Slashdot Mirror

DrLudicrous writes "Anthropologists have reconstructed and dated three skulls from Ethiopia that they believe to be the oldest anatomically modern human skulls in existance. They date to 160,000 years ago, in agreement with genetic studies that pin the arrival of modern humans to at least 150,000 years ago. The skulls also demonstrate evidence of ritual burial." UC Berkeley has the original release as well.

Neuropol writes "In the most rescent Seti@home news letter. Seti recieved (only!) 24 hours of telescope time at Arecibo to investigate interesting points in the sky where signals have not only shown up once but several times in data crunches in the last 4 years. The Planetary Society web site has an excellent summary of the reobservations. The Seti web site lists the reobservation targets and the 7,000 users whose computations directly contributed to finding them."

Neuropol writes "In the most rescent Seti@home news letter. Seti recieved (only!) 24 hours of telescope time at Arecibo to investigate interesting points in the sky where signals have not only shown up once but several times in data crunches in the last 4 years. The Planetary Society web site has an excellent summary of the reobservations. The Seti web site lists the reobservation targets and the 7,000 users whose computations directly contributed to finding them."

joebeone writes "Linus has commented on the SCO v. IBM suit saying "SCO is playing it like the Raelians" and that he will withhold his judgement until the code in question is shown in court. He has also recommended that former slashdot editor, Chris DiBona, be appointed to a panel offered by SCO to examine the evidence." Businessweek has an interview with SCO's CEO. The Open Group would like to remind everyone that SCO is only one of many in the Unix world.

Wynken de Word writes "An article in Canada's Globe and Mail says 'vineyard owner Don King is coaxing 30,000 plants to grow grapes of exactly the right colour, size and sweetness to produce great ice wine and other fine vintages...with the help of judicious watering, a knowledge of the age-old art of viniculture -- and electronic sensing devices linked together in a wireless network.' Using an Intel-based TinyOS and TinyDB, multiple sensing devices monitor grape micro climates and help determine irrigation and frost patterns."

Sayten241 writes "Wired is running an article about a program from UC Berkeley in which website developers can literally sketch out a webpage using a tablet. The article states that Berkley felt that since so many web-developers sketch things out on paper before they begin, why not allow them to sketch on the computer? This program is not limited to websites however. It has also been used to help MIT design a Linux Interface (click the blue parts of the image to navigate through interface)."

Hans Reiser - you're thinking ReiserFS, and you'd be right - has a proposal to slather Free Software with credits for its authors. Good? Bad? This is something the community has generally moved away from, but maybe Reiser has a good point. Newsforge is part of OSDN.

adamba writes: "Why are manhole covers round?" "How many gas stations are there in the United States?" "How would you design a remote control for venetian blinds?" "What company is famous for interview questions like those?" You might not know the answer to the first three questions, but you probably know the last one. The notion of asking "Microsoft interview questions," quick logic puzzles and brainteasers, has become accepted wisdom for many technology companies. In comparison, the questions asked during traditional interviews, such as "Describe your typical day" and "What is your greatest weakness?" seem too simplistic, too easy to handle with a prepared answer, too prone to allowing weak candidates to slip through: they simply don't reveal enough about the person. While the Microsoft questions appear to be a better way to evaluate people, the issue has never really been seriously examined. Microsoft's success would seem to make the argument pointless: Can $250 billion in market capitalization be wrong?" Read on for an interesting look at the details and justifications for this kind of interview. How Would You Move Mount Fuji? Microsoft's Cult of the Puzzle author William Poundstone pages 288 publisher Little Brown & Company rating 9 reviewer Adam Barr ISBN 0316919160 summary The scoop on Microsoft interviews--with answers!

Now comes a new book, How Would You Move Mount Fuji? Microsoft's Cult of the Puzzle - How the World's Smartest Company Selects the Most Creative Thinkers by science writer William Poundstone. Poundstone talked to various people who have been involved in Microsoft hiring, including those who were interviewed, and those who gave interviews (full disclosure: I worked at Microsoft for ten years and was one of the people he talked to). He includes a lengthy list of questions, and most interestingly for many people, he also includes answers.

In the book, Poundstone traces the origins of this type of question, providing some fascinating information on the history of intelligence testing. He then chronicles how a certain type of puzzle interview caught on in the high-tech industry. Microsoft was not the first company to ask such questions, but it certainly popularized it.

Poundstone explains that responding to a problem you can't solve could be thought of as the fundamental problem in Artificial Intelligence (AI), and then continues,

"The problems used in AI research have often been puzzles or games. These are simpler and more clearly defined than the complex problems of the real world. They too involve the elements of logic, insight, and intuition that pertain to real problems. Many of the people at Microsoft follow AI work closely, of course, and this may help to explain what must strike some readers as peculiar--their supreme confidence that silly little puzzles have a bearing on the real world."

It could be--or maybe Microsoft employees assume that since they were hired that way, it's a great way to hire (and complaints from those who were not hired are just sour grapes). Most developers I knew thought of AI as a pretty academic discipline, and were more concerned with putting a dialog box up at the right location on the screen than trying to pass the Turing Test.

Nevertheless, as companies seek to emulate Microsoft, the questions have caught on elsewhere. And as Poundstone put it, such questions have now "metastasized" to other industries, such as finance.

This makes the effectiveness of these questions an important issue. Poundstone first presents evidence that "Where do you see yourself in five years" and "What are you most proud of" are fairly pointless questions. In one experiment he describes, two trained interviewers conducted interviews with a group of volunteers. Their evaluations were compared to those of another group who saw a fifteen second video of the interview: the candidate entering the room, shaking hands, and sitting down. The opinions correlated strongly; in other words, when you are sitting in an interview telling the interviewer what you do on your day off and what the last book you read was, the interviewer has already made up his or her mind, based on who knows what subjective criteria. As Poundstone laments, "This would be funny if it weren't tragic."

Puzzle interviews could hardly be worse than that, but it turns out the evidence that they are better is doubtful. Poundstone shows how intelligence tests are on very dubious scientific standing, and points out that Microsoft's interviews are a form of IQ test, even though Microsoft does not admit that publicly. In his 1972 book of puzzles Games for the Superintelligent, Mensa member James Fixx wrote, "If you don't particularly enjoy the kinds of puzzles and problems we're talking about here, that fact alone says nothing about your intelligence in general". Yet virtually every Microsoft employee accepts the "obvious" rationale, that only people who do well in logic puzzles will do well at Microsoft.

There is another important point about puzzle-based interviews: although you would think that they were naturally more objective than traditional interviews--more black or white, right or wrong, and therefore less subject to interpretation by the interviewer--in fact, interviewers' evaluation of answers can be extremely subjective. Once you have formed your impression of a candidate from the enter/handshake/sit-down routine at the start of the interview, it is easy to rationalize a candidate's performance in an interview, either positively or negatively. They needed a bunch of hints to get the answer? Sure, but they were just small hints and it's a tough problem. They got the correct answer right away? No fair, they must have seen it before.

Given the ease with which the answers to logic puzzles can be spun, it is highly probable that Microsoft interviewers are also making fifteen-second judgements of candidates, without even realizing it.

Three years ago Malcolm Gladwell wrote a New Yorker article about job interviews called The New-Boy Network. Gladwell quotes much of the same research as Poundstone, and relates the story of Nolan Myers, a Harvard senior who is being recruited by Tellme and Microsoft. He has done a one-hour interview with Hadi Partovi of Tellme, and spoken to Gladwell, the author, in a coffee shop for about ninety minutes. His initial interaction with Microsoft was much briefer: he asked Steve Ballmer a question during an on-campus event, which led to an exchange of emails.

As Gladwell writes, "What convinced Ballmer he wanted Myers? A glimpse! He caught a little slice of Nolan Myers in action and--just like that--the C.E.O. of a four-hundred-billion-dollar company was calling a college senior in his dorm room. Ballmer somehow knew he liked Myers, the same way Hadi Partovi knew, and the same way I knew after our little chat at Au Bon Pain."

So Steve Ballmer, who obviously does not feel that he is choosing people based on traditional interviewing techniques, and in fact was one of the originators of the "Microsoft questions," is more prone to making fifteen-second judgements than he would probably admit.

