Slashdot Mirror

ScurvySeaDog writes "The centipede is the first new species in more than a century to be discovered in Central Park." Just goes to show what's right before your eyes...

gessel writes: "CNN has an article describing Italian police shutting down a U.S. hosted website deemed in Italy to be illegally blasphemous. The article goes on to describe the ramifications and U.S. efforts along the same lines."

Astrobirdr writes "CNN has a story about a giant squid that recently washed up on a Tasmanian beach. Some think it might be a new species." 60 feet long is enough for a lot of calimari.

lowlypeon writes "In a move that makes going back to college more tempting than usual, Case Western is installing fiber connections in 16,000 computers over the next year to give students a 1 gigabit per second Ethernet connection. Administrators aren't sure what anybody needs that kind of bandwidth for yet, but they are curious to see how it gets used."

Mantour writes: "To everyone's big suprise ;), Worldcom is going for Chapter 11. 'The Chapter 11 filing by WorldCom would follow once high-flying companies like energy trader Enron Corp. and Global Crossing Ltd., which crumbled into bankruptcy amid a crush of accounting investigations by federal regulators.' You can get more info in this Yahoo story" Update: 07/22 12:21 GMT by T : mnordstr points out a CNN report calling this "the largest bankruptcy ever."

eegad writes: "CNN has an article about a new idea from NASA springing from chaos theory called the interplanetary superhighway. It will purportedly allow easier space travel by steering through regions where the net gravitational force exerted by nearby bodies is smallest. The actual NASA news release is here. Sounds like an interesting concept but it is unclear how the scientists will account for every source of gravity, including the elusive dark matter."

RealPerseus writes "The Buffalo News reports today in this article that the 100th annivsary of air conditioning is upon us. Who would have thought that air conditioning was invented in Buffalo?"

nairnr writes "CNN has an article about a new space object tracking post in Tajikistan. The Russian military space forces on Thursday inaugurated an optical tracking facility located in the ex-Soviet republic of Tajikistan that is intended to monitor objects in space. The Okno (Window) complex, near the town of Nurek in central Tajikistan, is capable of tracking objects 40,000 kilometers (24,800 miles) from Earth, the space forces said in a statement carried by the Interfax-Military News Agency. According to the space forces, the Okno, which was put on test duty Thursday, offers a better range and precision than standard radar facilities. The report did not elaborate on how the Okno works"

BahdKo writes: "CNN reported today in this article that the U.S. government is working out a plan to help protect Cyberspace from attacks by "hackers and terrorists." This plan will include the distribution of government-provided software to help clean up insecure Windows installations. It's hard to picture myself executing government provided software on my workstation (we were supposed to be *increasing* the security of the PC's, right?)"

platypussrex writes "CNN is reporting that some Time Warner cable customers will be offered the ability to use digital recording. The article says they will not have a commercial zapping feature but even the use of digital recording seems a major turn-around from what the entertainment industry has been saying so far. I wonder if this will help TiVo and ReplyTV gain 'legitimacy'?"

An anonymous reader says "This CNN.com article talks about how most search engines have not disclosed the difference between a paid ad and an 'objective' result. The one exception of course is every geek's favorite search engine, Google. Once again, hooray for Google!" We mentioned the FTCs Mandate that search engines be clear about who's paying for what. Apparently all the non-google engines are on vacation ;)

QueueEhGuy writes "From the 'Red Planet' meets 'Hunt for Red October' department: CNN is reporting in this article that the Russian navy launched an inflatable space reentry vehicle atop a standard ICBM. Although this one was evidently only 2.5 ft in diameter, they evidently plan on making larger versions to act as life rafts or carrier pigeons from space back to Earth. Apparently, neither Val Kilmer or Sean Connery were involved in the test."

QueueEhGuy writes "From the 'Red Planet' meets 'Hunt for Red October' department: CNN is reporting in this article that the Russian navy launched an inflatable space reentry vehicle atop a standard ICBM. Although this one was evidently only 2.5 ft in diameter, they evidently plan on making larger versions to act as life rafts or carrier pigeons from space back to Earth. Apparently, neither Val Kilmer or Sean Connery were involved in the test."

medcalf writes: "The AP reports that the International Space Station, as proposed, is incapable of doing much meaningful scientific research, and that NASA should thus stop characterizing the program as 'science-driven.' Factors listed in support of the recommendation are insufficient crew, lack of certain vital equipment and insufficient resupply missions. Makes me proud of spending $30 billion in tax money -- hey, isn't that about enough for a manned Mars mission? Perhaps a reevaluation of our goals in space, and what we are prepared to risk for the money, would be in order?" The AP article is summarizing the conclusions of a 23-member panel, which finds the current aim of a "core-complete" station too slender a justification of the past and current expenditures in the name of science.

