Slashdot Mirror

spin2cool writes "Wired News is now accepting submissions for its fifth annual Vaporware Awards. These awards "celebrate all those eagerly anticipated gizmos that were put off, put away or quietly put down. And, of course, those that existed merely as a figment of someone's imagination."

MikeCapone writes "Slashdot had an article about the GNOME bounties a few days ago, but now, thanks to the Shuttleworth Foundation (created by Mark Shuttleworth, the guy who went into the ISS as a Soyuz cosmonaut a couple of years ago), the Mozilla project also has some monetary incentives. The budget for 2004 is USD$100,000."

Dan Howland writes "Disney closes the rides, but the CGI geeks love them too much to let them disappear. 'Adventures thru Inner Space,' the Disneyland ride in which you shrunk down to the size of a molecule, ran from 1967 to 1985. Atommobiles.com is a fan site which includes this elaborate CGI recreation. The Walt Disney World version of Mr. Toad's Wild Ride closed in 1967. Virtual Toad is in the process of re-building it." I was born after 1967, and I've ridden MTWR many times, so perhaps they're talking about an older version.

MikeCapone writes "As if we didn't already have enough articles about Linux kernel releases, Marcelo Tosatti has released the final 2.4.23 Linux kernel. Check out the changelog at Kerneltrap."

floppy ears writes "Pseudonymous blogger Atrios has been threatened with a subpoena and lawsuit for defamation. Apparently Atrios used a headline 'Diary of a Stalker' in reference to Donald Luskin. In response to the posting, several anonymous commentators made some allegedly libelous statements about Luskin, and now Luskin has hired an attorney and started making threats and demands. The funniest thing is that Luskin has previously referred to himself as a stalker in his own headline: 'We Stalked. He Balked.'."

floppy ears writes "Pseudonymous blogger Atrios has been threatened with a subpoena and lawsuit for defamation. Apparently Atrios used a headline 'Diary of a Stalker' in reference to Donald Luskin. In response to the posting, several anonymous commentators made some allegedly libelous statements about Luskin, and now Luskin has hired an attorney and started making threats and demands. The funniest thing is that Luskin has previously referred to himself as a stalker in his own headline: 'We Stalked. He Balked.'."

floppy ears writes "Pseudonymous blogger Atrios has been threatened with a subpoena and lawsuit for defamation. Apparently Atrios used a headline 'Diary of a Stalker' in reference to Donald Luskin. In response to the posting, several anonymous commentators made some allegedly libelous statements about Luskin, and now Luskin has hired an attorney and started making threats and demands. The funniest thing is that Luskin has previously referred to himself as a stalker in his own headline: 'We Stalked. He Balked.'."

floppy ears writes "Pseudonymous blogger Atrios has been threatened with a subpoena and lawsuit for defamation. Apparently Atrios used a headline 'Diary of a Stalker' in reference to Donald Luskin. In response to the posting, several anonymous commentators made some allegedly libelous statements about Luskin, and now Luskin has hired an attorney and started making threats and demands. The funniest thing is that Luskin has previously referred to himself as a stalker in his own headline: 'We Stalked. He Balked.'."

Thanks to GameGirlAdvance for pointing to a Healing Iraq weblog entry about the state of gaming life in Iraq. The Baghdad-based author says: "Videogames are a huge part of our society. Almost everyone I know, regardless of their socioeconomic status, either owns a console or has regular access to one", and goes on to note that "The most popular console in Iraq is the Sony Playstation. Dreamcast and the PS2 also have their devoted fans. The Xbox and Gamecube aren't very popular here." The games industry may not be raking in much money from Iraq, though: "We have a special gamers district at Bab Al-Sharji at the heart of the city where you can find hundreds of videogame vendors. Of course all the games we get are copies and we rarely find originals."

mactari writes "Jack Herrington at the O'Reilly Network has had the audacity to claim that both PHP and J2EE architecture... are converging on the same design [regarding scalability]. Can it be that he's disproven the idea that 'Java scales and scripting languages don't' when he says, 'The idea that PHP does not scale is clearly false at the performance level'? Even if a little oversimplified (ignores horizontal scaling), it's an interesting comparison that takes a peek at the architecture beneath both hypes."

Thanks to GameDevLeague for their article discussing discussing the Grand Theft Auto-like Activision game True Crime, and its good cop/bad cop dilemma. The author argues: "In Differentiate or Die, Jack Trout says if you're not the leading brand with the killer attribute - then you should go 'opposite' the leading brand's killer attribute." He continues: "What attribute does GTA own? Crime. How do you go opposite of crime? Law enforcement." But he laments that, while you play a cop in the game, "...Activision went and called it True Crime! And buried the law enforcement angle so deep I can barely even tell from the ad copy that's what it's about." So does everyone "want to be bad" nowadays, thus Activision's clone-like marketing ploy, or do users genuinely not care as long as the game is fun?

neoThoth writes "The MPAA is calling for a ban on all screeners for awards ceremonies. They state piracy as the rationale for killing of this tradition of the industry. It's interesting how this is never mentioned in their cries for tougher piracy laws. It's own members are the main source of piracy. 'The Directors, Writers and Screen Actors Guild all get screeners, as does the Golden Globe-selecting Hollywood Foreign Press Association and various critics' groups.'" Remember, movie piracy doesn't just hurt actors, but also camera operators, key grips, makeup artists, and costumers.

