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Effugas writes "The mind boggles. Police have apparently raided a student's dorm room due to his participation in a heavy metal music inspired Starcraft clan, 'Bled For Days.'" The link above is to the university's student newspaper, the Kent Stater, which one of the students told me got the story completely wrong, though he wouldn't elaborate. That said, having spoken with another of the students, I think the essentials of the story are right: cops, confiscation, clan, and (absurd) worry about trash talk being death threats. A few comments below.

I spoke with Patrick Barnes, identified as the lead member of the clan. He's a Comp. Sci. major, and I can tell from the sound of his voice that he likes the material (he finds it easy).

The way Patrick described it to me, there was a technical glitch in uploading the website -- I'm still not sure exactly how this happened, but apparently they contacted the wrong server. Anyway, whatever happened, it got the attention of someone at Kent State. The students with their names on the clan site got letters in the mail saying they were to have a meeting with their Resident Director in two days.

On the day of that meeting, it was cancelled. Then, on Thursday, the cops (campus cops, apparently) came to one of their dorm rooms, and confiscated a computer and CDs. Everyone in the clan was taken to the station and individually questioned about what it was, what it meant, whether they were hackers, who was the "leader," and so on.

The confiscated computer is having its hard drive copied and analyzed for evidence. According to Patrick, it might be returned tomorrow, or, as the law allows, not for a year.

Patrick was the only one of the members I spoke with who was willing to talk at any length. He predicted the other members of the clan would be more worried than he, and he was right (their lawyer had told them not to talk about it). I hope in a few years they can look back on this as simply a surreal trip into the land of university cops who don't understand gaming.

I'll hand the conclusion over to this story's submitter, Effugas, who asks:

"Instead of simply laughing and moving on, what can we, as a community do to prevent these kind of occurances in the future? Would something as simple as a confidential 'reality check' group of experts, made available to law enforcement as consultants, be helpful? Would a set of guidelines, peer reviewed by the community, be useful? Instead of cursing the darkness, how can we praise the light?"

ewhac was one of several to inform us that Yahoo has knuckled under. Their auction site will now start using "computer software," which as we all know is infallible, to roboban auctions of Nazi and Klan items (see SFGate's story or CNN's story). France wanted its countrymen kept away from these items, and since Yahoo couldn't block the French, they blocked the stuff. Cigarettes, switchblades and used underwear are also forbidden, but it seems only the hateful stuff gets autoblocked. "Photons have neither morality nor visas" my ass. Just wait until every one of the planet's sovereignties gets a proscripted category of its own -- will I be able to sell paintings by John Wayne Gacy? Wounded Knee medals? Confederate flags? The world's full of offensive knickknacks, Yahoo, have fun banning it all.

The actual terms of service forbid: "any item which, in Yahoo!'s sole discretion, is inflammatory, offensive, unlawful, harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, tortious, defamatory, vulgar, obscene, libelous, invasive of another's privacy, hateful, racially or ethnically objectionable, or otherwise inconsistent with the spirit of Yahoo! Auctions." It's the robo-enforcement that's new.

Uglor writes: "3dfx is getting out of the video card market. After two years of shrinking revenue, stock price and market share, they are going back to a chips-only company. Will this let them reclaim the top spot on the 3d market? Or could this just make nVidia work twice as hard to beat them?" So it doesn't mean that you won't be able to buy a card whose guts are made by the 3dfx folks, only that the box will probably have someone else's name a whole lot bigger. And ewhac points to an Adrenaline Vault story, which "suggests that 3Dfx is going to move away from the PC hardware arena and refocus toward licensing their technology for use in visual simulation and training systems. If true, this would basically leave NVidia and ATI as the remaining major 3D graphics players. (Now if NVidia would just crack open their docs so we can support their chips...)"

Effugas writes: "Seen on Zophar is one of the slicker hacks I've seen pulled off in recent memory: LaserMAME. A group of hackers actually patched MAME to drive a Pangolin QM2000 Laser Show Controller Card, allowing them "to play Classic Vector Games on large surfaces, for example we could play it on the side of a building, or possibly on the clouds." Tempest, Battlezone, Asteroids, and many other classics work perfectly--though, unfortunately, the Star Wars classics still don't work correctly. Still, the video is incredible."

Effugas writes: "Thank Memepool for pointing everyone towards The LED Museum, an absolute geek haven if there ever was one. The Museum archives, tests, and describes the multitude of LED types out there, from Ultraviolet to Turquoise to Infrared--and, most amazingly, true full color LEDs! Apparently, I wasn't the only tech drooling over the possibilities that these devices could be put to use towards: Color Kinetics threw 75 of 'em into a spotlight can and added a surprisingly versatile digital controller with external interfaces. The result: A 16.7 Million Color Programmable Spotlight, for $500US." This is an incredible site; I look forward to when the full color LEDs (and that spotlight - Yow!) are a lot cheaper. And unaccountably, Effugas has linked that "A" to something awful.

mindpixel writes: "Sandia National Laboratories is reporting the demonstration of the first UV microcavity laser which could be used to replace gas-filled fluorescent tubes in home and commercial lighting applications. Successful penetration of the lighting market by this and LED technology by 2025 "should translate [globally] into cost savings of $100 billion a year, power generation capacity reductions of 120 gigawatts, and carbon emission reductions of approximately 350 million tons per year (assuming that all the savings come from coal-fired plants)."

