Slashdot Mirror

Thanks to Shacknews for pointing to a Comics2Film article mentioning that there are hidden unlock codes for the Hulk videogame stashed away in the Ang Lee-directed Hulk movie that opens this weekend. Apparently, "You may see a license plate in the movie and that will be a code to open up areas in the game." The unlockable goodies include the gray Hulk often seen in the comics, but of course, the people over at GameFAQs have found the code already - don't look if you want to play along at home.

abhikhurana writes "Wired.com has an interesting story about a recent get-together of Mac Freaks in Amsterdam. Apparently to pass the time, they amused themselves by tossing Windows PCs, making Mac porn and holding a look-alike competition to find the best Ellen Feiss look-alike, the teenage star of one of Apple's new 'Switch' commercials. I especially enjoyed Mac porn, but hey, if you are under 18, don't click the above link ;-)."

abhikhurana writes "MSNBC is running a review of Roomba, supposedly the first intelligent 'floor vac', as in a cross between vacuum cleaner and a robot. I think its especially suited for lazy bums like me. Just let it loose, sitback and enjoy. There is also a video of how it cleans the floors, which requires windows media player (what else?) to watch it. It seems that the robo cleaner can indeed do that job for which it has been designed. A related article on Techreview has slightly more details about how it works. There is also a website exclusively for Roomba."

abhikhurana writes " There is an interesting article on CNET about a new USB standard called USB On-the-Go. Apparently this new technology is an offshoot of USB2 and it can remove the limitation of the master slave operation of normal USB devices, where you need a Host PC (the Master) to talk with the peripherals (the slaves). So using this, theoretically you can print using your digital camera directly on your printer or maybe connect two PDAs together to exchange some files. One thing that the article doesn't mention though is the speed one can expect from such a connection. If its as fast as USB2 then I think it can also act as the replacement for NICs for interconnecting two PCs. But considering that many wireless technologies like bluetooth offer similar opertational capabilities,albeit they are much slower, can USB On-the-Go really be a success? "

abhikhurana writes " This article on 80211-planet.com predicts a real boom in the market for 802.11a in the coming year. An excerpt from the article: In tests in my SOHO LAN, I found that in real world conditions, 802.11a averaged four times faster than 802.11b. In addition, with its 5GHz frequency, 802.11a avoids the interference slow-downs that b must suffer with microwave ovens, high-end wireless phones, and other 802.11b networks. Also makes an interesting read for knowing about the technologies which maybe driving the wireless bandwagon in the coming years."

cbull writes: "News.com reports that 9 states and the District of Columbia will be filing an alternate remedy proposal in the Microsoft case later today. This would close some of the loopholes, better define middleware, require Microsoft to continue Office development for Macintosh and to develop a version of Office for Linux, among other things." There's also a Cringely column about the case. Somehow the phrase "Microsoft Office for Linux" has gotten people all fired up. Do you really want a version of Office for Linux? Really?

metalhed77 writes: "A new version of the Nautilus file manager (1.0.4) has made its way out to the gnome ftps. here's the article on linuxtoday. It includes various improvements which are described on linux today, these primarily consisted of bug fixes and speed ups." Good to see that the effort that went into making Nautilus friendly wasn't wasted. But if you want to browse more than your hard drive, HeUnique points out another interesting project which is not distributed with the official KDE package. It's called: KDENOX ("KDE No X" -- you can use it with X or with framebuffer and QT Embedded: here's a screenshot). The gain? You get Konqueror without KDE, with SSL, cookies, proxy, bookmarks, fonts, and without KDE itself. The executable is small (4MB), doesn't take much RAM, and it works very nicely on low end machines ... (grab it from KDE CVS). Update: 07/08 01:17 AM by T : Here's a screenshot elsewhere; first person to mirror gets a lollipop.

vrmlguy asks: "While looking for something else, I found this discussion of SourceForge. As the authors point out, a great many Open Source projects have moved to SourceForge. I would like to compare this to another dependency that turned out badly. Deja.com provided a service that many, many people had depended on for years. (See this posting for a more jaundiced view of this dependency). Suddenly and without warning, they went out of business. This left quite a few people high and dry. My question is, what would happen if (heaven forbid!) something similar happened to SourceForge? I realize that 'everybody' affilated with a given project has their own copy of the piece that they are working on, but does any one person have a copy of everything any more? How hard would it be to put Humpdy Dumpdy back together? Are there any mirrors? Are they safe? Inquiring minds want to know!" If SourceForge were to close its open ports for the final time, tomorrow, I'm sure the community would find a way to continue. With that said, however, what are ways we can mitigate the damage if it happens?