gojomo writes "AaronSw offers a compelling idea: use anonymous transferable digital cash to allocate the monies collected for creators in a compulsory licensing scheme, to avoid some of the potential problems outlined by other compulsory critiques. LawMeme calls it a "Proto Whuffie" but expects fake artists to sign up for the loot. I might call it "voucher socialism" -- but that's not necessarily a bad thing."

gojomo writes "AaronSw offers a compelling idea: use anonymous transferable digital cash to allocate the monies collected for creators in a compulsory licensing scheme, to avoid some of the potential problems outlined by other compulsory critiques. LawMeme calls it a "Proto Whuffie" but expects fake artists to sign up for the loot. I might call it "voucher socialism" -- but that's not necessarily a bad thing."

gojomo writes "AaronSw offers a compelling idea: use anonymous transferable digital cash to allocate the monies collected for creators in a compulsory licensing scheme, to avoid some of the potential problems outlined by other compulsory critiques. LawMeme calls it a "Proto Whuffie" but expects fake artists to sign up for the loot. I might call it "voucher socialism" -- but that's not necessarily a bad thing."

Dan Howland writes "Shades of Jurassic Park: Disney's first walk-around, interactive animatronic character, Lucky the dinosaur, is now strolling around Disney's California Adventure, but will probably move to Disney's Animal Kingdom in the coming weeks. It kinda walks on two legs, just as the rumors promised, but actually pulls a cart for additional balance (and to hide the computers). Videos can be found on the link above. More photos, and a video of Lucky blowing his nose here."

hlovy writes "Here's part of a blurb that promotes, Nanotechnology: Atom and Eve in the Garden of Eden," an upcoming conversation between Foresight Institute founder Eric Drexler and ETC Group head Pat Mooney: "Recent studies indicate that nanoscale materials now being commercialized pose potential hazards for human health and the environment." The "studies" were actually incomplete surveys of inconclusive toxicology reports, commissioned by ETC Group, itself. Even Greenpeace admits that no complete scientific study of the toxicity of nanomaterials has been yet been performed. Read Howard Lovy's NanoBot for commentary."

hlovy writes "Here's part of a blurb that promotes, Nanotechnology: Atom and Eve in the Garden of Eden," an upcoming conversation between Foresight Institute founder Eric Drexler and ETC Group head Pat Mooney: "Recent studies indicate that nanoscale materials now being commercialized pose potential hazards for human health and the environment." The "studies" were actually incomplete surveys of inconclusive toxicology reports, commissioned by ETC Group, itself. Even Greenpeace admits that no complete scientific study of the toxicity of nanomaterials has been yet been performed. Read Howard Lovy's NanoBot for commentary."

What Can You Expect From A University Named "UH?" writes "Eric S. Raymond responds to Darl McBride's charge that he's drinking IBM's Kool-Aid in SCO's fight against Linux. The main thrust: Yes, there is an alliance against SCO, but, like the Open Source movement itself, it arises from lots of folks spontaneously striving for a common goal. 'It's beyond me how [you] can have the gall to talk as though we need funding or marching orders from IBM to mobilize against you. IBM couldn't stop us from mobilizing!' "

Howard writes "Horrified by "There Be Monsters Here" tales, some members of Congress called for a ban on DNA research in the mid '70s. Because those calls were rejected, millions of people around the world can now hope for DNA-based vaccines against AIDS, malaria and other deadly diseases that have destroyed lives, communities and nations. Here's an illustration: The name of Joseph DeRisi keeps coming up in connection with deadly diseases. No, he's not a modern-day Typhoid Mary. Just the opposite. The University of California, San Francisco researcher is using his own custom-built DNA microarrays to look inside the "minds" of some serious serial killers. The "minds" are genes, and his home-brewed gene chips helped solve the SARS mystery earlier this year. Now, DeRisi has chosen malaria as his next victim. For the complete commentary, please go to Howard Lovy's NanoBot."

Howard writes "Horrified by "There Be Monsters Here" tales, some members of Congress called for a ban on DNA research in the mid '70s. Because those calls were rejected, millions of people around the world can now hope for DNA-based vaccines against AIDS, malaria and other deadly diseases that have destroyed lives, communities and nations. Here's an illustration: The name of Joseph DeRisi keeps coming up in connection with deadly diseases. No, he's not a modern-day Typhoid Mary. Just the opposite. The University of California, San Francisco researcher is using his own custom-built DNA microarrays to look inside the "minds" of some serious serial killers. The "minds" are genes, and his home-brewed gene chips helped solve the SARS mystery earlier this year. Now, DeRisi has chosen malaria as his next victim. For the complete commentary, please go to Howard Lovy's NanoBot."

No, not Arnold Schwarzenegger. We're talking abut Georgy Russell, who studied computer science at UC Berkeley, often wears ThinkGeek clothing, has a blog, reads Slashdot, and knows how to run Linux. Since this California electoral free-for-all has turned into a worldwide spectator sport as bizarre as any other 'Reality TV' show currently airing, Slashdot might as well get in on the media frenzy and interview a candidate, and Georgy is the obvious choice. We'll email Georgy 10 of the highest-moderated questions, and publish her answers (and, yes, the chosen questions in the same post) as soon as she replies.