"

Effugas writes: "New Scientist is running a surprisingly readable series about the nature of slime made from polymer chains. Far more fascinating set of articles than I would have expected; for all the theoretical talk of grey goo and nanotech robotics, chemists really are the ones doing the largest scale engineering on the smallest of scales. I especially enjoyed the article about the hagfish, which can when under duress turn the five gallons of water around it into utterly impenetrable sludge -- instantaneously." The article also has a great do-it-yerself recipe for some bouncy homemade slime.

Effugas asks: "An engineer at a rather large ISP recently asked me a rather simple question that I didn't have a particularly good answer for: What logs should they be storing? He wasn't asking about the simple question of whether their own servers should be watched closely--that's obvious. He was asking about his routing infrastructure. I told him they of course musn't record the actual data being routed through their network; however, endpoint to endpoint route logs(since the establishment of those routes is the ISP's raison d'etre) did seem viable. But now, I'm not so sure--if there's one thing we learned from Kenneth Starr's subpeona of Lewinsky's book purchase records, it's that Barnes and Noble stored such records in the first place! But on the flip side, I've certainly had friends be harassed and threatened online, and turning a blind eye to everything but attacks directly against the network doesn't seem right either. So I ask, without passing judgement in either direction: What options does a network administrator have for retaining forensic evidence in case of abuse, which ones are ethically justified, and what are the actual router configurations which implement such ethical systems?"

Every once in a while, it's good to have someone slap you with a reminder that conflicts which look simple or clear-cut from a distance may not be quite so simple to those in the thick of the action. In this case, artist Baptist Death Ray spills his guts about the problems that widespread MP3 traffic poses to small musicians, in the context of an industry dominated by giants (and remember, not yet equipped for convenient micropayments). Meanwhile, ewhac serendipitously points out one faltering step toward the encryption which is sure to be common in the future MP3 marketplace, and perhaps has a bearing on the musicians' plight Mr. Death Ray describes.

I think that if you spoke with most musicians, you'd be surprised to find out that we hold big record labels in very low regard. Big record labels, owned by larger companies, run by stockholders, are interested in only one thing, and it ain't music. And it ain't musicians, neither. It is, quite simply, profit, and whatever they can do to maximise that profit, they'll do it. I know I'm sounding like Jon Katz here, but in truth a lot of what he says about corporatism fits the music industry perfectly. At the top are rich fat white guys churning out pablum, or thinking up new and creative ways to turn good acts into pablum, because pablum sells more records.

The problem with record labels is, quite simply, that in order to ensure that they make the kinds of money they want to make, they won't take chances. And because they happen to control all the methods of physical music distribution, they're the only game in town. When the only game in town won't take chances, that means that if you want to play, you have to play their game, and you can't take chances either.

Before the Internet, it wasn't even possible to compete against the major labels -- but in the 80s there were still plenty of minor labels willing to cater to your needs. In fact, once upon a time there was a thriving indie music scene -- there were bands able to make a living doing what they did by working with labels who didn't mind challenging music. But something happened: the big labels found out about these small labels, thought they could produce more pablum, and bought most of them out.

Meanwhile, the record industry lumbers merrily along, stepping on all the talent it can find, robbing them blind, making them sign ridiculous contracts that give up most of their rights and bleeding them dry. And a few musicians get fabulously rich in the process -- that's the carrot -- but the rest of the musicians wonder what the hell happened.

That's the problem with the record industry. And one of the biggest problems with a record label is that, despite how much they suck in general, they are phenomenally good at distribution. They know how to get the word out to record stations, they know how to put your CDs in stores, they know how to schedule you on talk shows, they know how to promote -- and they can reach a much, much larger area than you can. One of the biggest selling points a record label has is saying "our distribution network can put your CD in stores worldwide." Every musician wants his music heard worldwide, even if he tells himself he doesn't care. It's part of being a musician.

Here's the theory: the Backstreet Boys have thousands upon thousands of fans in every town they stop in. The Baptist Death Ray, on the other hand, does not. The Backstreet Boys play music that is likely to be played in every city and every town all over the world. The Baptist Death Ray, on the other hand, is a more cultivated taste. So while thousands upon thousands of people in every town might like the backstreet boys, only fifty to a hundred people in every town might like the Baptist Death Ray.

With the Internet, however, this can cease to be a problem. No longer does the Baptist Death Ray have to worry about finding 100 fans at a time. The Internet is distributed, which means among other things that although in reality all of the Baptist Death Ray fans are scattered across the globe, the perception is that they're all hanging out at the Baptist Death Ray's Web site, the Baptist Death Ray pages on Listensmart.com, Mp3.com, MusicBuilder.com, Riffage.com, and Garageband.com. In effect, the Baptist Death Ray has found a viable audience for his music over the Internet that he could not necessarily find via geography.

That is what the Internet should do for independent musicians. And this, my friends, is a genuine threat to the big record labels.

So right now you have musicians like me who make some of our music freely available. We say "listen to this! This is what I sound like. If you like it, why don't you buy the CD?" Pretty simple, not sophisticated, but all new movements start out simple and unsophisticated. In time, this could grow into something the major labels can't stop, and that scares them a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot. Once upon a time MP3.com talked a lot about this, before they tried to become another music label themselves. They called it a revolution. They were right, but then they went public and stopped talking about it.

But here's the truth: to support yourself on the Internet all you need to do is sell 10,000 CDs a year at $8 a CD. If you're selling through a model like MP3.com's, you can make 40K a year -- not bad for a musician! 10,000 CDs is nothing to a major label. 10,000 CDs sold in a year means the label drops you and never talks to you again. Your album doesn't even go aluminum at 10,000 CDs.

