Slashdot Mirror
Domain: cjb.net
Stories and comments across the archive that link to cjb.net.
Stories · 31
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Slackware 10.1 Beta And Pat's Health
phreakuencies writes "The ChangeLog in slackware-current got a distiguished update today on Jan 22: Patrick Volkerding updated us on his health condition stating he is not back in perfect shape but getting more medical tests and results. The initial phrase on the ChangeLog: 'I'm going to call this Slackware 10.1 beta 1, because we're at a state where things are relatively stable.' Read up here" -
2004 MN4, Even Higher Probability
phreakuencies writes "Worried since the recent post about the MN4 2004 asteroid, I added a bookmark to its 'impact risk' section at NASA. The asteroid started as having a 1/233 probability of hitting earth. Later it raised to 1/63. Daily computations made on 25 Dec raised its chances up to 1/45. Optimists can now say it has a 97.8% probability of missing earth." And Veteran writes " NeoDys offers the 'Orbfit' software package (source code released under the GPL) which can be used to get a pre-release view of the situation with Asteroid 2004MN4." -
Evolving the Social Network
arantius writes "An article on BottomQuark points to a new development: Here's a story about a new start-up Huminity, referred to as the technology of the year. The software they produce combines instant messaging, chat, and social networking. After burning through over $30k of personal funds, the team has now raised millions for their company. We've heard about Friendster recently, but somehow this seems more interesting." Jamie adds: Social networking was in the news recently because this patent apparently covers much of it. It was bought for $700K by the two underdogs and may be used to beat up on Friendster. Don't worry, the guy who wrote Slashdot's friend-of-friend code doesn't think we're affected :) -
MS Tweaks Ill-Received Licensing Plan
ahooton writes "C|Net is reporting that Microsoft has updated it's Software Assurance licensing program. The company has admitted that it's initial approach angered a large number of customers. No huge difference in pricing or terms -- changes are comprised of bundling some training and support. The one interesting concession is that corporate licensees of Microsoft Office can now use that suite on a home computer as well." What a concession. (Paddo points to this similar article on Australian IT via News.com.au.) -
Pasta Outperforms Computers For Earthquake Modeling
Judebert writes "Looks like Penn State has gone organic... at least where earthquake prediction is concerned. OK, really, they were trying to physically model friction forces, with respect to earthquakes. Since the glass tubes they needed were slow to arrive, they substituted angel hair pasta instead. (Does anyone but me think this sentence should be followed by "Hilarity Ensues"?) Apparently this physical model gives better (and faster) results than the numerical model they use on their computers. Instead of slashdotting Penn, you can also check out the near-perfect duplicate article at Science Daily." -
IT Worker-to-User Ratio Survey?
Breid asks: "This year has definitely been a career nightmare for IT pros. Our own company has seen our staff trimmed to near nothing and frankly, the workload is beginning to stretch people to the breaking point. With performance reviews coming up I want to make some statements to upper management concerning personnel and compensation. You can find plenty of salary surveys, but I haven't seen statements regarding the size of staff involved. And IMHO, workers on a 5 person staff supporting 200 need some compensation adjustment vs a 20 person staff supporting the same user base. At this point (for all of you still employed), what's the IT worker to workstation ratio look like? Or is anyone aware of any statistical data compiled about this?" -
PalmSource Talks About PalmOS 6.0
stevejsmith writes "The Register has released an article regarding PalmSource speaking about their next OS, PalmOS 6.0. The Register says, 'Version 6.0 will be as dramatic a change for the platform as OS X was for Apple, or NT was for Microsoft...', that it will actually include some source code of BeOS, and that will support Microsoft's .NET platform, among other things." -
More Evidence of Increase in Profound Autism
I am Jack's username writes "The New York times has an article (no registration required) about an increase in profound autism in California of 273% between 1987 and 1998. Between 1999 and 2001 more than 6 500 cases were reported, similar to the number reported between 1970 to 1995. The increase cannot be accounted for by misdiagnosis, increased awareness, childhood immunizations, emigration, birth injuries, and genetics. Some autism experts think the actual cases to be dramatically more than reported in the UC study. See also previous discussions about high-function geek rich areas like silicon valley." -
Godzilla Getting Ready to Stomp Mozilla?
mrBlond writes: "Doing the rounds: Seems like Toho [jp], 'the owner of all rights in and to the trademark and service mark GODZILLA [jp] and the GODZILLA characters,' is coming down on Davezilla for use of 'zilla' in his domain name and his dragon logo, to set a precedent before attacking Mozilla." -
Getting Unicode Character Codes in JavaScript?