Dan Howland writes "Big Ruxpin is Watching You: Once again, The Firesign Theatre's I Think We're All Bozos on this Bus proves itself to be the science-fiction story where the most stuff came true. If you recall, a hacker named Clem traveled through the Future Fair, followed by computer generated Holy-Grams who popped up and said things like, 'Why not try [WALL OF SCIENCE], 'cause it's my favorite!' Leave it to Disney to perfect that spooky technology with My Pal Mickey, an interactive talking plush doll that knows where it is inside Walt Disney World, and tells you trivia as you move through the park. Ah ha, but even better (at least from Disney's standpoint) is that, just like the Holy-Grams, My Pal Mickey feeds the info back into the central computer system, so Doctor Memory can track people's movements through the park in realtime. (Of course, these data will be skewed because they only track people who buy the dolls...) Here is another link, with the interesting, Asimov-like sentence: 'He has a strong sense of self-preservation, and reminds you to put him some place safe when you get near water play areas, or on wet rides.'"

amrust asks: "I live in an area that currently is not being served by broadband in any way. Local ISP's are discussing bringing Wireless Internet into our area, and for some of the more difficult to reach places, they have mentioned 900Mhz being used. I was wondering how reliable/secure the 900Mhz spectrum is for Wireless Internet, and if anybody has some comments on experiences with 900Mhz wireless internet that they can pass on?"

An'Desha Danin writes "According to an article on GameSpot, Infinium Labs is now taking applications for beta testers for its mysterious Phantom console over at the official website. Apparently they're looking for about a hundred gamers with broadband to test the console towards the end of the year. Infinium are still planning to publicly unveil the Phantom at the Ultimate Gamers Expo in LA this August."

Wacky_Wookie was only one of many who wrote in with a mention of Apple's "leak" of specifications for a new line of PowerMacs to be dubbed "G5", apparently running the new PowerPC 970 CPUs. No offense, but anyone who thinks it was a mistake or leak doesn't understand marketing. :) Update by J : In case those linked sites get taken down too, try MacNN.

Brian J. asks: "I've recently completed a manuscript for a novel that depicts a heist involving elements of the Information Technology industry. Basically, a quartet of laid-off technology workers think they're going to get revenge against their former employer, but it doesn't work out that way. I was wondering if Slashdot knew of author's agents or editorial staff at publishers who have an affinity for technology, especially technology fiction, to whom I could send a query letter."

SDuane writes "Orin S. Kerr, Associate Professor at George Washington University Law School, has written an article trying to answer the question "what does it mean to 'access' a computer? And when is access 'unauthorized'?" It's long, but interesting and he's looking for feedback."

Slashback this evening with a few more notes on AMD's upcoming Opteron processor, Siva Vaidhyanathan (three times quickly), Oregon's open source bill, and more. Read on below for this round of updates and amplifications. That Charlie's no dummy. softwareJoe writes "Tim Bray has come right out saying that if IP chancer Charlie Northrup manages to enforce his most recent claim, the consequences would be 'disastrous.'

'It would become impossible to have Open Source implementations of key pieces of the infrastructure. This would be harmful, perhaps fatal, to the grand plans of those who want to deploy Web services everywhere,' Bray is reported as saying, in XML Industry Newsletter ."

Waiting for the low-power version. Jethro writes "Ace's hardware Opteron review was a very interesting read which shows some real Java webserver benchmarks on SUSE and Debian Linux, and real world database performance in MySQL and MS SQL server 2000. A lot better than those synthetic mysql benchmarks that Tom's hardware served up."

And Distinguished Hero writes "[H]ardocp.com ([H]ardNews 1oth Edition) is reporting that the Opteron processor does not actually have an integrated dual channel controller. This explains why all the Opteron reviews only used a single channel configuration. While the integrated memory controlled is not dual channel, it can be bypassed by an external (Northbridge) memory controller connected to the processor via the HyperTransport bus."

One more: EconolineCrush writes "Yesterday's Opteron launch gave us all glimpse at AMD's new 64-bit platform, but the Opteron is a server and workstation chip that will be out of reach for the majority of consumers. AMD's upcoming Athlon 64, however, will bring 64-bit computing to the desktop. Drawing heavily from what we've seen of the Opteron's performance thus far, Tech-Report has posted its thoughts on what it will take for the Athlon 64 to succeed. It's an interesting read for anyone salivating at the thought of an affordable 64-bit desktop platform."

Ma'am, can you please ask those anarchists in the carrels to pipe down a bit? BrianWCarver writes "Readers may recall a Slashdot interview with Siva Vaidhyanathan, Professor at NYU, and author of Copyrights and Copywrongs. Vaidhyanathan is working on a new book, The Anarchist in the Library, and was interviewed on the blog, Eyeteeth. This is a brilliant and amazing interview where Vaidhyanathan discusses how creative communities share, the DMCA, the American industrial production of culture, the USA Patriot Act, the importance of libraries and librarians, and the policies of the FCC. It is a must-read for those who care about the future of creative and democratic culture."

Technically, Oregon is not Washington. Daniel Phillips is among the many folks who have been following the progress of a bill in Oregon (HB 2892) to encourage open source software, and he points out this Register story (picked up from NewsForge, actually), writing "Apparently, moving Oregon's open source bill forward comes down to convincing the house speaker."

Reader PotatoHead fleshes that out just a bit: " Despite reports detailing the demise of HB 2982, this bill continues to be a topic at the Oregon Legislature. We have broad support for HB 2892, but need everyone to continue showing support in the form of your phone calls, e-mails, faxes and snail-mail to your Oregon Representatives. We have the attention of the Oregon Legislature in a pretty big way and need to keep up the good work if HB 2892 is to move forward against the constant efforts of the usual industry lobbyists. If you don't already know, here is how you contact your representative. Please take a moment --right now-- and show your support for HB 2982. Every contact matters as we continue to move forward with HB 2892!"