The flaw, if any, may simply be in ascribing too much value to the puzzles themselves. The actual questions may be secondary: the company might do as well asking geek-centric trivia questions, like "What was the name of Lord Byron's niece?" That does not mean Microsoft is hiring the same people that an investment bank is going to hire. The cues they look for may be different: instead of a firm handshake and the right tie, they may be looking for intelligent eyes and fast speech, or whatever non-verbal cues ubergeeks throw off.

A Microsoft interview candidate will typically talk to four or five employees, and in general must get a "hire" recommendation from all of them. Even if the employees are actually basing their recommendations not on puzzle-solving ability but on a subconscious evaluation, it is unlikely that all of them will be subconsciously using the same criteria. Emitting the proper signals to satisfy four different Microsoft employees may be as good a judge of a candidate as any, and Microsoft may be good at interviewing simply because it tends to hire people that are similar in some unknown way to the current group of employees. If another company adopts puzzle interviews, they may discover that they are not hiring the smartest people, just the people most like themselves.

In the end, the best thing that can be said about puzzle interviews is that as a screening technique, they are no worse than traditional interviews. And there are some side effects: some candidates may be more prone to accept a job with Microsoft because of the interview style, and imparted wisdom about the technique may function as a useful pre-screening of prospective applicants. And of course, employees may get a kick out of showing a candidate how smart they are, although this can have a downside: How Would You Move Mount Fuji? has several examples of interviewers who seemed more concerned with proving their intelligence than in gauging that of the candidate. One former Microsoftie admits they asked candidates a question they did not know the answer to, just to see what they would do.

Two chapters of the book, entitled "Embracing Cluelessness" and "How to Outsmart the Puzzle Interview," attempt to help interview candidates who are confronted with such puzzle questions. The official advice is scarce: Microsoft's Interview Tips page advises candidates "Be prepared to think," which isn't much help, since presumably nobody is advising the opposite. Some of the recruiters who go to college campuses have their own little tips; for example, one recruiter named Colleen offers a quote from Yoda: "Do or do not, there is no try." Other recruiter tips include "Stay awake" and "Always leave room for dessert." Luckily, Poundstone gives advice that is a bit more concrete than that.

Microsoft puzzles can be divided into two types: those where the methodology is more important than the answer, and those where only the answer matters.

The "methodology" puzzles break into two classes, "design" puzzles ("How would you design a particular product or service?") and "estimation" puzzles ("How much of a certain object occupies a certain space?"--for example, "How much does the ice in a hockey rink weigh?")

Design questions exist because at Microsoft, responsibility for product development is split between two groups, the developers and the program managers. Developers write code: program managers design the user interface, trying to balance the needs of users with the technical constraints from developers. As Poundstone points out, while estimation questions and general logic puzzles are universal, the design questions are reserved for program managers.

The reason is that program management does not require the specific skills of development. Designing software is something any reasonably intelligent person can attempt, so the design questions are aimed at finding people who are really good at design. In fact one program manager I worked with told me that the best way to distinguish a potential program manager from a potential developer was to ask them to design a house: a developer would jump right in, while a program manager would step back and ask questions about the constraints on the house.

(Developers, meanwhile, are usually asked to write code on the whiteboard, an experience that program management candidates are spared. Books exist that discuss coding problems in more detail, such as Programming Interviews Exposed: Secrets to Landing Your Next Job by John Mongan and Noah Suojanen, which covers many standard programming questions and even includes answers to a few of the logic puzzles that Poundstone addresses).

Poundstone does include some of these design questions and provides sample answers. But the "answer" to these questions is really the process involved: ask questions, state assumptions, propose design. That's all you need to know about them. If you are wondering why Microsoft did not use this logical procedure when confronted with the question "Design a response to the open source movement," but instead seems to have spouted off the first five things that popped into its collective head--that's just more proof that performance in interviews is not necessarily a great indicator of future job performance.

Another recruiter, Stacey, gives the following interview tip: "The best interview tips I can give you are to relax and think for yourself. For a Microsoft interview, be prepared to answer both technical and problem solving questions. Ask clarifying questions and remember to think out loud. We are more interested in the way your are thinking through a problem then we are in your final answer!"

That approach works for the "methodology" questions: design and estimation. What about the other kinds--the more traditional brainteasers? For those questions, forget your methodology. What Microsoft interviewers want is the right answer.

James Fixx, writing three years before Microsoft was founded, offers some advice that may hearten potential Microsoft recruits: "One way to improve one's ability to use one's mind is simply to see how very bright people use theirs." With that in mind, we can follow along with Poundstone as he explains the solutions to the puzzles that the very bright people at Microsoft ask during interviews. He certainly delivers the goods: 100 pages of answers. Unfortunately, it's not clear whether seeing those answers help you tune up your brain to answer problems that do not appear in the book.

In his book, Fixx spends some time trying to explain what, as he so delicately puts it, "the superintelligent do that's different from what ordinary people do." For example, trying to describe how a superintelligent person figures out the next letter in the sequence "O T T F F S S", he advises people to think hard: "Persistence alone will now bring its reward, and eventually a thought occurs to him." Talking about how to arrange four pennies so there are two straight lines with three pennies in each line, he writes "The true puzzler...gropes for some loophole, and, with luck, quickly finds it in the third dimension." Further hints abound: "The intelligent person tries... not to impose unnecessary restrictions on his mind. The bright person has succeeded because he does not assume the problem cannot be solved simply because it cannot be solved in one way or even two ways he has tried." This advice sounds great in theory, but how do you apply it in practice? How do you make your mind think that way? As Poundstone quotes Louis Armstrong, "Man, if you have to ask 'What is it?' you ain't never goin' to know."

Poundstone recognizes that the flashes of insight that Fixx describes, and that Microsoft interviewers expect, are more of a hit-or-miss thing than the inevitable result of hard thinking by an intelligent person: "What is particularly troubling is how little 'logic' seems to be involved in some phases of problem solving. Difficult problems are often solved via a sudden, intuitive insight. One moment you're stuck; the next moment this insight has popped into your head, though not by any step-by-step logic that can be recounted."

During interview training I participated in when I worked there, Microsoft would emphasize four attributes that it was looking for when hiring: intelligence, hard work, ability to get things done, and vision. Intelligence was always #1, yet despite this, Poundstone says that the official Microsoft people he talked to would shy away from the word "intelligence", preferring to use terms like "bandwidth" and "inventiveness". Indeed Microsoft's Interview Tips web page says "We look for original, creative thinkers, and our interview process is designed to find those people." No mention of the word intelligence or any notion that interviews are some sort of intelligence test.

In fact, although I think that most Microsoft people would consider the puzzle tests to be mainly a test of intelligence, they may do better at testing some of the other desired attributes. Psychologist and personnel researcher Harry Hepner once said, "Creative thinkers make many false starts, and continually waver between unmanageable fantasies and systematic attack." Poundstone explains that you have to figure out when your fantasies have become too unmanageable: "To deal effectively with puzzles (and with the bigger problems for which they may be a model), you must operate on two or more levels simultaneously. One thread of consciousness tackles the problem while another, higher-level thread monitors the progress. You need to keep asking yourself 'Is this approach working? How much time have I spent on this approach, and how likely is it to produce an answer soon? Is there something else I should be trying?'"

This is great advice, not just for a puzzle, but for a job, and life in general. So watching someone think through a puzzle might be a great way to see how they would tackle a tough problem at work--the "hard work" and "get things done" abilities that Microsoft is also looking for. As James Fixx writes in the sequel More Games for the Superintelligent, "While the less intelligent person, unsure of ever being able to solve a problem at all, is easily discouraged, the intelligent person is fairly sure of succeeding and therefore presses on, discouragements be damned."

Unfortunately, the typical Microsoft interviewer is not looking at the approach to puzzle questions as a test of perseverence. Someone who tries five different attempts might demonstrate more resourcefulness than someone who just "gets it"--but they would get turned down. Interviewers who ask puzzle questions are probing the "intelligence" category, and they want the right answer.

The last chapter of the book is titled "How Innovative Companies Ought to Interview" and deals with a soon-to-be-problem: How will the industry be affected by the publication of this book? Will interviews still work if everyone knows the secrets?