Kool Moe was the first of several to note that the BSA is sending letters to companies saying they're offering a 'software truce' until December 1st... From the letter: "If your company takes steps to be sure they're fully compliant with all software licenses, the BSA will not fine you should they find you were not compliant previous to this date. If not, all bets are off and if the BSA finds you in violation, you could "face penalities totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars." The question is of course, can the BSA just come into your office and look? Is this a scare tactic? I'm definitely no expert since almost all of my stuff is free.

Mark Programmer writes: "After several months of secrecy, Nintendo finally unveiled their new GAMECUBE system at the Spaceworld 2000 Expo in Japan. While many companies had new systems out for display, Nintendo was one of the few to have an actual playable demo involving 128 fully-rendered independent Marios shoving each other around in real-time. Check out these screenshots or (if you've got the bandwidth) download the demo movie. (By the way, whenever you see GAMECUBE in print, it's in ALL CAPS. I guess that's because Nintendo likes to PLAY IT LOUD.) *grin*"

cbull writes "ZDNet Music has an article that makes an argument that "Gnutella is Going Down in Flames". Basically, the argument is that Gnutella isn't as scalable as Napster."

scroe writes "aztcs.org in Tucson Arizona is having a guest speaker, "Special Agent Thomas Liffiton of the F.B.I.'s National Infrastructure Protection and Computer Intrusion Program" regarding "carnivore". From the site :"The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation recently came under fire for its use of a new, highly secret e-mail sniffing tool known as "Carnivore." Come hear how the Bureau intends to make use of this tool and others in its never-ending war against crime in cyberspace, and the continuing struggles among privacy, protection, and enforcement in the age of the computer-connected home." Also, Michael McNulty of Brown and Bain will be there regarding the subject of copyrights and licenses. I'd like input from the community for thoughtful comments and questions to ask, as I'm hoping there will be a Q/A. I'm trying to round up the local 2600, maybe distribute some MPAA flyers as i doubt i can resist wearing my DVD/CCA shirt."

scroe writes "aztcs.org in Tucson Arizona is having a guest speaker, "Special Agent Thomas Liffiton of the F.B.I.'s National Infrastructure Protection and Computer Intrusion Program" regarding "carnivore". From the site :"The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation recently came under fire for its use of a new, highly secret e-mail sniffing tool known as "Carnivore." Come hear how the Bureau intends to make use of this tool and others in its never-ending war against crime in cyberspace, and the continuing struggles among privacy, protection, and enforcement in the age of the computer-connected home." Also, Michael McNulty of Brown and Bain will be there regarding the subject of copyrights and licenses. I'd like input from the community for thoughtful comments and questions to ask, as I'm hoping there will be a Q/A. I'm trying to round up the local 2600, maybe distribute some MPAA flyers as i doubt i can resist wearing my DVD/CCA shirt."

Ever more information for you, the loyal photographic memory-blessed reader. That is to say, more on Linux on Macs -- and not just the sexy new ones. Evolving attitudes in Kansas. Misinformation about Survivor. And cheap, cheap boxes for your node-in-every-room home network.

Pardon me sir, are you going to finish that Apple? Marco van de Voort writes: "MkLinux now has official support for these much sold first Nubus based PowerMac generation, that is rotting away in basements. These machines make excellent X-Terms." And the same models can naturally run NetBSD, too. [Updated 6:26GMT by timothy] Reader vkulkarn corrects me here. Mea culpa, you're right -- only some of the old Nubus PowerMac models actually run NetBSD. But I bet someone, somewhere is plotting to change that.

Garage sales can now support Linux.GigsVT writes "Coollogic has released a new set-top box, this one with Linux already installed. Sounds like ripe hacking material to me. Blurb: The Internet Ready 7200 uses a National Semiconductor MediaGX processor, 16MB of flash memory instead of a hard disk, 32MB of RAM and has the ability to connect to the Internet via DSL, Ethernet or a modem. It uses a TV instead of a monitor and comes with Netscape's Web browser." And MrRobahtsu writes "Want a 64MB diskless 200MHz Linux box cheap? Try egghead. With IDE, USB, 10/100 ethernet, and Linux and Netscape in flash ram, it looks pretty cool. Even says "can be upgraded to a pc." Not bad for $129."