Sir, can you direct me to the nearest buggy whip store so I can beat this dead horse? If $98 billion seems to you a bit much for the music cartel to charge students for even the most indiscriminant file swapping, you may be interested in following the chilling effects that it generates, too: PL_2003 writes "A follow up on a previous slashdot article. It really seems like the recording industry is determined to continue its fight.Check this NYTimes article (free reg. required). My Take: Couldn't they use their brains for a better business model?"

OK, here are the rules ... Grub (mentioned previously) is apparently causing consternation among many webmasters. Though they claim the client honors robots.txt , it seems that only the central servers check it (and don't honor it properly) and that grub clients don't don't check it at all. Ooops.

Time to round up and segregate the arrogant. jtheory writes "There's an AP story today here on Yahoo news) that the Justice department has dropped its probe into the recommendation policy of a Texas Tech bio professor. It's encouraging that all he had to do to stop the investigation was make some very minor changes in his policy, but it's still horrifying to me that he got into trouble in the first place. Is it even safe to encourage strict Creationists (or others with strong anti-scientific beliefs) to become doctors? Would they ignore animal research results, etc?"

Slashback this evening with a few more notes on AMD's upcoming Opteron processor, Siva Vaidhyanathan (three times quickly), Oregon's open source bill, and more. Read on below for this round of updates and amplifications. That Charlie's no dummy. softwareJoe writes "Tim Bray has come right out saying that if IP chancer Charlie Northrup manages to enforce his most recent claim, the consequences would be 'disastrous.'

'It would become impossible to have Open Source implementations of key pieces of the infrastructure. This would be harmful, perhaps fatal, to the grand plans of those who want to deploy Web services everywhere,' Bray is reported as saying, in XML Industry Newsletter ."

Waiting for the low-power version. Jethro writes "Ace's hardware Opteron review was a very interesting read which shows some real Java webserver benchmarks on SUSE and Debian Linux, and real world database performance in MySQL and MS SQL server 2000. A lot better than those synthetic mysql benchmarks that Tom's hardware served up."

And Distinguished Hero writes "[H]ardocp.com ([H]ardNews 1oth Edition) is reporting that the Opteron processor does not actually have an integrated dual channel controller. This explains why all the Opteron reviews only used a single channel configuration. While the integrated memory controlled is not dual channel, it can be bypassed by an external (Northbridge) memory controller connected to the processor via the HyperTransport bus."

One more: EconolineCrush writes "Yesterday's Opteron launch gave us all glimpse at AMD's new 64-bit platform, but the Opteron is a server and workstation chip that will be out of reach for the majority of consumers. AMD's upcoming Athlon 64, however, will bring 64-bit computing to the desktop. Drawing heavily from what we've seen of the Opteron's performance thus far, Tech-Report has posted its thoughts on what it will take for the Athlon 64 to succeed. It's an interesting read for anyone salivating at the thought of an affordable 64-bit desktop platform."

Ma'am, can you please ask those anarchists in the carrels to pipe down a bit? BrianWCarver writes "Readers may recall a Slashdot interview with Siva Vaidhyanathan, Professor at NYU, and author of Copyrights and Copywrongs. Vaidhyanathan is working on a new book, The Anarchist in the Library, and was interviewed on the blog, Eyeteeth. This is a brilliant and amazing interview where Vaidhyanathan discusses how creative communities share, the DMCA, the American industrial production of culture, the USA Patriot Act, the importance of libraries and librarians, and the policies of the FCC. It is a must-read for those who care about the future of creative and democratic culture."

Technically, Oregon is not Washington. Daniel Phillips is among the many folks who have been following the progress of a bill in Oregon (HB 2892) to encourage open source software, and he points out this Register story (picked up from NewsForge, actually), writing "Apparently, moving Oregon's open source bill forward comes down to convincing the house speaker."

Reader PotatoHead fleshes that out just a bit: " Despite reports detailing the demise of HB 2982, this bill continues to be a topic at the Oregon Legislature. We have broad support for HB 2892, but need everyone to continue showing support in the form of your phone calls, e-mails, faxes and snail-mail to your Oregon Representatives. We have the attention of the Oregon Legislature in a pretty big way and need to keep up the good work if HB 2892 is to move forward against the constant efforts of the usual industry lobbyists. If you don't already know, here is how you contact your representative. Please take a moment --right now-- and show your support for HB 2982. Every contact matters as we continue to move forward with HB 2892!"

Sir, can you direct me to the nearest buggy whip store so I can beat this dead horse? If $98 billion seems to you a bit much for the music cartel to charge students for even the most indiscriminant file swapping, you may be interested in following the chilling effects that it generates, too: PL_2003 writes "A follow up on a previous slashdot article. It really seems like the recording industry is determined to continue its fight.Check this NYTimes article (free reg. required). My Take: Couldn't they use their brains for a better business model?"

OK, here are the rules ... Grub (mentioned previously) is apparently causing consternation among many webmasters. Though they claim the client honors robots.txt , it seems that only the central servers check it (and don't honor it properly) and that grub clients don't don't check it at all. Ooops.