This means that if the public could get used to buying music online, the major labels would be screwed. They're not willing to sell CDs at $8 a pop, and plenty of musicians are willing to sell them for less. That is a revolution -- a revolution where musicians are suddenly supporting themselves based on whether or not their audience likes what they do and buys their work.

Then there's Napster. Napster seems to follow the model where the plucky indie musicians put their music online and compete against the big labels toe-to-toe. The problem is, Napster doesn't compete against the record labels. Maybe the record labels don't know this, but it's true... Napster doesn't compete against the record labels, it competes against those plucky indie musicians.

It's no secret that despite the "rampant piracy" of people trading MP3s last year, the big labels sold more CDs than ever before. People tend to like buying CDs; there's a psychological difference between downloading an MP3 and going to a store and buying a CD. Consumers aren't buying music -- they're buying CDs, with cover art and liner notes and a little poster inside and a few hidden tracks and a few spoken tracks and perhaps a limited edition signed thingie wedged in between the cover art and the CD itself. The record industry makes big stars, and owning the things that a big star sells is part of the job of being a fan. Trading bootlegs is also part of the job of being a fan, but buying the posters, the CDs, the T-Shirts, all that stuff is as well. Record companies will always make lots of money from CDs, DVDs, and any other physical format that comes after.

So yes, while there may be a billion people trading Metallica songs online, Metallica's fans will still buy Metallica CDs, because to their fans, Metallica is the greatest band that has ever lived. Despite piracy, record labels will be able to make money, gobs and gobs of it. Napster doesn't compete with the major labels -- Napster promotes them, whether either side wants to admit it or not.

Who Napster does compete with, however, are the independent musicans. While independent musicians are trying to convince people that they don't need to buy from major labels, that they can buy direct (for less!) instead, Napster is showing people that they don't need to buy music at all. So on the one hand, you could buy ABCDEffigy at MP3.com, on the other hand, you could scour Napster for all the MP3s and have it anyway. After all, the Baptist Death Ray doesn't sell CDs, he sells music. CDs are freakin' expensive. Liner notes and posters and colored cds and limited edition doodads are the kind of promotional, artistic things that record labels excel at, that they use to justify jacking up the price.

Meanwhile, the consumer looks at a Web site where he or she can spend $8 for a CD, and then looks at Napster and sees the entire contents of the album online, free. Pay, or free. It's entropy, people, it all depends on what requires less energy. Right now, maybe spending the $8 is more convenient than waiting two days on a 33.3 modem. When high bandwidth lines are commonplace, however, that will no longer be the case. The worst part is not that Napster makes it easy to pirate music -- No, the worst part is the overwhelming feeling among Napster users that pirating that music is somehow morally justifiable. Most of the arguments I see say that they're not stealing from artists, they're stealing from record labels who don't pay the artists enough anyway. Well, I have news for you, the artists, even if they don't get the amount that they deserve, still get something with every music sale.

So how does the artist make money? Well, the common response from the free music movement is "touring." But you all need to know about touring. Touring is not a good way to make money unless you have a core audience of a certain size. A "core audience" is an audience that of fans who love your stuff, and will go out of their way to see you play. Now, go back to the top of this article and read the bit about the geographical limitations the Baptist Death Ray has, versus the geogrpahical limitations the Backstreet Boys do not have.

Ideologically speaking, the people who defend Napster may very well be on stronger ground than I am. Perhaps copyright and intellectual property has run its course. Perhaps its abuses call for the complete and absolute revocation of any claim that any artist has to his or her work. Perhaps pirating music through Napster is the just the kind of direct action that we need in order to show the labels who, in fact, is boss.

What I see, however, is the death of a revolution before it even had the chance to get off the ground. I feel that even if Napster loses its court case, it's too late to stop the way things are going. Napster and its supports will, one way or another, win. However, the result of that victory will be that artists will depend more than ever on rich sponsors, which is all that a record label really is. You thought mainstream music sucked now? Wait a few years after you've won. It'll suck worse.

Signed,

The Baptist Death Ray
(bdr@baptistdeathray.com)

And in related news, ewhac writes: "CNet reported about a week ago that AOL has announced it will incorporate copy-protection measures into an upcoming release of WinAmp, the hugely popular music player (upon which XMMS is modeled). The copy protection technology, intended to deter music "piracy," is to be provided by InterTrust Technologies, and is also intended to be part of the upcoming AOL 6.0 release. WinAmp was developed by NullSoft, which was acquired by AOL a little over a year ago for about $100 million in stock.

Personal Observation: May we now conclude that AOL is no longer a customer-driven company? Because I can't imagine a single user actually asking, "Please take away my ability to share stuff with my friends." Sounds like it may be time for a Windows port of XMMS ..."

Back for more already? Good. Today's early dinner of information includes humble pie baked by NASA, quantities of penguins rescued from roiling in oil, a morsel about sex discrimination in the computer world, and a take-out order of XF86 for the diners in our Slackware booth.

Absolutely no danger whatsoever at all. Contradicting the BBC story reported last week on Slashdot, NASA officials deny that a 1997 shuttle mission was ever in danger because of communication interruptions. Signal 11 writes: "NASA has a press release out which refuses a previous story from the BBC stating that an unknown 'hacker' was able to disrupt communications between mission control and the shuttle." Aardwolf64 pointed to MSNBC coverage of the NASA denial.