Plug1 writes "CNN.com has an interesting article about nintendo hiring people to offer free samples of their games. Stephen Pellitier "will wear a 15-inch flat-screen TV on his chest and a pack of batteries on his back. With a game console and joysticks dangling from his waist, he will spend his weekends inviting passers-by to play games."" imagine the possible pickup lines involving joysticks, buttons, and playing with them! The potential for being beaten on the streets is just amazing!

Nofsck Ingcloo writes: " Reuters is reporting that ICANN voted on Friday to exclude ordinary Web surfers from its board in a move critics say allows mainstream interests to tighten their grip on the online world. ICANN unanimously passed the resolution at its quarterly meeting. (The last /. article I saw on this only mentioned it as a probable coming attraction.)"

An anonymous reader writes: "CNN has an interesting story about the scientists who are searching for proof that neutrinos have mass a half mile below Minnesota. Not alot of scientific theory but a good overall perspective on what is taking place. One of the more interesting quotes: "We're going to take a sawed-off shotgun and blast a bunch of neutrinos toward Minnesota and measure what sticks," said Marvin Marshak, a physics professor at the University of Minnesota."

EccentricAnomaly writes: "CNN is reporting that the Simputer will roll out next month. The Simputer is a handheld computer running GNU/Linux starting at around $214 and is aiming to be an affordable computer for the third world that can be used even by the illiterate with its text-to-speech features. From the Simputer website: "The Simputer is a low cost portable alternative to PCs, by which the benefits of IT can reach the common man." Slashdot ran a story in May 2001 reporting the launch of the Simputer project." The same Reuters story is also found at the Hindustan Times.

Slashback this holiday evening with just a few quick updates and follow-ups (below) -- I hope those to whom the Fourth of July is a significant holiday are out (responsibly) making things explode.

Nearly anything is better than ribbon cables. aibrahim writes "In the recent /. article about Serial ATA some people wanted to know where SCSI was going, and if Serial ATA could deal with some higher end workstation and low end server requirements. Apparently it has been decided that Serial ATA 2 (pdf doc) and Serial Attached SCSI are the answers."

Because being an American is all about first-person shooters. and i starve writes: "For any of you FPS fans out there who have been champing at the bit to see the newest product of our very own government's attempt at a multiplayer video game since Marine Doom your day has final come. America's Army, which utilizes the Unreal Warfare engine was created and designed by the United States Army and is TOTALLY FREE! go grab it off of File Planet right now!"

Before you hit your "JINGO" button, though, An anonymous reader cautions "In typical Army fashion the release of America's Army is a bust. All the servers are either full or down and the way it's set up, you can't play past the basic training without completing some of the training online. Since you can't connect to any of the servers to complete that training you basically can't play the game at all. What a waste of taxpayer money."

Nobody needs to make any cracks about this. Anonymous Coward writes "According to this CNN Article, [some cracks were] found on Space Shuttle Columbia this week, possibly delaying missions for the remainder of the year. This crack is similar to the crack found on Columbia's sister ships, Atlantis and Discovery. "

Worst pun in relation to this gets no prize.

somewinner writes "CNN.com has an article discussing WordCom's impending failure and its possible impact on the internet. Given that WorldCom (via UUNet) handles 50% of US internet traffic, and a large percentage of traffic worldwide, some concern is certainly justifiable. However, the author of the article seems to think that nothing serious is going to happen."

The Hubble has taken some great pictures of a supernova according to CNN. You can get a more indepth article, and more pictures from Space.com story on the same subject. Purty explosions!

QueueEhGuy writes "CNN is reporting that the Swedish Postal Service, Posten, is now offering a service where customers can choose to receive spam via a free, government run, service. Business are given the option of using this at a 25% discount from carrier delivered mail. For those of us with physical addresses, it raises an interesting question as to which one is less annoying, environmental benefits aside." Interesting step towards charging postage for email.