Time to round up and segregate the arrogant. jtheory writes "There's an AP story today here on Yahoo news) that the Justice department has dropped its probe into the recommendation policy of a Texas Tech bio professor. It's encouraging that all he had to do to stop the investigation was make some very minor changes in his policy, but it's still horrifying to me that he got into trouble in the first place. Is it even safe to encourage strict Creationists (or others with strong anti-scientific beliefs) to become doctors? Would they ignore animal research results, etc?"

Slashback tonight brings you a boatload of updates and amplification to previous Slashdot stories, including: the outcome of the RIAA-driven administrative crackdown on file trading at the U.S. Naval Academy, the legal status of ambiguously labeled Microsoft "gimme" software, more information on the insecurities of Blackboard's card-based payment system, and more. Read on for the details!

Every day, in every way, I am becoming a better and better Lt. Junior Grade. alanjstr writes "The Baltimore Sun reports 'The Naval Academy has disciplined 85 students who used a military Internet connection to illegally swap copyrighted music and movies, but it stopped short of carrying out its threat to impose the maximum penalties of expulsion or court-martial, an academy document shows.' It goes on to say that the raid was spurred less by the RIAA and more by the threat of losing the internet connection due to the enormous amount of bandwidth consumed. The academy had given students several warnings before raiding the dorm rooms. Some of the hard drives seized last November were found to contain one or two copyrighted files, while others ran into the hundreds or thousands."

I bet they could make a better agreement with Xiph.org Magnetic Confinement writes "In an effort to make life more difficult for civic-minded Mac users, NPR has decided to drop Quicktime from its available streams. Nothing specific on their webpage addresses it, just some suspicious vacancies remain. Their helpdesk response is officially:

'NPR.org had been offering some of its audio in the Apple QuickTime format under an arrangement with Apple QuickTime. We regret that we were unable to reach mutually acceptable terms for a new arrangement with Apple QuickTime. As a result, NPR is unable to continue offering its content in this format.

You can also contact Apple QuickTime directly at: quicktime@apple.com

Weston
NPR Online'"

A note that got lost in the bin for too long ... JulesVD writes "Microsoft has agreed to tweak its Windows XP operating system in response to recent feedback from the Justice Department over its antitrust settlement with the federal government. (See news on Yahoo!) Microsoft will give more prominent display to a button in Windows that allows computer users to remove the company's Internet Explorer browser, company spokesman Jim Desler said. The Justice Department is overseeing Microsoft's compliance with the settlement. Placement of the button in a hard-to-reach spot in Windows was one of several complaints Microsoft's rivals made to the department last year."

Proportionality isn't just for the personals. You may still be boggling (I am) at the recently announced RIAA suits alleging that colleges and college students are liable for billions of dollars in damages to the music industry for facilitating online file trading. Reader Derek Lomas writes in with another editorial indicating "growing support at Yale for legal alternatives".

Even biggerness. The Gathering is billed by some as the the world's largest computer party. MC68040, though, writes "I'd like to remind everyone to have a look at dreamhack, that 'also' is the largest LAN in Sweden twice a year ... Which had over 5000 participants in 2001 and even more in 2002.. *arhem* Biggest you say?"

If you want to fight about "LAN party" vs. "Computer party," leave me out of it!

How about calling it "900t"? An anonymous reader writes "As previously reported, mozilla.org's Phoenix browser has been renamed to Firebird. This hasn't pleased supporters of the Firebird relational database project. In an Australian LinuxWorld article, one of their administrators calls the name change "one of the dirtiest deeds I've seen in open source so far." In a MozillaZine article, the same person accused mozilla.org of "theft" and "corporate bullying". They don't explain how it was different when they picked a name that was already used by a BBS, financial software manufacturer, Fenix IDE and games company. Meanwhile, IBPhoenix, an organisation that supports the development of the Firebird database, has put up a protest page, encouraging people to spam the MozillaZine forums (even though MozillaZine had nothing to do with the decision) and send masses of email to many Mozilla developers (most of whom were not involved in selecting the new name). I find it rather hypocritical that the Firebird database people are accusing Mozilla of "the filthiest of dirty tricks" while at the same time advocating the harassment of many Mozilla developers."

Point of clarification. batkid writes "In response to the article 'Microsoft pirating their own software,' Seems like MS is taking it pretty seriously. I got the following response from Microsoft (I am a faculty member, but the response should be the same to students).

April 9, 2003

RE: Visual Studio .NET Professional Edition and Windows XP Professional software distributed during the Microsoft Faculty Seminars

Dear Faculty Member, Thank you for attending the recent Microsoft Faculty Seminar. The purpose of this letter is to clarify questions concerning the legal use of the Visual Studio .NET Professional and Windows XP Professional software distributed to faculty who attended the Seminar. The software received is governed by the electronic license embedded in the product set up that appears prior to installation and no additional documentation is required.

Notwithstanding language on the CD label for the copies of Visual Studio .NET Professional Edition and Windows XP Professional Edition that you received during your attendance at the Seminar, which appeared to indicate that a separate license document was required in order for you to legally use the software, this letter will confirm that use by you of the software received is governed by the electronic license embedded in the product setup that appears prior to installation.

You are required to agree to accept the terms and conditions of this license prior to proceeding with the products' installation. Acceptance by you of these "Click to Accept" licenses is the only license required for your use of the copies of Visual Studio.NET Professional Edition and Windows XP Professional Edition received. We recommend that you keep a copy of this letter in your personal files for future reference."