Toto, I don't think we're in the Pleistocene anymore! Claudius writes: "This cnn.com article reports that Kansas voters now support the teaching of evolution in their public schools, as evidenced by recent election results. They have voted to remove two incumbents to the Kansas Board of Education who have supported standards diminishing the importance of evolution, and a third, anti-evolution candidate was unable to defeat an opponent who opposes the current standards. The issue is still far from settled, however, since five of the ten seats on the board remain to be filled in November." For a refresher on the sticky state of evolution in Kansas education, see Hemos' story on it from a while ago.

Ha ha fooled ya good. TeacherReviews.com writes "Gervase just got voted off the Survivor island, meaning that RealWorldBlows discussed in a past story produced a false result and the actual winner of Survivor is still unknown." True enough. What was going through the collective CBS head when they failed to follow the directive of their own Web site?!

Still horrifying after all these days. chaidawg writes: "According to this article in the New York Times (free registration req.), author Stephen King's experiment with payment for e-publishing seems to be working. After the first of three promised chapters he has made back all but $10,000 of the more than $100,000 he spent on advertising." This still doesn't mean Jamie is wrong -- yet.

Kirch asks: " Company XYZ Encryption Technologies creates an encryption package (read anti-piracy) that will encrypt your data (read IP) for you and can only be read through licenced decrypted produced by XYZ. Now, the encryption used is very, very weak. It 'encrypts' by offsetting every bit by one and then 'decrypts' by offsetting every bit again by one. Or yet even better 'encrypts' everything by the Pig Latin method. Now the encryption is kept secret by XYZ. Users use this assuming they are protected by the encryption technology touted by XYZ. A semi smart user looks at the encrypted data and says 'Oh Look it's Pig Latin!' The user posts this on forums, makes a Web page exposing XYZ for using Pig Latin and writes a DePigLatin program. Who is liable here? The company, for producing a product with weak encryption, or the user for posting the DePigLatin program?" Sound familiar? It should, but not necessarily for the reason you expect.

ESRI makes a product called ArcView. Arcview has a feature that allows developers to customize it with Avenue. Developers can also encrypt their scripts so they can sell them to users. Dr. William Huber found out a way to decrypt the "encrypted" scripts using the Avenue scripting language. You'll find his findings here. It seems that he stumbled upon this a year ago. Again, who's at fault? ESRI or Dr. Huber? You'll notice he hasn't actually given out the code but does give out a few hints to those who know Avenue.

My limited understanding of the DMCA is that it is a crime to circumvent anti-piracy measures built into most commercial software. This would make the user a criminal for circumventing an anti-piracy measure. There is no provision saying, well if it's weak, then it's OK. So, according to the DMCA, was circumventing the XYZ Pig Latin Encryption technology a crime?"

The similarities to DeCSS should probably come as no surprise to you all at this point. What is a consumer to do when the very laws that are designed to ultimately protect us (as the software publishers keep saying) can be used as a bludgeon to silence the act of discovering what can and should be considered design flaws? Sure the DMCA protects someone, but the answer most assuredly isn't 'us' in any way shape or form.Of course, that last bit shouldn't come as any surprise to you, either.

Update: 07/13 12:43 AM by C :Some information for those of you who are still looking for ammunition against the DMCA: here's a lengthy paper from Pamela Samuelson, a professor at UC Berkeley, and another article from Openlaw . Finally, this bit from Michael Sims: "Sachems, grandmothers, and hackers of all ages have obtained a New York City Official Media Event Permit to peacefully assemble for the redress of wrongs:

Monday 17 July 2000
10:30 am to 5:00 pm
Court Yard of the Federal Court
500 Pearl Street"
(Manhattan, New York City, obviously)

Also, Martin Garbus (the famous lawyer who's representing the DVD defense) will be speaking at H2K, the hacker's conference this weekend. More precisely, he's speaking this Friday at 3PM at the Hotel Pennsylvania (you can go to Hope.Net for more info)."

cbull writes: "Yahoo! has an article that indicates the judge in the Microsoft case thinks splitting Microsoft into three companies is attractive to him. This is based on a friend-of-the-court brief filed by the Computer and Communications Industry Association and Software and Information Industry Association." And mfinke wrote: "Just saw the CNN article here about Judge Jackson's ruling that DOJ's proposal to split the company will still be considered when he rules. " Finally, mizhi pointed out this ZDNet coverage of the proceedings, saying "Basically, the government says that instead of splitting Microsoft into an operating system company and applications company, it should also split it into a third independent company for Internet Explorer."