jargonCCNA asks: "I've searched high and low across the web, but I can't seem to be able to find any code snippets or even anything that'll help me out here. I'm trying to get a Unicode character code from a data stream in JavaScript and there doesn't seem to be anything out there to help me; JavaScript itself only has onboard support for ISO-Latin_1, or something. I tried hacking my own converter code, but it's rife with errors. Anybody know of some code that I can include in a GPL project?""Here's the buggy code, if you're interested:
function unicode2hex( unicode )
"Mozilla's JavaScript console lets me know that '\u0' is an illegal character. I think this would work if I could make it use the string "0000" instead of the number 0 for i.
{var hexString = "";
}
for( var i = 0x0000; i <= 0xFFFF; i++ )
{test = eval( "\\u" + i );
}
if ( unicode == test )
{hexString += i / 4096;
}
hexString += i / 256;
hexString += i / 16;
hexString += i % 16;
hexString += "";
return hexString;
return false;
Just for reference -- I've seen a lot of people get nailed on Ask /. because they didn't do the proper research before asking their question. Google has failed me; I've been trying to figure this out on my own for about a month. I hope someone can shed some light on my situation." -
Driving from Alaska to Siberia
Pelerin writes "The team from the Ice Challenger project are driving from Alaska to Provodanya, in Siberia; across the 56-mile field of ice floes that each winter "joins" America and Russia. At the last minute the Russian authorities have denied the entry permit but the crew says they're on track to reach the Big Diomedes islands, which lie across the date line, thereby proving it's possible to do this. This feat is not as easy as it sounds due to the harsh Artic winter conditions, and the fact that the ice floes themselves are drifting at a pretty good clip. It takes a specially built vehicle to tackle this adventure. Geek quotient: pretty high :)" If you just want to drive to Alaska, you might go with Philip Greenspun. And if these guys don't make the trip to Russia this year, they might not get a chance. Update: 04/08 12:21 GMT by T : DrShrink adds to the story: "The two made it to Siberia, however were turned back due to not gaining permission to enter Russian territory." -
High-Density Magnets Created
Judebert writes: "University of California, Riverside scientists have created diradical magnets: magnetic particles that have two unbonded electrons instead of just one. The problem with diradical substances is that they have always been extremely chemically active, so they never stayed around longer than a few microseconds at room temperature. The new substance is stable at room temperature, even when it's in solution. And it's not even metallic. This paves the way for newer, higher-density magnetic and magneto-optical media and devices. You can help distribute the load if you visit the text mirror instead." -
Spacecraft Teamwork Ferrets Out Jupiter's Secrets
Judebert writes "Working together, Galileo and Cassini found how the solar wind affects Jupiter, shaping its magnetosphere (the biggest object in the solar system with distinct boundaries) and triggering auroras. They also detected the magnetic footprints of Jupiter's moons in the auroras. The Hubble and Chandra also had a role in this display of inter-planetary teamwork. Of course, the big benefit you receive from your tax dollars is all the pretty pictures! New desktop images for me!" -
New Definition of 'Laser Paper'
Judebert writes: "Berkeley Lab engineers have developed a laser system to measure the elasticity of paper as it whizzes by at 65 mph on a conveyor belt. The benefit is environmental and business savings: paper makers don't have to downgrade a whole roll of paper or use extra pulp (with all the nasty side-effects) to achieve desired paper qualities." -
Why Your Silverware Rusts
Judebert writes: "Watching your stainless steel silverware rust is enough to drive a geek to apoplexy. Not that you care, just that it is stainless, after all. Well, some clever Brits at the Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine have figured out Why Stainless Steel Corrodes and published a like-named article in Nature. Science Daily, as usual, mirrored their press release. When stainless steel goes, the results can be catastrophic. Especially considering that the stuff is used in Formula 1 engines, industrial equipment, and thousands of other places. Turns out the problem is sulfur in the steel / chromium alloy. But they've also figured out ways to fix the problem without resorting to very expensive low-sulphur steels." -
Fractal Weather Prediction
Judebert writes "Benoit Mandelbrot, the man responsible for much of the interest in fractals, spoke last month at the American Giophysical Union meeting. He explained how he has been using fractals to find order within complex systems in nature, such as coastlines and weather. (I thought he was dead, but apparently he's just been teaching at Yale.) Earth scientists have taken his fractal work to the point of forecasting the size, location, and windspeed of hurricanes at landfall. Their predictions are being made available to FEMA and other government agencies." -
DesqView/X: Night of the Living Dead Codebases
Pazuzues writes "I found something that you could say peaked my interest. It seems Symantec (purchasers of former company Quarterdeck) has release DeskView/X into public domain and can be downloaded now. DesqView/X was a GUI and OS extender that installed into DOS very much like MS Windows does. This little GUI can run X-Windows and MS Windows 3.x software and can even gateway serve MS Windows applications to remote X terminals. It was way ahead of its time and is a pretty decent toy to play with if you have a old 486 laying around. Anyways there is a petition being started that is petitioning Symantec to release the source code as OpenSource. I think this is a really good idea and could possiably help alot of other existing projects like WINE for example. It can load X and rexec X apps with 16mb RAM for Pete sakes!" -
Linux for the HP Jornada 525?