Thanks for passing that along.

What if Masterlock security was assured this way? Monday, you read that security researchers Billy Hoffman and Virgil Griffith (known as Vergil and Acidus) were were prevented from speaking at a security conference by means of a Cease and Desist order from Blackboard, Inc.. The two planned to talk about security flaws found in Blackboard's Transaction System.

In a mail posted at Declan McCullagh's Politech mailing list, David Yaskin of Blackboard responds to the criticism that the company's legal action has drawn. John R. Hall has posted a FAQ explaining some particulars of the Blackboard Transaction System which Virgil and Acidus aren't at liberty to discuss, as well as contradicting some claims that Yaskin makes in the posted email.

mactari writes "Java client application developers should take a look at Sun's J2SE Client Developer Survey. Swing's relative slowness has always made a Java app with a GUI look and feel slow, and Sun might finally be doing something about it. Questions on the survey suggest Sun is considering moving away from a crossplatform look and feel (eg, Metal) towards native looks by default. If Sun is going to follow the suit played by IBM's native widget toolkit, SWT, or do things on individual platforms like Apple has done with its hardware accelerated version of Aqua-Swing, Java might finally find its way to becoming a competitor on the desktop."

Bakajin writes "Greg Costikyan's blog article A Specter is Haunting Gaming speaks in coarse language about "despair" in the independent game developing community. He says that despite the fact that no Independent Game Festival title "has ever gone on to major publication and success... 10,000 geeks... would just love to do what the IGF guys are doing... work on something you believe in, not churn out the next big-budget piece of crap." I can't help but read that and think that it represents a huge opportunity for a new game machine that lowers the bar for entry and has a unique revenue model. However, is the story of Indrema a prophesy? Is Infinium just vapor? Is there any other solution?"

epeus writes "At World of Ends, Doc Searls and David Weinberger explain the End-to-End nature of the internet in terms so clear even your manager could understand them. 'The Internet isn't complicated. The Internet isn't a thing. It's an agreement. The Internet is stupid. Adding value to the Internet lowers its value.' and so forth."

truthsearch writes "Wired is reporting 'Symantec claims to have identified the Slammer worm that ravaged the Internet during the last weekend of January hours before anyone else did. Symantec then shared the information only with select customers, leaving the rest of the global community to get slapped around by Slammer.' I'm not bothered I didn't know Slammer was coming, but Symantec has a moral responsibility to inform the public if it thinks millions will be affected." It isn't clear to me how Symantec could know, hours in advance, about a worm which took ten minutes to spread throughout the entire Internet, unless they had something to do with its release. Update: 02/14 16:54 GMT by M : Wired has their math wrong; Symantec apparently had at most 20-30 minutes of early warning. Symantec claims in this press release that they discovered the worm "hours before it began rapidly propagating".

Slashback tonight with a round of updates and clarifications on Yahoo! v. France, William Gibson's new book(tour), lowish-tech helping to solve the Columbia mystery, searchable utra-localized information and more. Read on for the details.

How very magnanimous. Amazing Quantum Man writes "ZDNet reports that Timothy Koogle and Yahoo were acquitted of condoning war crimes by selling Nazi memorabilia. The article is rather sketchy, so that's all I have. Here are some background articles from Slashdot history."

He doesn't sign anything, just sprinkles on some invisible nanobots. shawn writes "The Penguin Group's site has a schedule of upcoming book signing events for Willam Gibson's Pattern Recognition . The new book was mentioned on Slashdot earlier."

And now Gisbon's new book has been reviewed, as well. Look out for a review of the No Maps For These Territories DVD (with extras) soon too.

Aren't you glad some people are realistic enough to be paranoid? For everyone worried about your ISP suddenly deciding to detect and crack down on everyone who's taken advantage of the currently ubiquitous, simple-to-use NAT hardware (here's the post we ran about the means to snoop behind your NAT box, which links to the Bellovin paper mentioned below), an anonymous reader writes with one way to foil detection efforts: "Good news coming from OpenBSD camp! Read CVS log message (mail archive): 'Add scrub option 'random-id', which replaces IP IDs with random values for outgoing packets that are not fragmented (after reassembly), to compensate for predictable IDs generated by some hosts, and defeat fingerprinting and NAT detection as described in the Bellovin paper.'"

Right place at the right time when the wrong thing happens. fonixmunkee writes "an 11-year-old Mac and a COTS (commercial-of-the-self) telescope may have captured a very helpful image in solving the shuttle Columbia tragedy. this article here at CNN tells the story of how some self-proclaimed 'geeks,' working on an Air Force project aimed at watching satellites & incoming missiles, whipped up a contraption with some simple parts that captured an image of the shuttle on descent that may offer some light on what happened. also interesting is how many news sources mistook the image as a capture from the high-tech cameras that the people *actually* worked on."

Just a scratch in the historical record. truthsearch writes "In response to a leaked Sun memo complaining of Sun's Java implementation on Solaris, News.com has Sun's response. Many posters doubted its authenticity (myself included due to missing dates), but 'Sun confirmed the memo's authenticity, but said that the document is two years old and that the problems it describes have been fixed.'"

GPS, free databases -- these are a few of my favorite things ... Tony Pryor writes: "In April 2001, while there at arsDigita University, I developed a web interface called the Godseye Project, designed to enable 'grassroots cartography,' allowing individuals with web access to add subjective knowledge details about their surroundings to closeup satellite images. Although I wrote Godseye over a year and a half ago, it isn't currently online- I'll spare you the gory details of the events between then and now.