The NASA release reads, in part:

"NASA's Inspector General's office found that during the STS-86 mission in September of 1997, the transmission of routine medical information was slightly delayed due to a computer hacker. However, the transmission was successfully completed.

At no time was communication between NASA and the astronauts compromised. The communication interruption occurred between internal ground-based computer systems."

Fly away little birdies! Fly away! Errr, swim away, little birdies! Swim away! Errr ... come back later! An unnamed correspondent writes: "follow up on recent story about penguins caught in oil spill. After being cleaned, the penguins were flown to Port Elizabeth and released to swim the +/- 800 km's back to Cape Town. This will give enviromnetal cleaners a short space of time to clean the oil from the beaches where they live. Two of the penguins are being tracked. This site tracks their progress via satellite. Can't someone novelize this rescue attempt under the title "Penguin's Progress"?

Sir, please stop hitting me with the 'No Discrimination' sign. fegg writes: "Emmett recently posted a story in which there was a reference to an AP article which discussed gender bias as regards women and computer science. This was put -- I thought cavalierly --i nto the "this-has-nothing-to-do-with-gender-dammit dept." Unfortunately, the evidence suggests that it has everything to do with gender or, at least, how the world is presented to young boys and girls.

This is a rather important topic to me, especially now that I have two daughters (not to mention a wife who is a professional computer scientist). I view this as a must read for anyone who wants to develop a reasonable understanding of why there is such an imbalance of men and women in computing.

The gender bias situation is real, and it has been known for quite a while by many in education and technology circles. I would like to refer the Slashdot community to Ellen Spertus, who, in 1991, wrote "Why Are There So Few Female Computer Scientists?" Particularly compelling, IMHO, is the piece therein on stereotyping.

Spertus's "Women and Minorities in Science and Engineering" provides an excellent set of pointers for people interested in this topic."

Isn't this what killed John Belushi? strredwolf writes "If you haven't heard, XFree86 4.0.1 is out in full force, with binaries and docs online. Slackware users can get the "Slackballs" via the Linux Mafia, along with other goodies." (Here's the direct link to the 4.0.1 files, but linuxmafia.org is worth exploring anyhow. Warning: it is an unabashed Pro-Slack Zone.)

This would be worth more than my car. Dredd13 writes "Empeg, Ltd., a UK company, shipped the first of its Mark 2 MP3 car-stereo to customers this past week. This is the same stereo that runs Linux and has won awards. The Mark2 is expected to be a full production run, (as opposed to the initial Mark1, which only had about 300 units) with enough to satisfy ample demand. As a former MkI owner (and one of the guys who got a Mark2 today from Mr. FedEx), I can say its worth every penny!" Slashdot's been following the Empeg saga for a while now; check out this item Rob posted in 1998. I hope they can bring the price down a bit, to better compete with the various mainstream MP3 players now emerging.

ewhac writes: "Blue's News is reporting that Cyan is working on a realtime version of Myst, and has some advance screenshots to prove it." (more)

"Personal Musings: After downloading the Serious Sam demo -- excuse me, technology test -- last weekend, and marveling at the rendering quality, it occurred to me that technology has finally advanced to the point where we could do Myst in realtime. Here it is three days later, and I discover it's being worked on. Just amazing.

I'm interested to see how they address certain issues in the game. One thing that made some of Myst's puzzles work at all was that you didn't have complete freedom of movement. For example, the clock tower at one end of the main island was only accessible after you fiddled with the knobs and got the walkway to appear. But in realtime Myst, what's to prevent you from just wading over? It can't be more than three feet deep there. Likewise, what if you walk off the dock and into the water at the beginning of the game? Will you drown immediately, will there be an obvious way back out, or will they contrive that You Just Can't Go There? Oh, and if I crank the boiler pressure really high, can I launch the tree off the island? :-)

However they address these issues, I'm interested in seeing the result."

Effugas asks: "I've been thinking about something off and on for some time now...perhaps, in all of our complaining that the patent office equates 'net' with 'new', we've done a bit of this ourselves? I'm thinking particularly in regards to non-computer related economic trends that look suspiciously like what the computer industry has taught us to expect. To wit: You don't own your apps (ASP's), you can't control your software (UCITA), your music isn't yours (SDMI), your privacy isn't yours, etc. Now look at the real world in areas where tech savviness is on the rise: leased cars, rented houses, long term apartments / condos / duplexes...your employment is at will and can disappear anytime, and your cities seem strangely hostile to you doing anything other than working, sleeping, or spending. Note the lack of any kind of long term commitments, ownerships, investments, or so on... Is there a relationship between tech patterns and what's going on outside? I'd appreciate your comments."

Bill Kendrick writes, "The long-awaited Atari Jaguar game Battle Sphere has finally been released. A special signed copy of the game is running on eBay for $1,225. After the auction is over, the game will start being sold for about $80 a cartridge. All proceeds from the auction will go to diabetes research."

Oryx Gazella writes "Unable to access Hotmail this Christmas morning? This would be why! You may have received an error like "unable to locate host", or "no such domain" after your browser was directed from www.hotmail.com to lc2.law5.hotmail.passport.com. There are no NS records for the domain passport.com in any of the root name servers. Hotmail (www.hotmail.com) uses the Passport Service (www.passport.com) which allows users of the Microsoft Messenger Service to login using their "Passport" and to add other Passport members to their contact list. The new MSN Messenger Service 2.0 is integrated with MSN Hotmail and Microsoft Outlook Express for real-time email notification, and retrieval. " Not being a Hotmail or regular Windows user for that matter, I cannot verify this - but I've gotten several e-mails from people this morning wondering about it.Update: 12/26 01:39 by H :Click below to read the quite humourous conclusion to this story.