Knowledge of Microsoft-style questions is already out there on the Internet. Since the candidates who participate in the interviews do not sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement, they are free to tell others the questions they were asked, and from these reports databases of questions have been built up. Poundstone includes the URLs of several sites, including Kiran Bondalapati's "Interview Question Bank", Michael Pryor's "Techinterview", Chris Sells' "Interviewing at Microsoft", and William Wu's "Riddles". These sites generally don't include answers, but certainly knowing the types of questions to expect can be an advantage.

Microsoft employees are aware of such sites. Once, when I sent email describing the questions I had asked a Microsoft candidate, I got a nasty reply from someone else at the company: Didn't I know that the question I had asked was posted on a website of known Microsoft interview questions? On the other hand, with no official internal Microsoft list of questions, some employees are undoubtedly using these sites to come up with material. Even within Microsoft there is debate about which questions are reasonable. In an unscientific survey I took of former Microsoft program managers, opinion was divided on the validity of some of the questions. A question described by one person as a good test of a candidate's ability was dismissed by another as foolish.

Poundstone does point out that some questions are silly and should not be asked ("Define the color green"), but he gives serious answers to others which I don't think are worthwhile either, including "If you could remove any of the fifty U.S. states, which would it be?" and "How do they make M&Ms?" Furthermore, I would argue that if an entire class of questions can be "tainted" by How Would You Move Mount Fuji?, they don't deserve to be asked in the first place. Estimation questions might be invalidated by the revelation that the way to solve them was to multiply together a bunch of wild guesses. The strategy of using a design question to to differentiate program management candidates from developer candidates might also go the way of the dodo. Is that necessarily a bad thing?

How Would You Move Mount Fuji? is worth reading even if you don't plan on interviewing at Microsoft. It has some interesting history, a few good Microsoft tidbits, and puzzles that are entertaining on their own. For those considering a job at Microsoft, the book may ratchet up the "arms race" of questions. Microsoft employees may assume that people interviewing have read the book--so if you are going to interview there, or anywhere else that imitates their style, you should probably read it too.

You can purchase How Would You Move Mount Fuji? Microsoft's Cult of the Puzzle from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

pdw writes "Revolution is not an AOL Keyword* is an entertaining piece of prose, which has been floating around the blogspace for the past month. In reinterpreting Gil Scott-Heron's The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, Eddan Katz has given us quick worldview, common to most Slashdoters, and of course reminds us of what is most important to all, to go out and enjoy life!"

Jamie noted that an Exploit was found in Seti@Home and there is code exploiting the hole actually running about in the wild. Patches are available for those of you not interested in running a public warez server or DoS client ;)

tom_conte writes "From the proceedings of the 2nd International Workshop on Peer-to-Peer Systems (IPTPS'03), "On Death, Taxes, and the Convergence of Peer-to-Peer and Grid Computing" compares the two current popular incarnations of distributed computing technology, Peer-to-Peer (P2P) and Grid Computing. It also predicts the convergence of the two technologies: "The complementary nature of the strengths and weaknesses of the two approaches suggests that the interests of the two communities are likely to grow closer over time." This paper is worth reading if you want to clear up the marketing cloud that surrounds these two technologies and sometimes makes them hard to distinguish."

tom_conte writes "From the proceedings of the 2nd International Workshop on Peer-to-Peer Systems (IPTPS'03), "On Death, Taxes, and the Convergence of Peer-to-Peer and Grid Computing" compares the two current popular incarnations of distributed computing technology, Peer-to-Peer (P2P) and Grid Computing. It also predicts the convergence of the two technologies: "The complementary nature of the strengths and weaknesses of the two approaches suggests that the interests of the two communities are likely to grow closer over time." This paper is worth reading if you want to clear up the marketing cloud that surrounds these two technologies and sometimes makes them hard to distinguish."

Slashback tonight with more on SBC's claim to own patents covering basic Web navigation techniques, an eyebrow-raising look at Slammer's spread, bad news for Ogg streams from the BBC, and more. Read on for the details. Update: 02/04 00:13 GMT by T : And late-breaking good news from SDF regarding its Public Access UNIX System.

FedEx should take notes. nweaver writes "We have completed our preliminary analysis of the Sapphire/Slammer SQL worm. This worm required roughly 10 minutes to spread worldwide, scanning at a peak rate of over 55 million IP addresses per second, making it by far the fastest worm to date and nearly two orders of magnitude faster than Code Red. It infected at least 75,000 victims and possibly considerably more. The remarkable speed was due to the use of a bandwidth-limited scanner. There were also two bugs in the random number generator. Copies of our analysis are available from CAIDA, Silicon Defense, and UC Berkeley."

"Sir, this patent application needs to filled out in ink. Not Crayon." We recently posted that the company SBC was calling in the chips on patents it holds which the company claim cover certain types of navigation links found on many web pages. Dan Gillmor writes "Noticed the link to Cringley's piece. Well, I did ask readers for prior art and got quite a bit, some of which I've posted..."

Speaking of SBC, theodp writes "The SBC Intellectual Property folks are back in the news, this time for donating a $7.3 million virus screening patent to the University of Texas. While patent donations are one of the latest twists on corporate philanthropy, the practice has aroused the curiosity of the IRS as a possible tax avoidance scheme."

I wonder how much they'd feel justified in writing off if they donated their web patent portfolio to the FSF.

Can we call this an on-again, off-again relationship? Albanach writes "It seems the BBC who had pioneered Ogg Vorbis broadcasting on a serious scale have abandoned Ogg indefinitely. They say other work commitments make Ogg support no longer a priority. Their statement can be read here"

What, and let all my pigeons escape? FedeTXF writes "We already love pop-up blocking in Mozilla and some other related browsers, now Blogzilla is reporting a great trick to get rid of embedded ads (banners and iframes) using plain CCS and the always amazing Mozilla flexibility and openness. Go check this page if you are anxious to see how to set it up."

Did you have your video camera trained on Columbia? Finally, Child of Apollo writes ""For anyone who has recorded video or taken photos that they believe may be of aid in the investigation of the Space Shuttle Columbia accident, NASA has established a special location on the Web where Internet users may upload their media files to be reviewed by NASA." Although sad news all around, thanks to pleasant for the link."

Here's the late-breaker. fonixmunkee writes "looks like SDF will return soon. a message stating that they negotiated a new contract graced the single page in the "members area" of the temporary www.lonestar.org, but did not cite who specifically with. a few different ideas were tossed around for hosting, so only time will tell with who. i also just today got an e-mail from the Washington State Attorney General's Office that offered a small ray (read: none) of hope for assistance with SDF's run-in with NWLink. (NWLink breached SDF's contract.) hope all is well soon." This is good news, especially so soon after SDF got the rug yanked from under them.

Slashback tonight with more on SBC's claim to own patents covering basic Web navigation techniques, an eyebrow-raising look at Slammer's spread, bad news for Ogg streams from the BBC, and more. Read on for the details. Update: 02/04 00:13 GMT by T : And late-breaking good news from SDF regarding its Public Access UNIX System.

FedEx should take notes. nweaver writes "We have completed our preliminary analysis of the Sapphire/Slammer SQL worm. This worm required roughly 10 minutes to spread worldwide, scanning at a peak rate of over 55 million IP addresses per second, making it by far the fastest worm to date and nearly two orders of magnitude faster than Code Red. It infected at least 75,000 victims and possibly considerably more. The remarkable speed was due to the use of a bandwidth-limited scanner. There were also two bugs in the random number generator. Copies of our analysis are available from CAIDA, Silicon Defense, and UC Berkeley."

"Sir, this patent application needs to filled out in ink. Not Crayon." We recently posted that the company SBC was calling in the chips on patents it holds which the company claim cover certain types of navigation links found on many web pages. Dan Gillmor writes "Noticed the link to Cringley's piece. Well, I did ask readers for prior art and got quite a bit, some of which I've posted..."

Speaking of SBC, theodp writes "The SBC Intellectual Property folks are back in the news, this time for donating a $7.3 million virus screening patent to the University of Texas. While patent donations are one of the latest twists on corporate philanthropy, the practice has aroused the curiosity of the IRS as a possible tax avoidance scheme."

I wonder how much they'd feel justified in writing off if they donated their web patent portfolio to the FSF.

Can we call this an on-again, off-again relationship? Albanach writes "It seems the BBC who had pioneered Ogg Vorbis broadcasting on a serious scale have abandoned Ogg indefinitely. They say other work commitments make Ogg support no longer a priority. Their statement can be read here"

What, and let all my pigeons escape? FedeTXF writes "We already love pop-up blocking in Mozilla and some other related browsers, now Blogzilla is reporting a great trick to get rid of embedded ads (banners and iframes) using plain CCS and the always amazing Mozilla flexibility and openness. Go check this page if you are anxious to see how to set it up."