I just wrote two new pieces which *are* live. The first is a script that dynamically adds geolocation pages using Movable Type, and automatically registers each of them with http://www.geourl.org. The second part is a geolocation-based search centered upon any one of these geopages. The search aggregates the results of consecutive google queries on each of the sites (or geopages) within a given radius."

Visit the still-growing Godseye Project to test out this cool geographic search capability; Tony promises that the functionality will improve with lots of visitors and suggestions.

JPNews writes "The European Space Agency is designing a program (www.esa.int) to re-configure dying television transmission satellites to be used as a XM Radio-like satellite radio network. 'Once in position, 35,000 km away in space, TV satellites will remain in orbit forever, but their useful life amounts to 15 years or less... further life can be squeezed from a low-propellant TV satellite switched over to mobile digital radio broadcasting where precision position control is less important.'"

ditogi writes "The Harvard Political Review did a quick interview with the lord of darkness himself, Jack Valenti. He gives his thoughts on government mandated copy prevention, fair use, and lobbying. In response to his famous 'VCR is [to the movie industry]...as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone.' quote, he responds, 'I wasn't opposed to the VCR.' And what does he think of his current job? 'I think lobbying is really an honest profession.'" My favorite quote: "In the digital world, we don't need back-ups, because a digital copy never wears out. It is timeless." Update: 02/05 20:05 GMT by T : Derek Slater writes "I'm the author of the Valenti article you guys linked to. I've made some brief comments about it on my site, and figured I'd send them along."

ditogi writes "The Harvard Political Review did a quick interview with the lord of darkness himself, Jack Valenti. He gives his thoughts on government mandated copy prevention, fair use, and lobbying. In response to his famous 'VCR is [to the movie industry]...as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone.' quote, he responds, 'I wasn't opposed to the VCR.' And what does he think of his current job? 'I think lobbying is really an honest profession.'" My favorite quote: "In the digital world, we don't need back-ups, because a digital copy never wears out. It is timeless." Update: 02/05 20:05 GMT by T : Derek Slater writes "I'm the author of the Valenti article you guys linked to. I've made some brief comments about it on my site, and figured I'd send them along."

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.

This is a man who obviously knows a lot about the Internet. I am not making this up. He wrote a book about it. He has his own blog, his own Web site, and his own online alt.fan newsgroup with its own FAQ. Not only that, he is in a band and writes a syndicated humor column that often covers matters of interest to Slashdot readers. What are you going to ask him? Up to you, as long as you hold it down to one question per post. We'll send Dave 10 of the highest-moderated questions and post his answers as soon as we get them back, after which we're sure many alert readers will have much to add even if they haven't heard about Bennett Haselton's excellent automated Dave Barry column generator.

The Infamous Grimace writes "Chimera's developer is seriously considering dropping it, since 'Safari has already won.' This would be unfortunate, indeed. I still use Chimera at times, although it's true that Safari has become my browser of choice." I cannot use Safari regularly, it lacks too many features and has too many bugs. Of course, how long will this remain so? But even if Safari adds tabs and fixes bugs, will they add all the features I need from Chimera/Mozilla, like remembering form passwords, site navigation bar, more fine control of security and privacy? I guess there is always Mozilla if Safari doesn't fit the bill ... but Chimera is so much faster and Mac-like. Update: 01/22 19:54 GMT by P : The web site has been updated: "Chimera's not going [away], regardless of whatever I post on this blog."

The Infamous Grimace writes "Chimera's developer is seriously considering dropping it, since 'Safari has already won.' This would be unfortunate, indeed. I still use Chimera at times, although it's true that Safari has become my browser of choice." I cannot use Safari regularly, it lacks too many features and has too many bugs. Of course, how long will this remain so? But even if Safari adds tabs and fixes bugs, will they add all the features I need from Chimera/Mozilla, like remembering form passwords, site navigation bar, more fine control of security and privacy? I guess there is always Mozilla if Safari doesn't fit the bill ... but Chimera is so much faster and Mac-like. Update: 01/22 19:54 GMT by P : The web site has been updated: "Chimera's not going [away], regardless of whatever I post on this blog."

I thought I'd grab up some of the many commentaries and responses to the Eldred decision. If you read only one of these links, see Lessig's blog. Jack Balkin, another law professor who contributed to the case, is discussing it in his blog. The NYTimes has two distinct news stories on the decision (NYT1, NYT2), plus a biting editorial about the decision. Copyright scholar Siva Vaidhyanathan has a piece in Salon. The LA Times posts one of the very few stories to present the decision in a positive light. Reason is one of several to mock the mouse.

Zebulon Prime writes "Hannibal over at Ars has just posted a new article on processor technology. The article uses loads of analogies and diagrams to explain the basics behind pipelining and superscalar execution, and it's actually kind of funny (for a tech article). It's billed as a basic introduction to the concepts, but as a CS student and programmer I found it really helpful. I think this article is a sequel to a previous one that was linked here a while ago."

truthsearch writes "From News.com: 'A jury on Tuesday found a Russian software company not guilty of criminal copyright charges for producing a program that can crack anti-piracy protections on electronic books.' HUGE legal win against the DMCA. Thank you Lawrence Lessig."

truthsearch asks: "I've been a professional Visual Basic developer for 6 years, working on two and three tier systems and also web applications. Two years ago I tried Linux and went from being a fan of Windows to an aspiring developer of Linux (or at least Unix) applications. My company has just announced their complete acceptance of moving everyone to .NET and so I want to leave ASAP. I'm even willing to take a pay cut to leave Microsoft software development. So if I were to not contribute to OSS or take time off to get my masters (in CS of course), what's the best way to transition from professional Microsoft platform development to Linux? Are many companies hiring Microsoft developers with little Linux experience to assist in corporate migration? With online postings requiring 3-5 years Linux/C++/Java experience how's a Windows developer supposed to transition? Is my only solution to stick it out here while I contribute to OSS for the experience?"

