Slashdot Mirror

Not a paperweight. 13Echo writes: "CSI, the manufacturer of the Dreamcast broadband adapter, is extending its reservations option by another week. They wish to meet a goal of 1,000 units before production will start. A rough Babelfish translation can be found here. This device is very beneficial in Dreamcast home-brew software development, and is also supported in the various Linux and BSD distributions on the Dreamcast. It is available for pre-order from this page at NCSX, or other import shops at a price of US $49.00. If any other Slashdotters are interested, now is the last time that we will be able to get one of these things. I've already placed my order with NCSX."

How about sell moon bits to sponsor the trips up there? Anonymous Coward points to this AP report which begins: "Four grains of moon dust brought to Earth by the first manned lunar mission were stolen from a space exhibit in Sweden, a museum official said."

Will the stolen moon rock madness ever end?

The race is on, Apple. SailorBob writes "The NexII got good reviews on slashdot (Review: Nex II CF MP3 Player) a while back and now a newer version named the NexIIe is shipping. Some nice functionality has been added such as drawing power from the usb while copying files and being able to hook to an external AC adapter. They've also told me via e-mail that they're considering adding Ogg Vorbis support, which wouldn't be a problem after the fact since the player can be updated for new formats with a firmware update."

Graphomania has a name, and it is Orson. Binestar writes "Author Orson Scott Card has released his latest book, Shadow Puppets. As usual, the first 3 chapters are available online. He's definitely one of my favorite authors."

Just kidding, folks -- just kidding. Afraid to play video games in Greece? Elonka indicates this BBC story (Court Allows Greek gamers to play on), excerpting: "In reference to the recent law enacted in Greece which bans all computer games, a court in northern Greece today threw out the case against two internet cafe owners who were arrested for allowing clientele to play Counter-Strike and online chess. The court said the law was unconstitutional."

Monsanto should invest in helicopters and lawyers for a whole new revenue stream. dwprice writes "A Saskatchewan farmer loses a patent infringement case when it turns out patented canola is growing in his fields and he didn't pay for it. He claims it blew into his field." When this farmer, Percy Schmeiser, lost the first round, I figured it was a simple lapse of sanity and would be overturned on appeal. No such luck.

Best TV news I've heard in a while. Masem writes "Offical word has been announced that Futurama will be shows on Cartoon Network (most likely as part of the Adult Swim Comedy block) starting in Jan 2003, according to Cartoon Reasearch. No indication of new episodes, but CN will have all 72 episodes that have been made."

This would be reason enough to have cable. MrChubble writes: "Seems that futurama isn't as dead as previously believed. Here is a quote from a someone's experience at ComicCon: "Julie Schwartz Slide Oddball Comics Show (Hilarious as usual), and at the FUTURAMA panel they showed a preview of a forthcoming episode in which Fry, Leela and Bender become super-heroes. One thing they didn't mention at the panel, was the news that FUTURAMA would be joining Cartoon Network's ADULT SWIM in the near future." Is this too good to be true?"

We have semi-successfully identified a potential security problem ... Jim Driggers writes: "You guys recently had an article on how to escalate one's security status on a Win32 machine. The article included a link to a download called shatter.exe. My Norton antivirus says it contains the beavuh virus. I don't have IIS 5, so it is not a worry for me, but I thought you guys should know."

Actually, it shouldn't be a worry for anyone: apparently, the shatter.exe file triggers some anti-virus software, but according to several readers this is a false alarm.

How to win friends and influence people. In response to this posting ("Congress to Ashcroft: Go After Song Swappers"), Declan McCullagh writes: "FYI I've placed the congressional letter to Attorney General Ashcroft here: Also see this analysis from last summer on why P2P piracy violates the federal No Electronic Theft act: 'Duncan Frissell on why Napster users are federal felons'."

Up against the wall (of videos). An anonymous reader writes "Looks like the film Revolution OS finally makes it to a small screen near you. First copies available at HP booth at LinuxWorld, San Francisco.

It includes footage from LinuxWorld '99 in San Jose where Stallman accepts the "Linus Torvalds Award" from the hand of Linus and proceeds to talk about why Linux should be called GNU/Linux". This is a treasure."

In addition, for the skateboard-inclined, note that Dogtown and Z-Boys is finally out on DVD, too.

Slimmer and trimmer like I ought to be. prostoalex writes "The rumors of Ziff Davis filing for Chapter 11 can just stay rumors, as company claimed it achieved a compromise with bondholders on financial restructuring. Recently ZD has been shutting down a sleuth of print publications including Yahoo! Internet Life, Family PC, Expedia Travels, Interactive Week, eShopper and Smart Business. It is still a publisher of eWeek, PC Magazine, CIO Insight, ExtremeTech and other computer and gaming magazines."