An anonymous reader writes: "Adventurer Steve Fossett succeeded Tuesday on his sixth try to pilot a balloon solo around the world, crossing the meridian where he started his historic journey June 19, his ground crew at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, announced. Here is the official site, while there's also several other articles, including this one."

KeelSpawn writes "CNN is running an article about "sounds in outer space", which begins: "University of Iowa astrophysicist Donald Gurnett first heard the sounds on a spacecraft in 1962 and it reminded him of music. The sounds, which resemble whistles, bird chirps and booms, would not be heard by someone in space but are picked up by sensitive radio equipment. The sounds will be blended into a performance this autumn by the Kronos Quartet when they play at Hancher Auditorium at the University of Iowa in Iowa City." The U. of Iowa has a page about the concert.

Lothar+0 writes "In United States v. Lucite ball containing lunar material (an actual case, I'm not making this up, folks), the feds are suing to get back a moon rock from an American who brought it back from Honduras. They're alleging that this rock from the Apollo 17 mission is stolen property; ironic considering that NASA took something that wasn't under U.S. jurisdiction."

squarefish writes "CNN has this story about a hiker stranded in South America's Andes mountains when a blizzard begins. He reaches into his backpack for his cell phone -- only to find his prepaid minutes are up. Out of nowhere, a phone company solicitor is calling on his cell phone, asking if he would like to buy more time. Is this convenient or what?"

linderdm writes "CNN has an article describing how the FTC wants search engines who receive payment for higher rated links, to disclose this to users. The concern is that users go to search engines looking for the best results for their search criteria, not the highest paid results for their search."

jmoloug1 writes "Traditional theory is that the earth took up to 10 million years to recover from the dinosaur extinction event. However a newly discovered site has revealed that this estimate may be way off. CNN has the article describing how quickly a tropical rain forest grew after the catastrophic event 65 million years a go."

echucker writes: "In a story reminiscent of a recent slashdot article about a Chinese crackdown, CNN is reporting that the Vietnamese government plans to keep tabs on users at over 4,00o net cafes there. Local officials are to report back to national authorities by July 7th on status of cafes in their jurisdiction. Better surf quick, folks!"

ahertz writes: "If only it were this easy for geeks! CNN is reporting that officials at the China Giant Panda Breeding Center in Woolong, China are showing... err... panda pr0n to increase the sex drive of captive pandas. The program is apparently quite effective, as birth rates have risen dramatically."

VUSE g-EE-k and entirely too many other people wrote in about an Appeals Court decision holding that the Pledge of Allegiance, as recited in its current form in various public schools (often by law), is unconstitutional. The court's decision (PDF) is available.

mansa writes "Over at CNN they have an article about a company that wants to expand wireless coverge with weather balloons! I hope it's not just a bunch of hot air! "

mansa writes "Over at CNN they have an article about a company that wants to expand wireless coverge with weather balloons! I hope it's not just a bunch of hot air! "

RedArmy18 writes "A German freighter carrying 107 people became trapped when the boat got stuck in the ice. Argentina was going to launch a rescue effort but it has been caught in a dispute over the cost, the Russian govt. has also considered sending an icebreaker to free the crew."

Bistronaut writes "Reports are in today on the final arguments between the 9 State Attorneys General and Microsoft (articles from eWeek). CNN also has a summary. Spoiler: States say, "Here are our priorities for reforming MS." - MS says, "We don't need no stinkin' remedy.""

Talinom writes "This has just simply gone too far. CNN has a story that tells how the video game Doom III by id Software has won the "Best Of Show" award at the E3 convention about one year before its release. Does this mean that Duke Nukem Forever is overdue for its "Game Of The Year" award?" The awards site is E3Awards.com. I don't see how they can give an award called "Best Action Game" to something that doesn't exist as a playable game, but then again looking at the past awards I see Neverwinter Nights won in 2000... in 2001... and in 2002.

Talinom writes "This has just simply gone too far. CNN has a story that tells how the video game Doom III by id Software has won the "Best Of Show" award at the E3 convention about one year before its release. Does this mean that Duke Nukem Forever is overdue for its "Game Of The Year" award?" The awards site is E3Awards.com. I don't see how they can give an award called "Best Action Game" to something that doesn't exist as a playable game, but then again looking at the past awards I see Neverwinter Nights won in 2000... in 2001... and in 2002.