Did you have your video camera trained on Columbia? Finally, Child of Apollo writes ""For anyone who has recorded video or taken photos that they believe may be of aid in the investigation of the Space Shuttle Columbia accident, NASA has established a special location on the Web where Internet users may upload their media files to be reviewed by NASA." Although sad news all around, thanks to pleasant for the link."

Here's the late-breaker. fonixmunkee writes "looks like SDF will return soon. a message stating that they negotiated a new contract graced the single page in the "members area" of the temporary www.lonestar.org, but did not cite who specifically with. a few different ideas were tossed around for hosting, so only time will tell with who. i also just today got an e-mail from the Washington State Attorney General's Office that offered a small ray (read: none) of hope for assistance with SDF's run-in with NWLink. (NWLink breached SDF's contract.) hope all is well soon." This is good news, especially so soon after SDF got the rug yanked from under them.

deadfx writes "Since disk drives are cheap, backup should be cheap too. Of course it does not help to mirror your data by adding more disks to your own computer because a fire, flood, power surge, etc. could still wipe out your local data center. Instead, you should give your files to peers (and in return store their files) so that if a catastrophe strikes your area, you can recover data from surviving peers. The Distributed Internet Backup System (DIBS) is designed to implement this vision."

DeAshcroft writes "EE Times has a piece on progress with the four-year-old DARPA-conceived Smart Dust self-organizing sensor networks. Based on Berkeley's TinyOS and TinyDB open-source projects, the article reports several companies are demonstrating both military and civilian applications. Ars Technica adds background and commentary on issues not discussed in the EET article."

DeAshcroft writes "EE Times has a piece on progress with the four-year-old DARPA-conceived Smart Dust self-organizing sensor networks. Based on Berkeley's TinyOS and TinyDB open-source projects, the article reports several companies are demonstrating both military and civilian applications. Ars Technica adds background and commentary on issues not discussed in the EET article."

benh57 writes "A student at Berkeley has come up with a novel approach for navigating small handheld displays. In effect the display is a "peephole" into a much larger information area. You see different parts of the display by moving the handheld around - no more tiny scrollbars. Check out the DiVX movies to see it in action. It even works in 3D!"

immerrath writes "The New York Times has an article [Sorry, tomorrow's article, no Google link yet] on a movement that is rapidly gaining support in the scientific community: the Public Library of Science(PLoS). The founders, Nobel Laureate Harold Varmus, Stanford biologist Pat Brown and Berkeley Lab scientist Michael Eisen, argue that scientific literature cannot be privately controlled or owned by the publishers of scientific journals, and must instead be available in public archives freely accessible by anyone and everyone. This has very important implications for the fundamental principle that Science must transcend all economic, national and other barriers. For a while now, PLoS has been trying to get scientific journals to release the rights to scientific papers; many major journals have not complied -- in response, PLoS is starting PLoS-standard-compliant journals (for which they received a $9 million grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation), to demonstrate the validity of the idea and persuade academic publishers to adopt the free access model. They even have a GPL-like open access Licence, and their journals have some very prominent scientists on the editorial board. Here is the text of an earlier Newsweek article about PLoS, and here is a Nature Public Debate explaining the issues. Michael Eisen received the 2002 Benjamin Franklin award for his work on PLoS. Don't forget to sign the PLoS open letter!"

decowski writes "Results from the first six months of experiments at KamLAND, an underground neutrino detector in central Japan, show that anti-neutrinos emanating from nearby nuclear reactors are "disappearing," which indicates they have mass and can oscillate or change from one type to another. As anti-neutrinos are the anti-matter counterpart to neutrinos, these results provide independent confirmation of earlier studies involving solar neutrinos and show that the Standard Model of Particle Physics, which has successfully explained fundamental physics since the 1970's, is in need of updating. The results also point the way to the first direct measurements of the total radioactivity of the earth."

decowski writes "Results from the first six months of experiments at KamLAND, an underground neutrino detector in central Japan, show that anti-neutrinos emanating from nearby nuclear reactors are "disappearing," which indicates they have mass and can oscillate or change from one type to another. As anti-neutrinos are the anti-matter counterpart to neutrinos, these results provide independent confirmation of earlier studies involving solar neutrinos and show that the Standard Model of Particle Physics, which has successfully explained fundamental physics since the 1970's, is in need of updating. The results also point the way to the first direct measurements of the total radioactivity of the earth."

Slashback with words on the demise of TIPS, MPlayer's newest add-in, Revolution OS on DVD, Wal-Mart blinking first in their fight with FatWallet, and more. Read on for the details.

Facts is facts, Ma'am. joebeone writes "WalMart has backed down [AScribe.org] from it's DMCA claim in the FatWallet case[1] after FatWallet countered that facts are uncopyrightable (at least in the US). Let this be a lesson to those who would use the DMCA to unjustly intimidate websites into removing content. I definitely think that Boalt Hall's Samuelson Law, Technology and Public Policy Clinic deserves some major credit for sticking up for the little guys who don't have the litigatory resources that companies like WalMart have.

[1] WalMart claimed that their day-after-thanksgiving sale prices were copyrightable."

Maybe they just changed the drop location. An anonymous reader writes "There was one small ray of light in the Homeland Security Act. A provision inserted in the bill killed the Justice Department's TIPS initiative. You'll recall that TIPS was the DoJ's proposal to create a domestic spy network using ordinary citizens. And I was hoping to join up and inform them that John Ashcroft wears women's underwear. Oh well ..."

Best way to play back "L.A. Confidential." An anonymous reader writes "The best media player for *nixes, MPlayer, has just gotten better with the ability to play Windows Media Player 9 (WMV9 and WMA9) files. When Sorensen playback was added the only remaining codecs were the Window Media Player ones. Now that this is complete, Linux finally seems to have a complete solution for multimedia playback. It just remains for the mainstream distros to include this gem."

Measure three or four times at least, cut once. jdevons writes "The Owner-Builder Book that I reviewed a while ago has been updated. The author reads slashdot regularly and included many of the ideas and suggestions offered in the slashdot comments ..."

Jeff, Rob and Chris in their Hollywood makeup. updog writes "The film Revolution OS, which has been discussed on Slashdot here and here, is now available on DVD at Netflix (btw, it's interesting to note that this Netflix version is sub-licensed under the guise of pay-per-view television, and the director J.T.S. Moore wasn't even aware of its existence until recently.)

A 2 Disc Special Edition DVD will be available in January 2003, and will include additional interviews, bonus material, and better video quality over the Netflix version. You can make sure that you're notified when it's released by requesting info here. Finally, I've written a review of the Netflix version of the DVD, which you can read here."

Next year's stocking stuffer, maybe? An anonymous reader writes "nvmax.com is running a story/press release explaining how Dynamism.com is teaming up with the Zaurus Open Source development community to bring the Sharp Zaurus SL-C700 to English!. I need to get one!"

What I want is C-64 style Aztec. retro128 writes "For all of your old schoolers out there, Tierra Entertainment has released a re-make of King's Quest II, which includes original art, completely redone music, and a few extra things not seen in the original game (some early screen shots hinted at a town, which did not exist in the original). What's remarkable is that Tierra has no affiliation with Sierra whatsoever, and is driven by two developers who wish to remain anonymous. I've played their re-make of KQ1 and it's up to snuff. Check out the main page or go straight to the good stuff."

Slashback with words on the demise of TIPS, MPlayer's newest add-in, Revolution OS on DVD, Wal-Mart blinking first in their fight with FatWallet, and more. Read on for the details.

Facts is facts, Ma'am. joebeone writes "WalMart has backed down [AScribe.org] from it's DMCA claim in the FatWallet case[1] after FatWallet countered that facts are uncopyrightable (at least in the US). Let this be a lesson to those who would use the DMCA to unjustly intimidate websites into removing content. I definitely think that Boalt Hall's Samuelson Law, Technology and Public Policy Clinic deserves some major credit for sticking up for the little guys who don't have the litigatory resources that companies like WalMart have.

[1] WalMart claimed that their day-after-thanksgiving sale prices were copyrightable."