Shibumi writes: " Penthouse.com is starting to pursue legal action against persons who post material to Usenet from their pay site." At least they're going after the poster and not the usenet servers.

johnathan spectre wrote in to tell us about these really cool plasma shoelaces. plasticPaddy wrote in to tell us about SkyBird, a nifty remote-control ornithopter. Fire up the flux capacitor, because feebeling wrote in about this WWW guide, circa 1993. seizer told us about some crazy guy TCP/IP tunneling through E-mail: now that's dedication. Speaking of crazy people, Green Monkey scared me with his submission, a Web site devoted to Pokémon butts. From the self-referential bucket, the Webby Awards have nominated Slashdot in the 'Community' and 'Print and Zines' categories. Go Vote and we get some trophy or something. _damnit_ wrote in with a nice little piece on the Ides of March. In case you're in the greater Boston area, Rob 'CmdrTaco' Malda will be speaking at the Geek Pride Festival at the end of the month.

??? writes "It would appear that the Mercury is retracting its earlier story posted here. In a recently posted story, both the Chinese government and Microsoft deny the veracity of the story. The interviewed Chinese government spokesperson did however indicate that they are encouraging the use of domestically produced software. " Some of the Reuters stories seem to indicate that China has banned Win2k in critical government/infrastructure situations - but I can't find confirmation.

Shadarr asks: " We would like to be able to have one machine and put each version of Windows (95, 98, and NT) on a separate partition on the hard drive, then use a boot loader to pick which one to start each time. This would probably not be that difficult to set up. My worry is that every time we reformat a partition and reinstall Windows, it will over-write the master boot record and we will have to re-install and configure the boot loader. Is there a way to protect the MBR, and if not what would be the easiest way to reinstall the boot loader? " Is NT's boot loader up to the task, or would something similar to System Commander be the answer? Even with NT?

Base_16 writes "Panoramix, a new graphical installation for linux-mandrake, was released today. It nicely integrates the new Diskdrake partitioning tool with the rest of the installation to make setting up linux much easier. Go here to get more information. "

redbird writes "According to this article, the FBI is temporarily (although they have a different meaning for that word) blocking satellite phones that would allow world wide wireless service because such communications are difficult to tap."

Hexdancer wrote to us with the latest interview at theLinux MusicStation with Dev Mazumdar, co-founder (with Hannu, the guy who wrote the original OSS kernel sound drivers) of 4Front Technologies the commercial Linux/Unix sound driver guys. He's talking about the future of XMMS, and trying to make sound w/XMMS a killer app for Mac/Windows people, as well as the problems with working with some of the high end sound cards.

Hexdancer wrote to us with the latest interview at theLinux MusicStation with Dev Mazumdar, co-founder (with Hannu, the guy who wrote the original OSS kernel sound drivers) of 4Front Technologies the commercial Linux/Unix sound driver guys. He's talking about the future of XMMS, and trying to make sound w/XMMS a killer app for Mac/Windows people, as well as the problems with working with some of the high end sound cards.

chris wrote in to tell us that Registration for the 3^rd Annual Atlanta Linux Showcase is open. First 100 registrations get an OS-Wars T-Shirt (I have one, they rock) brazilian brain sent us an English Translation of an Interview with Alfredo Kojima of WindowMaker fame. Scott wrote in to tell us that the July issue of Daemon News is online and Jim wrote in to tell us that the July issue of The FreeBSD 'zine is out too. geophile wrote in to tell us that Propoganda 10 is out. More excellent background images to consume your free RAM. Very yum. erios23 notified us of a new toy on jwz's webpage. BluBall sent us a Slashdot reference in Salon's Silicon Funnies. Spoofs Linux and Slashdot and even me a bit I guess (well, my name anyway). And finally chrisd (who may be biased on this one) wrote in to say that VA is one of the 10 best companies to work for (According to ZD) ranking amongst Replay, Nokia and Novell. I suspect that Nerf has something to do with it.

Hexdancer writes "Linux MusicStation currently has an interview with Jaroslav Kysela from the ALSA sound drivers project as well as some words from the author of SLab (one of the two free HDD recording systems for Linux)"

Marcus Zozuk writes "It seems Sensar, a biometrics security firm, has snagged a deal with Citicorp and NCR (ATM Makers) to supply Iris Scanners for use on ATM's. No more worries about forgetting your PIN." Anyone see Demolition Man? Seriously though, I'm glad. Soon I won't even need to carry a wallet anymore. Course, soon I won't need to go outside anymore either.