Betelgeuse writes "CNN has a story about a group of astronomers, led by William Herbst and Catrina Hamilton at the astronomy department of Wesleyan University that have detected an eclipsing disk around a young star. As someone who helped take the observations as an undergraduate at Wesleyan, it's pretty exciting to see that small telescopes can still have a place in modern astronomy. More information can be found here."

TildeMan writes "According to this article on CNN, people using Botox for the usual cosmetic reasons are also experiencing fewer headaches and using fewer painkillers. For the relatively small number of side effects, it seems that Botox is pretty good medication! (Except for the paralysis thing that makes it work.)"

TildeMan writes "According to this article on CNN, people using Botox for the usual cosmetic reasons are also experiencing fewer headaches and using fewer painkillers. For the relatively small number of side effects, it seems that Botox is pretty good medication! (Except for the paralysis thing that makes it work.)"

An anonymous reader writes "CNN and others are reporting an Associated Press story on "the revived browser war" with Mozilla paired against Microsoft. It seems the 1.0 release is creating some waves out there. " Considering most people consider the war long since over, I can't imagine this mattering much.

An anonymous reader writes "CNN and others are reporting an Associated Press story on "the revived browser war" with Mozilla paired against Microsoft. It seems the 1.0 release is creating some waves out there. " Considering most people consider the war long since over, I can't imagine this mattering much.

inblosam writes "An article at cnn.com describes how a insect-pollinated coffee bean plant actually has an increased yield, by 50 percent or more, when a killer bee does the pollination. The gene mixing allows for better gene selection, making better and bigger beans. Way to go killer bees. If the bees don't kill you, the gallons of coffee may." I guess I don't understand why it matters that it's a killer bee versus a regular bee. Maybe the killer bees travel farther, mixing up the pollen better?

The sleaze has gotten out of hand; it's time to roast a group of 20 or so companies whose profits are directly linked to creating fear in their customers, who have to keep discovering new sources of fear to improve their bottom line - or in the absence of new discoveries, keep inventing new sources of fear. Yes, it's time to take on the anti-virus software vendors.

The latest "news" to come out of the AV industry is New Virus Infects Picture Files. McAfee put up their description and made sure to issue a wide-spread press release to stir up some interest. McAfee's spokesdrone fans the flames:

• "Potentially no file type could be safe."
  
  That evolution should make computer users think twice about sending pictures or any other media over the Internet, Gullotto said.
  
  "Going forward, we may have to rethink about distributing JPGs."

Now, if you know much about computing, you may be a little suspicious of this. JPEGs are compressed image files that only contain data representing an image to be displayed, not code to be executed. A modification of that data might screw up the picture of your cat dangling from the edge of the kitchen table you like so much, but it won't turn the image into a potential virus transmitter, because the programs that display JPEGs don't read them with an eye toward executing the code. An image file is just data to be displayed. The line between "data" and "code" is a little bit fuzzy - often particular characters or a particular file can be both data and code, depending on the context of how other code handles it. Or a particular file can include both data and code separately, like a Microsoft Word file that includes data (your text) and code (some macro designed to be executed by Word when the document is opened).

But for JPEGs there's a well-designed standard, and it doesn't include executing code of any sort. If a JPEG-handling program doesn't like the data it sees, it should just stop trying to display the image, not decide to start executing code from the image. JPEGs are mostly harmless.

McAfee's claim of a virus spread through JPEGs requires one essential element: you have to have already been infected by ANOTHER virus transmitted by some actual executable code. What it comes down to is:

Once you're infected with a virus, the virus can set you up to be infected by other viruses.

No shit, Sherlock. Once you have enemy code running on your system, you're toast. A virus could alter Microsoft Word so that opening any Word document at all would erase every file on your hard drive, making every single Word document in existence a deadly threat -- to you, and to you alone. But this isn't a new virus threat of any sort. It isn't a breakthrough. It's a consequence of being infected, not a new method of being infected.

Two weeks ago, we ran a story about a cross-platform virus. Like this one, it didn't really exist in the wild. Like this one, it was mainly a PR ploy (by Symantec, in that case). But we thought it had at least some minimal technical interest as a bit of code that would run under Windows or Linux.