Maybe they just changed the drop location. An anonymous reader writes "There was one small ray of light in the Homeland Security Act. A provision inserted in the bill killed the Justice Department's TIPS initiative. You'll recall that TIPS was the DoJ's proposal to create a domestic spy network using ordinary citizens. And I was hoping to join up and inform them that John Ashcroft wears women's underwear. Oh well ..."

Best way to play back "L.A. Confidential." An anonymous reader writes "The best media player for *nixes, MPlayer, has just gotten better with the ability to play Windows Media Player 9 (WMV9 and WMA9) files. When Sorensen playback was added the only remaining codecs were the Window Media Player ones. Now that this is complete, Linux finally seems to have a complete solution for multimedia playback. It just remains for the mainstream distros to include this gem."

Measure three or four times at least, cut once. jdevons writes "The Owner-Builder Book that I reviewed a while ago has been updated. The author reads slashdot regularly and included many of the ideas and suggestions offered in the slashdot comments ..."

Jeff, Rob and Chris in their Hollywood makeup. updog writes "The film Revolution OS, which has been discussed on Slashdot here and here, is now available on DVD at Netflix (btw, it's interesting to note that this Netflix version is sub-licensed under the guise of pay-per-view television, and the director J.T.S. Moore wasn't even aware of its existence until recently.)

A 2 Disc Special Edition DVD will be available in January 2003, and will include additional interviews, bonus material, and better video quality over the Netflix version. You can make sure that you're notified when it's released by requesting info here. Finally, I've written a review of the Netflix version of the DVD, which you can read here."

Next year's stocking stuffer, maybe? An anonymous reader writes "nvmax.com is running a story/press release explaining how Dynamism.com is teaming up with the Zaurus Open Source development community to bring the Sharp Zaurus SL-C700 to English!. I need to get one!"

What I want is C-64 style Aztec. retro128 writes "For all of your old schoolers out there, Tierra Entertainment has released a re-make of King's Quest II, which includes original art, completely redone music, and a few extra things not seen in the original game (some early screen shots hinted at a town, which did not exist in the original). What's remarkable is that Tierra has no affiliation with Sierra whatsoever, and is driven by two developers who wish to remain anonymous. I've played their re-make of KQ1 and it's up to snuff. Check out the main page or go straight to the good stuff."

Slashback with words on the demise of TIPS, MPlayer's newest add-in, Revolution OS on DVD, Wal-Mart blinking first in their fight with FatWallet, and more. Read on for the details.

Facts is facts, Ma'am. joebeone writes "WalMart has backed down [AScribe.org] from it's DMCA claim in the FatWallet case[1] after FatWallet countered that facts are uncopyrightable (at least in the US). Let this be a lesson to those who would use the DMCA to unjustly intimidate websites into removing content. I definitely think that Boalt Hall's Samuelson Law, Technology and Public Policy Clinic deserves some major credit for sticking up for the little guys who don't have the litigatory resources that companies like WalMart have.

[1] WalMart claimed that their day-after-thanksgiving sale prices were copyrightable."

Maybe they just changed the drop location. An anonymous reader writes "There was one small ray of light in the Homeland Security Act. A provision inserted in the bill killed the Justice Department's TIPS initiative. You'll recall that TIPS was the DoJ's proposal to create a domestic spy network using ordinary citizens. And I was hoping to join up and inform them that John Ashcroft wears women's underwear. Oh well ..."

Best way to play back "L.A. Confidential." An anonymous reader writes "The best media player for *nixes, MPlayer, has just gotten better with the ability to play Windows Media Player 9 (WMV9 and WMA9) files. When Sorensen playback was added the only remaining codecs were the Window Media Player ones. Now that this is complete, Linux finally seems to have a complete solution for multimedia playback. It just remains for the mainstream distros to include this gem."

Measure three or four times at least, cut once. jdevons writes "The Owner-Builder Book that I reviewed a while ago has been updated. The author reads slashdot regularly and included many of the ideas and suggestions offered in the slashdot comments ..."

Jeff, Rob and Chris in their Hollywood makeup. updog writes "The film Revolution OS, which has been discussed on Slashdot here and here, is now available on DVD at Netflix (btw, it's interesting to note that this Netflix version is sub-licensed under the guise of pay-per-view television, and the director J.T.S. Moore wasn't even aware of its existence until recently.)

A 2 Disc Special Edition DVD will be available in January 2003, and will include additional interviews, bonus material, and better video quality over the Netflix version. You can make sure that you're notified when it's released by requesting info here. Finally, I've written a review of the Netflix version of the DVD, which you can read here."

Next year's stocking stuffer, maybe? An anonymous reader writes "nvmax.com is running a story/press release explaining how Dynamism.com is teaming up with the Zaurus Open Source development community to bring the Sharp Zaurus SL-C700 to English!. I need to get one!"

What I want is C-64 style Aztec. retro128 writes "For all of your old schoolers out there, Tierra Entertainment has released a re-make of King's Quest II, which includes original art, completely redone music, and a few extra things not seen in the original game (some early screen shots hinted at a town, which did not exist in the original). What's remarkable is that Tierra has no affiliation with Sierra whatsoever, and is driven by two developers who wish to remain anonymous. I've played their re-make of KQ1 and it's up to snuff. Check out the main page or go straight to the good stuff."

Pingster writes "Next week, ICICS 2002 will take place in Singapore. Out of 40 papers at the conference, there will be just one paper that looks at human factors. Though many people know that usability problems can render even the strongest security useless, the security community has only recently started paying attention to usability issues. More serious thinking about usability and security is desperately needed. The paper proposes ten interaction design principles. Maybe you'll find them obvious; maybe you'll disagree with them entirely. Great! Let's have a discussion."

Structured Audio writes "Mike Langberg of the Merc put up his 5 technology predictions for 2012. Well chosen, although of course in 2012 speech recognition will still be 10 years away :-)."

PolicyWonk asks: "I just bought a new stereo, a Sony CMT-EP707, into which I intend to plug my laptop when watching DVDs, and my iPod when listening to music. When I first turned the stereo on I was horrified to hear interference from a local radio station, as well as a general hum emanating from the speakers. The hum and the radio emissions are audible even when the stereo's volume is set to 'min' and irrespective of what setting the stereo is on (i.e. Tuner, CD, or MD), or what input is (or isn't) plugged into the stereo. (I have tried my laptop, iPod, and no input). That means that during a quiet pause in a movie, or the intro to a song, this background noise is clearly audible. No amount of moving the speakers around the room, or plugging the stereo into different grounded outlets seems to fix the problem. I've checked my outlets, and they appear to have a ground connection, but I live on the fifth story of a circa 1900 apartment building in Manhattan, so it's anyone's guess what happens to the wires once they are in the walls. Anyone have any good solutions for reducing or eliminating interference from nearby radio sources?"

Prabhu Ramachandran asks: "I am a graduate student at the University of California at Berkeley and as part of a course project I am trying to gather comments on the following question: Will the Open Source and Free Software communities develop software that will find widespread adoption amongst the mainstream, or is such software, by its nature, suitable only for sophisticated users? As part of my literature survey I found an academic perspective that seemed to indicate that open source projects do not reach the mainstream because the developers tend to listen only to their smartest customers. There also seems to be a lack of detailed documentation and an easy-to-use interface which normally attract the not-so-sophisticated users. I would like to hear the thoughts of Open Source developers and others on this issue. If you would like to view my references or the comments posted on a website hosted for this purpose, please visit my website." There have already been some interesting comments posted on his website. What is your take on this issue?