Effugas writes "Oh, this is just beautiful. Linux user Michael D. Chaney of Doublewide.Net, upon reading of Microsoft's Christmas loss of the passport.com domain, took it upon himself to donate $35.00 for the world's largest software company to restore service for its customers. I've heard about Linux empowering its users to truly prevent downtime, but this is ridiculous ;-) I'm still laughing--Merry Christmas, Microsoft, from the Linux community to you! "

chocko sent us an article about Stevie Wonder's Eye Chip. Now normally a Stevie Wonder story probably wouldn't make it on Slashdot, but this is actually about him implanting a chip into his eye in order to try to gain some of his sight back. I just thought that was kinda cool. Update: 12/04 12:02 by H :Thanks to Chris Griffin for updating the story.

Effugas writes "The technology isn't new--Tesla coils have been around for a century. However, I doubt very many of us have seen much like the pictures located at Lightning On Demand--consider that, for most of these displays of extreme electrical discharge, there's a guy sitting *inside* the main electrode. I'm trying to imagine sitting in a metal ball while thirty foot electrical streamers erupt around me. Got Drool? "

Let's get the serious stuff out of the way: chrisd put up a survey to track what trade shows Linux Coders think are a good idea to go to. With the proliferation of cons, its nice to know what ones matter. Oh, and if you're looking for beer, you should try Heineken's BarTrek. its a PDA proggie with maps to bars and reviews of beer. And if you have GPS, it'll even lead you to it. My guess is after a few beers, it better be a really user friendly app or you might wind up in a desert or something. k-rist sent us linkage to Pulp Simpsons! which I highly recommend. An anonymous reader pointed us to a 15 pound Millenium Falcon made of legos. CK-2 pointed us to what looks like the most impressive real life light saber money can buy. dave pointed us to the site worth it. notjenni, a parody of jennicam. An AC pointed us to a Swedish site has a photo of the Daytrading Yucca plant. This plant is wired up to a computer to trade on the Swedish stock market in response to its electrical activity. If it makes a profit it is rewarded with water and light, if it makes a loss it is unwatered and sits in the dark. The plant has made an 18 percent profit in the last three months! God I hope this is true ;) Effugas pointed us to a pretty good parody of the Matrix. regs pointed us to MonkeyBagel which outta win an award for something. I don't really know what tho. Random merchandising: at0m noted that Copyleft now has Slashdot polos in grey and green. Finally, what would quickies be without some porn? Tolath sent us something graphic... if you happen to be an electrical cord.

Effugas writes "Apparently displeased that individual artists might try to contact their fanbase All By Themselves(TM), Sony has been inserting clauses in their contracts that assign eternal ownership of any URL that even slightly references the artist's name to The Company. " Sent some shivers down my spine.

Effugas writes "Possibly the best post ever to hit Segfault--South Park: The Computer Episode. It's brilliant; arguably the best style adaptation I've seen in a very long time. Absolutely hilarious, too." Warning:You may not want to read this at work if your supervisor is nearby. It could leave you laughing helplessly for 1/2 hour or more.

ewhac writes "Blue's News is among the first to report that Hercules Computer Technology, one of the longest-standing names in the PC graphics card industry, is going out of business. Hercules' latest claim to fame was the fastest manufacturer-supported implementation of NVidia's TNT2 Ultra graphics chipset, clocking in at 200MHz. People who pre-ordered Hercules TNT2 Ultra cards but who have not yet had their credit card charged are not going to receive them. However, if you happen to be nearby Hercules' Fremont, CA, headquarters and show up in person, they will sell you a TNT2 Ultra for $200 (regularly $250). How good a deal this is without any continuing driver support is unknown."

John R. Johns II submitted this issue which many of us might be faced with in the future: "I found out today that my entire ISP's primary web server is blocked by Cyber Patrol. Cyber Patrol blocks the web server because a few users have adult content, but the result is that all accounts on the server are blocked regardless of content. Cyber Patrol won't remove the ban (I guess they have no method of only partially blocking a server), and my provider won't boot the users with the adult material. I support my ISP for keeping the users with the adult materials, because it is a matter of freedom of speech, but I believe it is wrong for them not to provide a separate web server for the stigmatized users, so that not everyone is blocked due to the content owned by a few. What can you do when faced with a situation like this? Click below for more.

There's more to the situation, however...

"I am more upset that my ISP never told me that Cyber Patrol was blocking their server... they have known for some time and they chose not to spread this information to their customers. I only found out when a job hunter couldn't access my resume and wrote me an e-mail to alert me to the problem. What can I do about this situation, aside from move to another ISP? What sort of compensation can I seek, either from Cyber Patrol or my ISP? It's impossible to measure what sort of hits I have lost due to this block, and I don't know how long it's been this way.

I suggested to my ISP that they set up 2 web servers, one for unregulated content and one "safe-surfing" where people could sign an agreement to keep content clean in trade for an unblocked server, and to co-ordinate this effort with companies such as Cyber Patrol. My ISP responded that they would take my comments into consideration, but that they did not even know whether their web server alone was blocked, or the entire domain, and that my solution might not be feasible."

Such behavior scares me. Is it legal for ISPs to behave this way? Will we all have to worry about being silently censored in this manner?