Spencerian writes "UNIX guru and writer Dave Taylor's Teach Yourself Unix System Administration in 24 Hours is a strong "rosetta stone" reference and tutorial for beginning and intermediate Mac OS X, Linux and UNIX system administrators. The book covers fundamental and specialized UNIX sysadmin tasks for three UNIX flavors: Red Hat Linux 7.2, Solaris 8, and Mac OS X, version 10.1.2. Although Mac OS X and Red Hat have advanced in versions since this book was published, it doesn't appear to affect the book's usefulness since many of the tasks involve the venerable UNIX command line." The rest of Kevin's review is below -- read on to see if this book might help you. Teach Yourself Unix System Administration in 24 Hours author Dave Taylor pages 508 publisher Sams Publishing rating 8 reviewer Kevin Spencer ISBN 0672323982 summary Teach Yourself Unix System Administration in 24 Hours makes an excellent rosetta stone for beginning or intermediate UNIX sysadmins.

The Big Picture As you might get from the title, Sams Publishing's "24 Hours" book series attempts to teach specific tasks or steps within 1 chapter per hour. UNIX can get pretty complex, so it would seem that this format would limit the effectiveness of this book. Not so.

Topics from the book include:

• Unix Installation
• Documentation
• File Ownership
• Disk Usage
• Account Management
• Package Management (including the Fink system for Darwin)
• Process and System Controls
• Network configuration
• Web Server Management and shell scripting

Almost every chapter views how a particular task is handled with Linux as its normal focus, where many commands are shared between Solaris and Mac OS X. When functionality differs, Taylor downshifts to show how matters are handled in each respective operating system. As someone very experienced with Mac OS X, I found Dave Taylor's discussions on Mac OS X idiosyncrasies in contrast to Red Hat and Solaris very useful, particularly where Darwin overrides the traditional dotfile preference configuration, substituting the convoluted NetInfo services.

What to Expect Dave provides a Q & A section after each chapter. In an early chapter, Dave answers a typical geek question, "What Unix distributions do you run on your own systems?" Dave provides a very geeky answer--his Apple PowerBook G4 is running Mac OS X (with Darwin as its core, of course), along with a PC running Windows 2000, Linux Mandrake 8.1, and a web server running Red Hat Linux 7.2--a varied assortment that shows Dave puts the author in authority. In a later chapter, Dave touches on emulators such as WINE and Virtual PC as options for additional operating system support.

What makes the book work is that Dave provides a very conversational tone throughout the book, almost as if you're sitting with him in front of a system, talking while you do your thing. Humorous moments are scattered in appropriate moments to make things less dry (this is UNIX, after all).

Questions that weren't answered for me as a beginning UNIX sysadmin in another book by Dave Taylor, Learning UNIX for Mac OS X , were available in droves in this book. Topics such as scripting with perl or from the shell, disk quotas, crontabs, rlogin, managing system logs, and the like--all answered. Ever wondered how Mac OS X handles system init states? You'll discover that its a tad different from other UNIX systems, but not too much.

The Bad and the Upshot I ran into several layout problems in the book that were somewhat annoying, such as where tables or notes were sliced between pages, making them difficult to read. It wasn't a showstopper at all, but I hope that a later reprint will pass muster.

If you're still getting your feet wet with a few basics, or have a really mixed environment of UNIX flavors, this book may be very useful to you. I'd recommend this book to any Mac OS X technician who wants to take advantage of its UNIX underpinnings. Beginning Linux users should also find this a strong general reference. The book's cost ($25) is very reasonable, even a bargain for a book of this depth. Overall, Teach Yourself Unix System Administration in 24 Hours makes for a very well rounded reference, as well as a tutorial book. Perhaps the title should be shorter--it's quite a tongue twister.

You can purchase Teach Yourself UNIX System Administration in 24 Hours from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

David Mazzotta writes "Bet you didn't know Edgar Allen Poe pre-discovered the Big Bang and Black Holes. This article at the NYT discusses the concept of pre-discovery, or theorhetical anticipation of eventual scientific discoveries. Most of these come from forward thinking physicists, but occasionally they come from a morbid, alcoholic, poet."

Spencerian writes "Mac OS X is a very promising new BSD variant, but how does it rate as a server? Byte.com writer Moshe Bar has made an extensively balanced performance comparison of Mac OS X Server 10.1.5 versus SuSE Linux PPC with the 2.4.19 kernel. Both operating systems ran on the same hardware: an Xserve 1U rack mount server from Apple. While /.ers may guess (correctly) at his results, Mac OS X Server 10.1.5 wasn't as far behind the curve as you might think. Performance might've been better if Moshe had Mac OS X Server 10.2, with its faster GUI and other enhancements, but still, it appears that Mac OS X Server 10.1 was doing pretty good for a 1-year old."