Prabhu Ramachandran asks: "I am a graduate student at the University of California at Berkeley and as part of a course project I am trying to gather comments on the following question: Will the Open Source and Free Software communities develop software that will find widespread adoption amongst the mainstream, or is such software, by its nature, suitable only for sophisticated users? As part of my literature survey I found an academic perspective that seemed to indicate that open source projects do not reach the mainstream because the developers tend to listen only to their smartest customers. There also seems to be a lack of detailed documentation and an easy-to-use interface which normally attract the not-so-sophisticated users. I would like to hear the thoughts of Open Source developers and others on this issue. If you would like to view my references or the comments posted on a website hosted for this purpose, please visit my website." There have already been some interesting comments posted on his website. What is your take on this issue?

earnest_deyoung asks: "Twenty-five years ago Frederick Brooks laid out a vision of the future of software engineering in "No Silver Bullet." At the time he thought improvements in the process of software creation were most likely to come from object-oriented programming, of-the-shelf components, rapid prototyping, and cultivation of truly great designers. I've found postings on /. where people tout all sorts of design tools, from languages like Java, Perl, Python, Ruby, and Smalltalk to design aids and processes like UML and eXtreme Programming. I'm in a Computer Science degree program, and I keep wondering what "improvements" over the last quarter century have actually brought progress to the key issue: more quickly and more inexpensively developing software that's more reliable?"

joebeone writes "The California Supreme Court has suprisingly ruled that Matthew Pavlovich is not within their jurisdiction in the DVD-CCA's suit against his posting of DeCSS in relation to the development of the LiViD DVD player for open operating systems. What's surprising? It's surprising that they held that his posting of DeCSS was not actionable... (however the use of the program by users to circumvent CSS could be under the DMCA)."

joebeone writes "The California Supreme Court has suprisingly ruled that Matthew Pavlovich is not within their jurisdiction in the DVD-CCA's suit against his posting of DeCSS in relation to the development of the LiViD DVD player for open operating systems. What's surprising? It's surprising that they held that his posting of DeCSS was not actionable... (however the use of the program by users to circumvent CSS could be under the DMCA)."

minesweeper writes "Astronomers at the Keck Observatory in Hawaii recently monitored the largest volcanic eruption ever observed on Jupiter's moon Io. The eruption took place in February 2001, though image analysis was only recently completed by a team of University of California, Berkeley, astronomers. More info is available from the Berkeley press release, and an image is available here."

minesweeper writes "Astronomers at the Keck Observatory in Hawaii recently monitored the largest volcanic eruption ever observed on Jupiter's moon Io. The eruption took place in February 2001, though image analysis was only recently completed by a team of University of California, Berkeley, astronomers. More info is available from the Berkeley press release, and an image is available here."

SethJohnson writes "People have been attaching cameras to kites for quick-and-dirty aerial photographs for almost a hundred years. Hobbyists have progressed the art far beyond it's quick-and-dirty origins to produce stunning results. NASA even has a fairly detailed how-to using a disposable camera. Looks like a fun science fair project for those dads out there with kids."

StArSkY wonders: "I just had a quick look at the Team Slashdot page on the SETI site, and it looks as though only about 10% of the names are still active participants. Does Slashdot have limited patience? Have the Men In Black movies dulled our sense of commitment to the search for alien life? Or do we just rebuild our PC's too often and forget to reinstall the SETI client? For those of you who are interested, 'Team Slashdot' is currently ranked 27th in total results returned, and when I was typing this, we only needed another 6003 results to reach 1 million. Now that would be a huge achievement. So all of you Slashdotters out there with dormant SETI accounts get fired up, install the client, and get back to using those idle CPU cycles." not two days later, cybrpnk2 writes in with this update: "This week Team Slashdot becomes only the 28th registered group to process one million work units (basic blocks of radio data). Since the entire SETI@Home project has processed only around 600 million work units total, Slashdotters have made a pretty significant contribution to the overall project. Kudos to all involved, particularly slashdotter Mike Hardy for his team-leading contribution of over 23,000+ work units." A big hearty "Thanks!" to all current and future members of Team Slashdot. You guys rock! cybrpnk2 continues with this bit of history on Team Slashdot: "Team Slashdot was formed in Spring 1999 to participate as a group in the SETI@Home search for extraterrestrial radio signals. Over 2200 Slashdotters have joined over the past three years, with around 250 active today. You can join Team Slashdot here."

StArSkY wonders: "I just had a quick look at the Team Slashdot page on the SETI site, and it looks as though only about 10% of the names are still active participants. Does Slashdot have limited patience? Have the Men In Black movies dulled our sense of commitment to the search for alien life? Or do we just rebuild our PC's too often and forget to reinstall the SETI client? For those of you who are interested, 'Team Slashdot' is currently ranked 27th in total results returned, and when I was typing this, we only needed another 6003 results to reach 1 million. Now that would be a huge achievement. So all of you Slashdotters out there with dormant SETI accounts get fired up, install the client, and get back to using those idle CPU cycles." not two days later, cybrpnk2 writes in with this update: "This week Team Slashdot becomes only the 28th registered group to process one million work units (basic blocks of radio data). Since the entire SETI@Home project has processed only around 600 million work units total, Slashdotters have made a pretty significant contribution to the overall project. Kudos to all involved, particularly slashdotter Mike Hardy for his team-leading contribution of over 23,000+ work units." A big hearty "Thanks!" to all current and future members of Team Slashdot. You guys rock! cybrpnk2 continues with this bit of history on Team Slashdot: "Team Slashdot was formed in Spring 1999 to participate as a group in the SETI@Home search for extraterrestrial radio signals. Over 2200 Slashdotters have joined over the past three years, with around 250 active today. You can join Team Slashdot here."

StArSkY wonders: "I just had a quick look at the Team Slashdot page on the SETI site, and it looks as though only about 10% of the names are still active participants. Does Slashdot have limited patience? Have the Men In Black movies dulled our sense of commitment to the search for alien life? Or do we just rebuild our PC's too often and forget to reinstall the SETI client? For those of you who are interested, 'Team Slashdot' is currently ranked 27th in total results returned, and when I was typing this, we only needed another 6003 results to reach 1 million. Now that would be a huge achievement. So all of you Slashdotters out there with dormant SETI accounts get fired up, install the client, and get back to using those idle CPU cycles." not two days later, cybrpnk2 writes in with this update: "This week Team Slashdot becomes only the 28th registered group to process one million work units (basic blocks of radio data). Since the entire SETI@Home project has processed only around 600 million work units total, Slashdotters have made a pretty significant contribution to the overall project. Kudos to all involved, particularly slashdotter Mike Hardy for his team-leading contribution of over 23,000+ work units." A big hearty "Thanks!" to all current and future members of Team Slashdot. You guys rock! cybrpnk2 continues with this bit of history on Team Slashdot: "Team Slashdot was formed in Spring 1999 to participate as a group in the SETI@Home search for extraterrestrial radio signals. Over 2200 Slashdotters have joined over the past three years, with around 250 active today. You can join Team Slashdot here."

StArSkY wonders: "I just had a quick look at the Team Slashdot page on the SETI site, and it looks as though only about 10% of the names are still active participants. Does Slashdot have limited patience? Have the Men In Black movies dulled our sense of commitment to the search for alien life? Or do we just rebuild our PC's too often and forget to reinstall the SETI client? For those of you who are interested, 'Team Slashdot' is currently ranked 27th in total results returned, and when I was typing this, we only needed another 6003 results to reach 1 million. Now that would be a huge achievement. So all of you Slashdotters out there with dormant SETI accounts get fired up, install the client, and get back to using those idle CPU cycles." not two days later, cybrpnk2 writes in with this update: "This week Team Slashdot becomes only the 28th registered group to process one million work units (basic blocks of radio data). Since the entire SETI@Home project has processed only around 600 million work units total, Slashdotters have made a pretty significant contribution to the overall project. Kudos to all involved, particularly slashdotter Mike Hardy for his team-leading contribution of over 23,000+ work units." A big hearty "Thanks!" to all current and future members of Team Slashdot. You guys rock! cybrpnk2 continues with this bit of history on Team Slashdot: "Team Slashdot was formed in Spring 1999 to participate as a group in the SETI@Home search for extraterrestrial radio signals. Over 2200 Slashdotters have joined over the past three years, with around 250 active today. You can join Team Slashdot here."

StArSkY wonders: "I just had a quick look at the Team Slashdot page on the SETI site, and it looks as though only about 10% of the names are still active participants. Does Slashdot have limited patience? Have the Men In Black movies dulled our sense of commitment to the search for alien life? Or do we just rebuild our PC's too often and forget to reinstall the SETI client? For those of you who are interested, 'Team Slashdot' is currently ranked 27th in total results returned, and when I was typing this, we only needed another 6003 results to reach 1 million. Now that would be a huge achievement. So all of you Slashdotters out there with dormant SETI accounts get fired up, install the client, and get back to using those idle CPU cycles." not two days later, cybrpnk2 writes in with this update: "This week Team Slashdot becomes only the 28th registered group to process one million work units (basic blocks of radio data). Since the entire SETI@Home project has processed only around 600 million work units total, Slashdotters have made a pretty significant contribution to the overall project. Kudos to all involved, particularly slashdotter Mike Hardy for his team-leading contribution of over 23,000+ work units." A big hearty "Thanks!" to all current and future members of Team Slashdot. You guys rock! cybrpnk2 continues with this bit of history on Team Slashdot: "Team Slashdot was formed in Spring 1999 to participate as a group in the SETI@Home search for extraterrestrial radio signals. Over 2200 Slashdotters have joined over the past three years, with around 250 active today. You can join Team Slashdot here."