McAfee and Symantec (and all the other AV vendors out there) are waging a PR war to "discover" ever more news-worthy viruses to defend against. To get maximum coverage, your new virus needs to do something unique or different -- make your computer turn green, or infect something previously uninfectable, or whatever it might be. Compare this to Klez, a very basic virus similar in most ways to viruses that have gone before, which is still out there looting and pillaging tens of thousands of computers every day, but isn't ideal for AV vendors because they don't have a monopoly on the cure.

The press is catching on, to some tiny extent at least, that most virus alerts are fictitious and just designed to drum up business for the vendors. But it's far easier to repurpose a vendor's press release and call it a story than to dig into real threats that exist on the Internet, and the causes of those threats. Today, like last year and the year before and five years ago, there are major email-borne virus threats out there. (There are still old-school viruses out there too, transmitted by sneaker-net or by downloading suspicious software, but email is clearly the way to go for the discriminating virus creator.) All the real email virus threats share a few distinguishing characteristics:

• They only affect Microsoft Windows. If you aren't running Windows, you are safe.
• They're usually transmitted by email. If you know enough on your own, or you've had a half-hour class in "Email 101", you should be able to avoid executing random files received by email.
• They auto-execute in Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Express. Microsoft has finally made some progress, after many years, in reducing the vulnerability of their flagship email programs. So if you have a recent or fully-updated version of these programs, you may not be as vulnerable as people running older versions. Nevertheless, this was (and still is, since so many people don't have recent or fully-updated versions) a primary vector.

And that's really it. If you don't run Windows, you're safe. If you have basic email skills, you're safe. If you don't run Outlook, you're safe. That's the story of modern viruses, and fortunately or un-, it's a pretty boring one.

McAfee, and Symantec, and everyone else involved in the anti-virus FUD business: lay off. I mean that literally, as in, "Lay off the people you employ for the purpose of drumming up new virus threats." Lay off the public relations people you employ to say things like, "We may have to rethink about distributing JPGs." Lay off the BS. There's a real market for your product, people who (for whatever reason) are using Windows and/or Outlook, and haven't received the half-hour training course necessary to avoid viruses. You can market to them based on your fast responses to real virus threats - you don't need to manufacture any more.

great throwdini writes "CNN is carrying news (published in this week's New Scientist) that scientists have revealed the existence of a recording that may point to the presence of an unknown biological ocean-dweller nicknamed 'Bloop.' Some suggest a "sea monster" (possibly a giant squid) may be responsible for creating the ruckus. Slashdotters have commented on the discovery of giant squid and octopi in the past, so maybe the idea of a deep-sea monster isn't so far-fetched?"

great throwdini writes "CNN is carrying news (published in this week's New Scientist) that scientists have revealed the existence of a recording that may point to the presence of an unknown biological ocean-dweller nicknamed 'Bloop.' Some suggest a "sea monster" (possibly a giant squid) may be responsible for creating the ruckus. Slashdotters have commented on the discovery of giant squid and octopi in the past, so maybe the idea of a deep-sea monster isn't so far-fetched?"

MikeD83 writes "A wireless alliance has formed between the likes of Nokia, Microsoft, Intel, Walt Disney Co., and almost 200 other companies. Their mission is to develop an open standard for how wireless phones can be used on any network." Whoo-hoo! DRM for cell phones! The group's website has some more information.

TheMatt writes "CNN.com is reporting about a new conflict perhaps emerging in classrooms: calculators v. PDAs. The article talks about how TI seems to be making their latest calculator more PDA-like, while PDAs are gaining TI-like functionality. A comment on current math education is this quote from the article: "When you have circles and ellipses, there is no way you'd be able to do this without a calculator," Jarvis said. "It helps us visualize what we're doing." Were the compass and geometry uninvented?"

person-0.9a writes "To quote the first paragraph of the BBC story: "The UN is publishing an online atlas of the world's oceans to combat their unsustainable exploitation." You can read the BBC story, the CNN story, and view the atlas here." Hmmm, my DNS server doesn't like oceansatlas.org, but maybe it just hasn't updated yet.

person-0.9a writes "CNN is currently running a story about Daimler-Chrysler's fuel-cell concept car completing a trek across America. The CNN article is more about the trip, but details about the vehicle can be found here."