tfurrows asks: "If any of you have used or own a Jornada 525 you've probably noticed that it's not the lightest, smallest or most advanced PDA out there. But for only $189.00 (or check here) it's not really something to scoff at either; you get a nice piece of hardware at a reasonable price. I've had mine for several months now, I purchased it just after the price drop in November of 2001. I'm very please with it, especially with the hardware (being a Palm convert). My only problem is this: I purchased the unit thinking that many others would be interested in an inexpensive color PDA, and that various hacks and programs would be devised. I was especially looking forward to a Linux Port. How many people out there have one of these things? Is anyone interested in continuing development of hacks (namely loading Linux) for this somewhat outdated PDA (after all, Linux really makes the old stuff shine)? Or is this not such a good deal after all?"' Seeing as the Jornada is based on the Hitachi SH3 processor, it looks like these folks might be the ones that bear some watching. Anyone else with a Jornada 525 have their own Linux port experiences to share? -
Computer Chips Exploding for Science
Judebert writes "While some may argue that any modern processor without a heat sink already exhibits this behavior, UCSD chemists have discovered that properly doped computer chips are actually explosive. Standard techniques are used, and they function just like normal computer chips. Better yet, they burn clean, making them ideal for chemical analysis. The article sites other uses, such as micromachine propulsion and military explosives, but I imagine this woudl make for the ultimate in copy protection, as well: "Unauthorized copy detected. This system will self-destruct in 10... 9..." Science Daily also has a copy." -
SOHO Produces Images of Sunspot Interiors
Judebert writes: "The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO, the one that looks at the Sun) has used a Doppler-like device to look underneath the surface of a sunspot. It turns out to be much shallower than expected, but the data does help explain why sunspots last so much longer than theory dictates. NASA's story is more informative, but the pictures and movies at Stanford are spectacular. I've got a new background!" -
£10,000 Prize for Linux Virus Challenge Re-Issued
mutantcamel writes "Eddie Bleasdale, the director of NetProject has been offering £10,000 to the first hacker to infect his Linux machine with a virus for the last two years, and so far no one has hit the jackpot. He's re-announced his challenge to virus writers following a Gartner report which told IT depts. not to trust MS server software because of recent worm attacks on their servers, but a Microsoft exec said yesterday that the hugely successful worm attacks were due to 'tardy' sysadmins." -
Advertisers Escalate Banner Ad War
AnonymousComrade writes: "In today's Newsbytes, there is an article about MediaBEAM GmbH, a German company that say they have developed Web server software that can detect whether a home browser is blocking banner ads or pop-ups. If the Web server detects blocking software, a message appears on the screen advising the 'free-loading' surfer that he has two choices if he wants access to the Web site's content: pay for it or be exposed to the ads. This sounds strange to me. Can they really include something in the download (Java or JS, I assume) that detects whether an ad picture has been downloaded or not? What if you have blocking S/W that not just blocks the download of the ad picture, but also modifies the HTML on-the-fly (a la the Proxomitron). Can they really distinguish this from a remote ad server that just isn't responding? And how long will it take before ad blocking S/W is updated to block this blocking-detection mechanism?" -
ClearChannel Plays It Safe
mertzman writes: "Rather than wait for the government assaults on civil liberties to reach full steam, ClearChannel, one of the nation's largest radio networks, has decided to do some censorship on their own! According to F***edCompany, ClearChannel has created a list of banned songs with "questionable content" in light of the recent tragedies. Stuff ranging from Drowning Pool's "Bodies" to Nena's anti-war hit "99 Red Balloons" have made their list." ClearChannel owns many radio stations, so this probably affects you. Update: 09/18 18:30 GMT by M : The San Francisco Chronicle has more on this - ClearChannel says it isn't an official mandate, just some sort of internal memo circulating. Update: 09/18 23:18 PM GMT by T : Fuzzy points out that "snopes.com has an explanation of the ClearChannel hoax. ClearChannel has also sent out a press release saying they have released no such list." -