StArSkY wonders: "I just had a quick look at the Team Slashdot page on the SETI site, and it looks as though only about 10% of the names are still active participants. Does Slashdot have limited patience? Have the Men In Black movies dulled our sense of commitment to the search for alien life? Or do we just rebuild our PC's too often and forget to reinstall the SETI client? For those of you who are interested, 'Team Slashdot' is currently ranked 27th in total results returned, and when I was typing this, we only needed another 6003 results to reach 1 million. Now that would be a huge achievement. So all of you Slashdotters out there with dormant SETI accounts get fired up, install the client, and get back to using those idle CPU cycles." not two days later, cybrpnk2 writes in with this update: "This week Team Slashdot becomes only the 28th registered group to process one million work units (basic blocks of radio data). Since the entire SETI@Home project has processed only around 600 million work units total, Slashdotters have made a pretty significant contribution to the overall project. Kudos to all involved, particularly slashdotter Mike Hardy for his team-leading contribution of over 23,000+ work units." A big hearty "Thanks!" to all current and future members of Team Slashdot. You guys rock! cybrpnk2 continues with this bit of history on Team Slashdot: "Team Slashdot was formed in Spring 1999 to participate as a group in the SETI@Home search for extraterrestrial radio signals. Over 2200 Slashdotters have joined over the past three years, with around 250 active today. You can join Team Slashdot here."

StArSkY wonders: "I just had a quick look at the Team Slashdot page on the SETI site, and it looks as though only about 10% of the names are still active participants. Does Slashdot have limited patience? Have the Men In Black movies dulled our sense of commitment to the search for alien life? Or do we just rebuild our PC's too often and forget to reinstall the SETI client? For those of you who are interested, 'Team Slashdot' is currently ranked 27th in total results returned, and when I was typing this, we only needed another 6003 results to reach 1 million. Now that would be a huge achievement. So all of you Slashdotters out there with dormant SETI accounts get fired up, install the client, and get back to using those idle CPU cycles." not two days later, cybrpnk2 writes in with this update: "This week Team Slashdot becomes only the 28th registered group to process one million work units (basic blocks of radio data). Since the entire SETI@Home project has processed only around 600 million work units total, Slashdotters have made a pretty significant contribution to the overall project. Kudos to all involved, particularly slashdotter Mike Hardy for his team-leading contribution of over 23,000+ work units." A big hearty "Thanks!" to all current and future members of Team Slashdot. You guys rock! cybrpnk2 continues with this bit of history on Team Slashdot: "Team Slashdot was formed in Spring 1999 to participate as a group in the SETI@Home search for extraterrestrial radio signals. Over 2200 Slashdotters have joined over the past three years, with around 250 active today. You can join Team Slashdot here."

RobertFisher writes: "As professional astronomers have continuned to build ever more powerful telescopes, the role of amateur astronomers has diminished substantially, mainly to monitoring variable stars and discovering comets. Now a group of professional astronomers at UC Santa Cruz are beginning an exciting new project, to discover extrasolar planets using a network of amateur astronomers who will monitor candidate stars for transits of extrasolar planets. From their website : '...the past several years have seen the introduction of highly affordable small telescopes equipped with sensitive and stable CCD (charge coupled device) detectors, and controlled by laptop computers. Thousands of amateur astronomers already own observatories which, when properly configured, are capable of reliably detecting the periodic dimming which occurs when a close-in giant planet passes in front of the parent star as seen from Earth.'"

Gldm asks: "I've been working on a video codec as part of a college computer science project, but I've been stuck at an impasse for several months now: I can't figure out how to get video data from the OS to compress or test anything with. All the software applications I have (Premiere, Virtualdub, and AVIcap) want to use Microsoft's Video For Windows API, but I can't find any books on how to get a codec to interface with it. I've tried Microsoft's own docs, but they're not very helpful. The only example source I've found is huffyuv but it's written and commented so poorly, I can't understand it. I've tried emailing the author but he never replied. I thought it would be simple to do this but apparently VFW is some kind of ancient byzantine labyrinth of messages and function calls and data types I don't understand. If anyone knows a book on the VFW API that still exists and maybe something that very clearly explains exactly how you go about building a DLL please let me know. Or if you have experience programming for this API please please email me."

"I've tried asking my CS department for help, but they barely acknowledge the existence of GUIs and usually have us do everything in SunOS on their ancient 50mhz machines using gcc, which is not practical for this project. Nobody in the department knows any Windows programming and I've been unable to teach myself how to do it. I'm really frustrated because all I need is some kind of pointer to the pixels in a frame, its size and color format, and a pointer of where to put the compressed output."

I am a bitter old man. I hate change. Mac OS -- not Mac OS X, which is a different OS -- in its various iterations has been my OS of choice for over 15 years, and I have not looked fondly on the day that streak ends. But that day may very well be at hand. I like Mac OS X v10.2 enough that it may soon become my primary OS. From the day Apple acquired NeXT, and Rhapsody was announced, I was excited about the prospect of a "modern operating system" (read: Unix) that would look and act like my beloved Mac OS. But as Mac OS X started to become a reality, it became clear that this was not going to be Mac OS. It was going to be MacNeXT.

Oh, it wasn't entirely un-Mac-like. But it was different enough that I wasn't comfortable in it. I love Mac OS because of its ease of use and applications and interface and all of the little things. I sit in front of this darned computer for most of my waking hours, and if I am not comfortable with it, then it's no good. Life is too short.

Mac OS X v10.0 was a disappointment to me, and many loyalists to Mac OS. Many things in the interface just didn't work at all, or as well as, they did in Mac OS. Many still don't work right, including cmd+arrow keys to open and close arrows in Finder windows (half works: cmd+opt+arrow should open or close all hierarchical folders) and in dialogs with progress bars, such as file copying (doesn't work). The file dialogs, stuck in a column view, are, in my opinion, a glaring design flaw. In many places in the OS, you can't merely hit "return" in an active dialog to select the default button (if there is a default button at all), or "escape" to cancel.

But these problems were just the beginning. In 10.0, performance was bad, even on G4s. This improved significantly in 10.1, but Mac OS v9.2 still seemed faster. The entire Mac OS X UI -- while eminently "lickable," like no OS before it -- was tiring to look at. Anti-aliasing made things harder to read, especially on LCDs, even with the unnaturally large fonts in the Finder; many of the UI elements, including the aqua ones, often distracted the eye.

But in 10.2 (Jaguar), much has changed. The aqua elements are sharper, crisper ... perhaps shinier. Many of the UI elements, such as the Dock, are more subdued. The Finder has more options for changing the appearance of elements such as font size. Gosh, complaining about font size sounds petty, but darnit, it is so much nicer to look at.

The cursors are improved: the busy cursor has gone from an ugly rainbow pinwheel to a cute rainbow pinwheel (and how long before Steve makes it monochrome?). The arrow cursor has a better outline around it. The I-bar cursor still needs work; I lose it on dark backgrounds. In Mac OS, that cursor would change from dark to light when it passed over something dark.

Similarly, I also now lose my selection box in the Finder; in previous versions of Mac OS X, a selection box in a white space would appear grey. Now it is white, and invisible. Oops.

But while in the Finder, one of my old favorites is finally back: multiple Get Info windows. If you select multiple items at once, you still get the single window with all the items, but you can at least now open many Get Info items for individual items, one at a time. And you can get the old behavior of a single floating window ("Inspector") by holding down Option.

I still can't copy the content of a text clipping in the Finder. That's just insane. Open the clipping. Read it. Cmd-c to copy the contents to the Clipboard. This is a no-brainer.

It's all of these little touches that make a significant difference in whether I can comfortably use the OS on a daily basis. And for the first time ever, despite the problems that still exist, I am mostly comfortable.