Effugas writes " IBM has just released IBM Visualization Data Explorer under an Open Source license. Appears to be an impressively complex and powerful 3D data manipulation tool. If this is the same stuff I saw running back at LinuxWorld(realtime solid model deformation calculations of a crashing vehicle) I'm impressed. "

ewhac writes "Fastest Game News Online is reporting that Beth Llewelyn, PR manager for Nintendo US, has issued a formal statement confirming that Nintendo will pursue legal action against "Reality Man" and "Epsilon", the nom de plume of the creators of the UltraHLE N64 emulator. Says Llewelyn, "Nintendo is very disturbed that Reality Man and Epsilon have widely distributed a product designed solely to play infringing copies of copyrighted works [ ... ] We are taking several measures to further protect and enforce our intellectual property rights which, of course, includes the bringing of legal action. Emulators and ROMs are clearly infringing and damage not only 'larger industry players' such as Nintendo but hundreds of smaller companies who invest millions of dollars and thousands of hours to develop and program software only to have it stolen on the Internet." "

Flagrantly Biased Editorial: Once again, Nintendo is inventing intellectual property rights out of thin air. Miss Llewelyn states as axiomatic that emulators A) are illegal, and B) exist solely to permit playing illicit copies of games. This false premise leads them to a variety of flawed conclusions, such as the belief that Nintendo has the right to dictate what buyers can and can't run the games on. Regardless of what shrinkwrap "agreements" may say, it is my adamant position that once a product is released into an uncontrolled retail market, what the purchaser does with that product is entirely their business (within the confines of applicable statutes), and the vendor has no right after the fact to constrain use. Further, running a program under an emulator, despite Nintendo's fervent desires, does not constitute an infringing "derivative work" under copyright law. In fact, translating your personal copy of a copyrighted software program to achieve compatability with another platform is recognized as fair use, as Nintendo well knows. (Redistribution of the translation, however, isn't kosher.)

Nintendo's narrow position also fails to take into consideration that I'm seriously considering buying a copy of Zelda-64 now that I can play it on my PC. If, however, their principles compel them to forego my (meager) contribution to their revenue, I would be happy to oblige.

ewhac writes "In the current issue of The Bulletin (an email newsletter, pricey subscription required), it is reported that, in mid-January, Microsoft was awarded patent #5860073 on, "The use of style sheets in an electronic publishing system." The Seybold article casts doubt on the validity of the patent, citing prior art back to the 1960's, and on the competence of the US Patent and Trademark Office for awarding it. The article also calls Microsoft's motives into question for failing to mention this patent application to the World Wide Web Consortium, with whom it has been working for some time to develop a style sheet standard. Thomas Reardon, director of standards at Microsoft, claims that it will offer a "free and reciprocal" license to anyone wishing to use the technology, adding, "These are the most liberal licensing terms out there." (It would seem Reardon is not aware of the GPL.) "

ewhac writes "According to TechWeb, Nintendo has not ruled out the possibility of suing the authors of UltraHLE, the Nintendo-64 emulator for PCs with Voodoo graphics cards. Nintendo holds the dubious opinion that the emulator is illegal, predicated on the assumption that the emulator would not have been possible without circumventing the security chip. (Circumvention of copy-protection/authentication systems was recently criminalized in the United States, with fines up to $500K.) "

After a long night in the darkroom working on photography projects, nothing will make me happier than cleaning out the submissions box. So hit the link below and read the huge flood of stuff that has been accumulating while I've been trying to vanquish my end-of-the-semester projects. There is a ton of cool stuff in there worth checking out. Realcosmo commented that OpenBios Project Is looking for a logo. Visit their page for info. James Keller wrote in to send us an entertaining article about using Microsoft Manuals as Targets . Idan Shoham wrote in to say that the The Linux in business reference page has grown to 300 entries of companies that use Linux in a mission-critical setting. Good PHB data.

jahn wrote in to send us a link to Linus and RMS in a techno remix of Join us Now and Share the Software. I think we mentioned this a few months ago, but probably bears repeating anyway. I'm on a total MP3 craze again (4.5 gigs and growing) so this is entertaining me all over again.

[-SwM-] wrote in to send us a link to an online version of Rock Paper Scissors. Goofy. DaveWhitinger from Linux Today wrote in to say that Linux Mandrake 5.2 is available. Gordon Delp sent a link to a new FreeBSD news site called (appropriately enough) FreeBSD Rocks

acb wrote in to send us an entertaining parody of O'Reilly book covers. Several folks commented that WindowMaker v0.20.3 is now out, and several other folks commented that it has a new logo "Well, as you can see the new official logo has been put in place, and the logo contest is officially over. We appreciate all the logo submissions and the people who took time to vote. You can read about the winning entries here." LynXmaN wrote in to send us a link to Sololinux.com, a Spanish Linux News site. have opened. Ant wrote in to send us a link to Quake 2 Penguin Models for you penguin nuts. YogSothoth writes "I've always been interested in fractals, but what I always thought would be fun would be a scripting language-based approach that would give you a lot flexibility (with regard to choosing equations, bailout conditions, coloring techniques) without requiring a math degree to enjoy. Its hot off the presses but works quite well." you can check out Samples or Source Code. Vorx wrote in to warn everyone that this weeks User Friendly has been featuring a strange Star Wars/Linux/ESR takeoff that folks might enjoy reading. Bain wrote in to send us a link to a company that is selling Tux Stuffed Animals that actually look like tux.