eFront From Inside
Gridle writes: "In short, eFront was a company which bought out successful websites and turned them into cash cows by maximizing profit through different ways of banner and other advertising. Not a bad idea, except that their methods aren't exactly pretty ones. A disgruntled employee obtained some crucial ICQ logs (mirror), which show the true spirit behind eFront. It includes cheating on banner companies, cheating on top100 sites, talking about raping a female webmaster because she doesn't agree on some points, tax evasion, delaying payment to webmasters, literally harrassing sites out of existance and all kinds of other nasty stuff. Somebody put together a summary about how it concerns the emulation scene. Also notice OverClocked's comic about it and Tim Eckel's previous ventures against the emulation community, and Penny Arcade. And it's all over the place already. FuckedCompany, SomethingAwful, Lum the Mad (and their forums), Get High Forums, mame.dk support pages and Retrogames' General and Current Affairs boards. Somebody even found that their CEO has earlier been convicted." -
Debian Lays Out Freeze Plans For Woody
impaler writes: "Looks like Woody is frozen. LWN has a message from the Woody release manager, saying it is frozen. So, I guess it is finally frozen. Hopeful in less than a year Debian 2.3/3.0 will be out. Yay. Well, really lots of yay. Nice gui installer(even though I'm fine with the text one) and automatic hardware detection(something I like...especially when installing Debian on a box you know almost nothing about its hardware i.e. at an installfest)." And it looks like the Debian Release Manager has absolutely, positively staked his life on releasing Woody no later than July 8, 2001, so we can set our clocks now and hold him to his sworn word. -
More Anime Washing Ashore In 2001
da3dAlus writes: "Gundam Wing has been pulled from the Toonami block on Cartoon Network, and the 4th season of DBZ is coming to an end--but that's not nearly the end of the anime hitting U.S. cable TV. CNX: Toonami Revolution has more word on series to premiere on Toonami within the next 4 months. These include Outlaw Star (which is supposed to air as early as January 15) and the original Mobile Suit Gundam (which is set to air in mid March). Among the possible future series are Cowboy Bebop, Magic Knights RayEarth, and Rurouni Kenshin. In the meantime, you can catch an encore presentation of Blue Submarine #6 on January 5, and take heart in knowing that CN has the rights to air the remaining DBZ episodes when they're ready." -
Cassini Glitches
byronbussey writes: "After the Mars Lander fiasco and the metric conversion problems the gremlins are not going away for NASA. The Cassini probe which has been taking some awesome pictures of Jupiter, has run into some steering problems." -
Blue Sub #6, Outlaw Star, And Tenchi, Oh My!
da3dAlus writes: "Toonami Revolution (check link for exact schedule) has spread the word on the new Toonami lineup beginning the week of November 6th. Basically, Cartoon Network is moving around a few shows to make room for the 4-part Blue Submarine #6 series and the weekly Toonami movies showing every Friday in November at 5pm EST. Gundam Wing will be dropped from the Midnight Run, DBZ will take its place, and Tenchi will fill the 12:30 slot (with NO uncut episodes). Currently, Outlaw Star is scheduled for airing on November 11 at 11 am EST." I highly recommend Blue Sub #6. The Japanese audio track is amazing (great surround sound) but I s'pose CN will air the English track. -
Top 10 Gadgets of All Time
pulski sent in MSNBC's list of the top 10 gadgets of all time. It's a fairly interesting list, although I think some of the more ancient gadgets were overlooked - cutting tools, dams and other fundamentals of civilized life. -
Linux Unreal Tournament Status Update
slothdog writes "Brandon Reinhart of Epic Games has updated his .plan with some more info about the open-sourcing of Unreal Tournament for Linux. Specifically, it will be available under the Artistic License and coordinated through SourceForge. A little snoop-work will lead you to the project's page. Yummy. " -
BladeEnc 0.80 released under the LGPL
Tord writes "After about half a years delay I have finally released BladeEnc 0.80 under the LGPL. After some investigations, me and my patent ombudsman could only come to the conclusion that BladeEnc doesn't infringe any of the Swedish MP3 related patents, so I have been recommended to just go ahead with BladeEnc. I'll explain the patent issues in more detail later. Let's just say that we have found some interesting details... "