And man, is Jaguar fast. Everything is just more responsive. Previously, clicking on UI elements would begin a delay that isn't there anymore. It's noticeably quicker. Even Classic seems quicker, despite the fact that Mac OS is no longer included with Mac OS X.

But I still can't do everything in Mac OS X, even with Classic. My UMAX (*spit*) scanner won't work, and likely never will; I use it seldom enough that it's probably a better use of my time and money to boot into Mac OS to use it, for now. I am having trouble getting reliable fax software to work, so I booted into Mac OS to use FaxSTF last weekend (I was going to install the 10.0 installer I have and then the Jaguar update when it comes out, but 10.0 won't install at all on Jaguar, so I am probably out of luck with that, though I am keeping my eye on Cocoa eFax, too).

But most important to my comfort is that all of the apps I know and love from Mac OS -- BBEdit, Interarchy, DragThing, Mozilla, Eudora -- work natively in Mac OS X. The operating system exists to host applications. They are the reason I use the computer. I want the same apps, and, thankfully, I have them. Further, much of Mac OS is still there, like QuickTime, AirPort, Keychains, AppleScript, and Internet Config (although this works somewhat oddly in some cases, and there's not much of a UI for it).

But the big question is: why should I use Mac OS X? If I am just trying to recreate Mac OS, why not just stick with Mac OS?

There are two answers. The first is a single word: Unix. I don't need to describe in detail why Unix is a Good Thing to Slashdot readers, but I will say that XDarwin and fink are two of the most important features of Mac OS X, and having a stable operating system is a joy. The stability of Mac OS certainly was pretty good -- ignore the hypocrites who used to praise Mac OS but now decry it -- but it can't match Mac OS X. That I can put my laptop to sleep, and wake immediately, and still have many TCP/IP connections open, is incredible to me.

The second answer is that new features are added to Mac OS X to make it too compelling to ignore.

The i* software suite -- iChat, iTunes, iMovie, iPhoto, iDVD, iCal, iSync, iProbablyForgotSomething -- are in many cases some of the best products to hit personal computing in many years. iMovie and iDVD are leaders in their niches. iTunes was a bit flat in its earlier versions, but gets more compelling in its feature set every year. iChat is actually a nice chat client: unobtrusive, mostly well-integrated into the system and Address Book, and easy on the eyes (it's also a little buggy; expect a few crashes). iPhoto is a nice beginning, but really needs better features for more flexible exporting of image metadata to be well-used. iCal and iSync aren't yet released, but by all accounts look very promising: how long before I ditch my PDA, or at least Palm Desktop's contacts and calendar apps?

Then there's Rendezvous -- the "zero configuration" networking -- which is only beginning to get significant use, but is sure to be a staple of many applications for years to come. Despite having some problems with printer sharing (making a comeback, finally) via Rendezvous -- I mistakenly had some computers on my network with a 255.0.0.0 subnet mask while others were 255.255.255.0, and this was enough to throw it off -- it requires zero configuration once you're configured properly.

Sherlock is now finally its own separate beast, with Find integrated into the Finder (imagine that!) and no longer is it scraping web pages, but it is enabled with web services goodness.

All of these features and more are only available in Mac OS X. If you want them, you need to switch.

Still, some things simply don't work in Mac OS X v10.2. The upgrade went smoothly, but various third-party apps, and even some Apple programs, had trouble. My chosen replacements for the Dock -- DragThing and LiteSwitch X -- both needed updates (Proteron says LiteSwitchX update should be available any day now). WeatherPop needed updating. WirelessDriver -- a serious boon to PowerBook G4 users who need to work more than 20 feet from a wireless base station -- no longer works, and it's not been updated in many months.

Apple Remote Desktop 1.0.x doesn't work; you'll need to run Software Update to get version 1.1. Unfortunately, even the new version only half-worked for me; the client side seems fine, but the Admin app says it is not installed properly. I wanted to just uninstall the whole thing and start over, but there is no uninstall option, that I could find. So I deleted all the files that the Installer installs, and then tried to reinstall, and the Installer says it is already installed. So now I have nothing, and I can't change it.

I thought for awhile that Apple's ScriptMenu didn't work, too; it was still sitting in /System/Library/CoreServices/Menu Extras/ where I had left it, but it was not launching. I searched for ScriptMenu on the discs and hard drive for information or a replacement, and on Apple's site, but found nothing. I was later informed the name had been changed from "ScriptMenu" to "Script Menu": the replacement was in the /Applications/AppleScript/ directory. Oops.

fink has a few problems, as one might expect with an OS update that sees a move from gcc2.9 to gcc3.1. Most of the things I tried worked fine without recompiling, including XFree86. But xterm and bash broke because of dependencies relating to the change gcc3.1, and manconf (a wrapper for Mac OS X's man) broke, because the Jaguar man doesn't accept the -C option to specify a configuration file. The workaround is to install fink's man, or at least remove /sw/bin/man in the meantime. The fink team is working to resolve the issues, and updates are forthcoming. An update for xterm is available on the XonX page.

SSHAgentServices, which sets an ssh-agent for the entire login session, stopped working; but the author of SSHPassKey, which I use to provide the ssh password to GUI apps, said he would integrate ssh-agent services into the next version of his application. Some of TinkerTool was obsoleted by 10.2, as Apple has added some of those preferences into their UIs, things like Terminal transparency, and what to do with newly mounted CDs and DVDs, so there's a new version available.

Currently, SharePoints doesn't work. This configures NetInfo to allow you to share arbitrary folders with any users via file sharing. So now I don't have a reasonable file server, unless I want to give everyone admin access to see all the volumes on the machine. But the author says he has discovered the problem, and a new version is forthcoming. This makes me quite happy.

There's also the long-standing and unresolved problem of AvantGo not working with Mac OS X. It's amazing that this is still broken.

I'm not making any firm commitments, but I am using Mac OS X as my primary OS right now, and it's the least painful it's ever been. That's more of a compliment than it seems. But there's enough that doesn't work, enough that's raw -- especially with third-party software -- that I'd recommend people who don't like pain to wait at least a few weeks, if not a month or so, to allow all of the issues to be worked out, tech notes to be published, and workarounds to be posted.

Habberhead writes "Some people are aware of the quest for a palindromic solution for the number 196. Basically any number that doesn't form a palindrome by reversing and adding its digits is known as a Lychrel Number. (Sequence Number A023108 of Sloan's On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences) The number 196 happens to be the first of them. In over a year's worth of time, and more than 2 quadrillion calculations, this guy at www.p196.org has reversed and added the number over 100 MILLION times. His current answer is over 41 million digits long! Apparently he and a few others are also working on a distributed computing program for finding larger and larger Lychrel Numbers. It looks like they have in mind a Seti@Home style program with visible results."

Octothorp writes: "Though not as complicated as the underwater vehicles. There is an annual competition sponsored by National Semiconductors to build an autonomous race car. They move along pretty well too, at almost 9 ft/s. More technical information on how they are built is available on a Berkeley page, and there's a video of the winning run for 2002."

Octothorp writes: "Though not as complicated as the underwater vehicles. There is an annual competition sponsored by National Semiconductors to build an autonomous race car. They move along pretty well too, at almost 9 ft/s. More technical information on how they are built is available on a Berkeley page, and there's a video of the winning run for 2002."

half-seas-over writes "NASA issued a very interesting press release today. It highlights a recent study that compared tiny magnetite crystals in the Allan Hill meteorite to similar magnetite crystals that are created here on Earth by bacteria (who use the magnetite as a compass). The study (abstract available here (PDF) from this site) uses fairly strict criteria to determine that 25% of the magnetite content of the meteorite was created by ancient (>3.9Gyr ago) martian bacteria... either that or there is some strange natural process that makes very pure, isolated magnetite crystals that we haven't imagined or seen on Earth which is present on Mars. We'll have to wait and see what happens next, 'extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence' -Carl Sagan."

opencity writes "CNN (and AP) reports on the 'Spy Fly' project. "Biologists and technologists at the University of California, Berkeley have spent the past four years developing a tiny robot, called the Micromechanical Flying Insect, that they say will one day fly like a fly." Good technical stuff on the Cal Berkeley page. The Pentagon likes the idea for spying and battlefield deployment but their page has no info about weaponization or command / communication technologies."