Nate, My roommate and all around swell guy, has put a bunch of his Gimp Artwork online if you're interested in that sorta stuff. Its pretty excellent. Chris DiBona wrote in to send us a link to Chick Magnet which has some cool essays including one that explains that the best place for women to pick up guys is at Linux User Group Meetings. Quite funny. J. David Eisenberg wrote in to send us A response to his article on Linux and the Consumer Market. This addresses comments made by Slashdot Readers. Also, his opinions on the KDE thing which probably isn't all that relevant anymore.

See? Lots of good stuff! Anyway, I'm gonna get some sleep so I can get up nice and early and get back on the grind. The zany thing is that in 340 or so hours, I'm ton. Forever. No more school. Then I can finally finish Slash v0.3, fix the rest of the bugs in Slashdot, and actually start working on all the new stuff thats coming. Yee haw. In the meantime, I just wanna beg folks to go easy on the email. Don't hesitate if its important, but please read FAQ first and save us all some time.

After a long night in the darkroom working on photography projects, nothing will make me happier than cleaning out the submissions box. So hit the link below and read the huge flood of stuff that has been accumulating while I've been trying to vanquish my end-of-the-semester projects. There is a ton of cool stuff in there worth checking out. Realcosmo commented that OpenBios Project Is looking for a logo. Visit their page for info. James Keller wrote in to send us an entertaining article about using Microsoft Manuals as Targets . Idan Shoham wrote in to say that the The Linux in business reference page has grown to 300 entries of companies that use Linux in a mission-critical setting. Good PHB data.

jahn wrote in to send us a link to Linus and RMS in a techno remix of Join us Now and Share the Software. I think we mentioned this a few months ago, but probably bears repeating anyway. I'm on a total MP3 craze again (4.5 gigs and growing) so this is entertaining me all over again.

[-SwM-] wrote in to send us a link to an online version of Rock Paper Scissors. Goofy. DaveWhitinger from Linux Today wrote in to say that Linux Mandrake 5.2 is available. Gordon Delp sent a link to a new FreeBSD news site called (appropriately enough) FreeBSD Rocks

acb wrote in to send us an entertaining parody of O'Reilly book covers. Several folks commented that WindowMaker v0.20.3 is now out, and several other folks commented that it has a new logo "Well, as you can see the new official logo has been put in place, and the logo contest is officially over. We appreciate all the logo submissions and the people who took time to vote. You can read about the winning entries here." LynXmaN wrote in to send us a link to Sololinux.com, a Spanish Linux News site. have opened. Ant wrote in to send us a link to Quake 2 Penguin Models for you penguin nuts. YogSothoth writes "I've always been interested in fractals, but what I always thought would be fun would be a scripting language-based approach that would give you a lot flexibility (with regard to choosing equations, bailout conditions, coloring techniques) without requiring a math degree to enjoy. Its hot off the presses but works quite well." you can check out Samples or Source Code. Vorx wrote in to warn everyone that this weeks User Friendly has been featuring a strange Star Wars/Linux/ESR takeoff that folks might enjoy reading. Bain wrote in to send us a link to a company that is selling Tux Stuffed Animals that actually look like tux.

Nate, My roommate and all around swell guy, has put a bunch of his Gimp Artwork online if you're interested in that sorta stuff. Its pretty excellent. Chris DiBona wrote in to send us a link to Chick Magnet which has some cool essays including one that explains that the best place for women to pick up guys is at Linux User Group Meetings. Quite funny. J. David Eisenberg wrote in to send us A response to his article on Linux and the Consumer Market. This addresses comments made by Slashdot Readers. Also, his opinions on the KDE thing which probably isn't all that relevant anymore.

See? Lots of good stuff! Anyway, I'm gonna get some sleep so I can get up nice and early and get back on the grind. The zany thing is that in 340 or so hours, I'm ton. Forever. No more school. Then I can finally finish Slash v0.3, fix the rest of the bugs in Slashdot, and actually start working on all the new stuff thats coming. Yee haw. In the meantime, I just wanna beg folks to go easy on the email. Don't hesitate if its important, but please read FAQ first and save us all some time.

After a long night in the darkroom working on photography projects, nothing will make me happier than cleaning out the submissions box. So hit the link below and read the huge flood of stuff that has been accumulating while I've been trying to vanquish my end-of-the-semester projects. There is a ton of cool stuff in there worth checking out. Realcosmo commented that OpenBios Project Is looking for a logo. Visit their page for info. James Keller wrote in to send us an entertaining article about using Microsoft Manuals as Targets . Idan Shoham wrote in to say that the The Linux in business reference page has grown to 300 entries of companies that use Linux in a mission-critical setting. Good PHB data.

jahn wrote in to send us a link to Linus and RMS in a techno remix of Join us Now and Share the Software. I think we mentioned this a few months ago, but probably bears repeating anyway. I'm on a total MP3 craze again (4.5 gigs and growing) so this is entertaining me all over again.

[-SwM-] wrote in to send us a link to an online version of Rock Paper Scissors. Goofy. DaveWhitinger from Linux Today wrote in to say that Linux Mandrake 5.2 is available. Gordon Delp sent a link to a new FreeBSD news site called (appropriately enough) FreeBSD Rocks

acb wrote in to send us an entertaining parody of O'Reilly book covers. Several folks commented that WindowMaker v0.20.3 is now out, and several other folks commented that it has a new logo "Well, as you can see the new official logo has been put in place, and the logo contest is officially over. We appreciate all the logo submissions and the people who took time to vote. You can read about the winning entries here." LynXmaN wrote in to send us a link to Sololinux.com, a Spanish Linux News site. have opened. Ant wrote in to send us a link to Quake 2 Penguin Models for you penguin nuts. YogSothoth writes "I've always been interested in fractals, but what I always thought would be fun would be a scripting language-based approach that would give you a lot flexibility (with regard to choosing equations, bailout conditions, coloring techniques) without requiring a math degree to enjoy. Its hot off the presses but works quite well." you can check out Samples or Source Code. Vorx wrote in to warn everyone that this weeks User Friendly has been featuring a strange Star Wars/Linux/ESR takeoff that folks might enjoy reading. Bain wrote in to send us a link to a company that is selling Tux Stuffed Animals that actually look like tux.

Nate, My roommate and all around swell guy, has put a bunch of his Gimp Artwork online if you're interested in that sorta stuff. Its pretty excellent. Chris DiBona wrote in to send us a link to Chick Magnet which has some cool essays including one that explains that the best place for women to pick up guys is at Linux User Group Meetings. Quite funny. J. David Eisenberg wrote in to send us A response to his article on Linux and the Consumer Market. This addresses comments made by Slashdot Readers. Also, his opinions on the KDE thing which probably isn't all that relevant anymore.

See? Lots of good stuff! Anyway, I'm gonna get some sleep so I can get up nice and early and get back on the grind. The zany thing is that in 340 or so hours, I'm ton. Forever. No more school. Then I can finally finish Slash v0.3, fix the rest of the bugs in Slashdot, and actually start working on all the new stuff thats coming. Yee haw. In the meantime, I just wanna beg folks to go easy on the email. Don't hesitate if its important, but please read FAQ first and save us all some time.

stumsc writes sent us a link to an article that talks about Linux and the Consumer Market. The author talks about several major areas of debate and it looks like the thing we need most is documentation, but also things like easier installation and interoperability (in both cases, they work, they just need to be easier for the less hardcore)

Don Antonio sent us a link to a site where you can *cough* club a seal. I love this world. Lee Maguire writes "According to a recent usenet post from their Director od Communications, Mainframe are to announce a deal with The Cartoon Network to show all episodes of the CGI cartoon ReBoot (quite popular with computer/sci-fi geeks like me..) - this includes the eagerly awaited third season. " Mark Ashton wrote in to tell us about a Student-run conference in Champaign, Illinois. Speakers include Bjarne Stroustrup and Theo de Raat. Mike Miller wrote in to mention that The Linux Mall now has a floatable 'Linux Headline News Stories' window which updates every 5 minutes. Is it worth adding something like that here or not? Lastly, everybody and their mother wrote in to tell me that Linux 2.1.118 is now available in the usual places.

Dan Kaminsky writes "I'm one of the co-maintainers of the GNOME User Interface Style Guide project, and I'm writing to announce that I've completed an early beta of a design spec for a GNOME feature I call "Cluehunting". Imagine Cluehunting as autocomplete and tab-complete done right. Enjoy, and please send feedback to effugas@best.com! "

Dan Kaminsky writes "I'm one of the co-maintainers of the GNOME User Interface Style Guide project, and I'm writing to announce that I've completed an early beta of a design spec for a GNOME feature I call "Cluehunting". Imagine Cluehunting as autocomplete and tab-complete done right. Enjoy, and please send feedback to effugas@best.com! "

Geoff Smith writes in to ask "I'm wondering what kind of luck people have had using the new(ish) Super7 socket 7 motherboards (and their associated technologies such as 100MHz RAM, AGP video cards, and specifically the AMD K6-2 processor) under Linux. Is there a Super7 mobo that folks like for Linux? Any compatability problems (aside from the well-known, and hopefully soon-to-be-fixed, i740 card glitch with the MVP3 chipset)? I'm thinking my next machine will be based around an AMD K6-2 and haven't seen much about using Linux with it (hopefully this means it's a slam-dunk). Thanks in advance for any help you all can provide..."

BeOS Central reports the BeZilla team has a working alpha port of the NSPR code. All things considered, it's going at a fairly rapid pace! The site also notes John Carmack has some bits in his .plan disucssing the loaning of the Quake 2 source to be for development purposes. Seems as if Be's got hardware accelerated QL Quake 2 going! Also, one of their readers seemed to imply there is a working Adobe Photoshop port out there somewhere. Some good news for you Be fans out there!

Ronald Pottol sent us a link to an article about a new type of battery for laptops. Gets 10 hours of life, then you refill it with hydrogen. Longer battery life and wireless computing one day will join together and allow me to wear my computer. Joy.

Our first question comes from john beale who writes "I like Linux and use it for graphics and some development/hacking. However I have some nifty toys (Kodak DC120 digital camera, Turtle Beach Fiji soundcard) which are not supported at all under Linux and others (eg. HP Photosmart film scanner) which have very limited support. Much as I'd prefer not to, I have to boot Win95 to use these devices. Question: how can we encourage hardware manufacturers to either support Linux directly (ha) or release info so others can write drivers?" Hit the link below and let's see what you have to say about this.

Couple of Technical Notes: Ask Slashdot will soon be a more isolated thing, so you'll be able to keep track of them better. For now, I'll make sure to prefix titles with 'Ask Slashdot' so you can quickly skip these questions if they don't interest you.

If you have a question that you want Slashdot's readers to try to answer, email Clifton Wood (note that the email address has changed). Any topic is cool, from Linux to Unix to X-Files to Southpark.

Our first question is really one of Advocacy, but hopefully in the future we will have questions on any topic that happens to be Stuff that Matters.