Slashdot Mirror

necro81 writes "David Pauly at Bloomberg has written a piece that asks 'Does Apple Inc. Have a Future Without Steve Jobs?' He writes in the context of Jobs' latest success in launching the iPhone, set against the backdrop of stock backdating troubles. In Pauly's worst-case-scenario, the SEC prosecutes Apple, and the board is forced to oust Jobs.Even without resorting to such scenarios, it's an interesting question to ask the fanboys and detractors out there: could Apple succeed and continue to innovative without Jobs at the helm?"

necro81 writes "The NYTimes' widely read technology columnist, David Pogue, has devoted his weekly product review to Microsoft's Zune. He does an even-handed job of describing what Zune has over the iPod, as well as some product-related letdowns." From the article: "Competition is good and all. But what, exactly, is the point of the Zune? It seems like an awful lot of duplication — in a bigger, heavier form with fewer features — just to indulge Microsoft's 'we want some o' that' envy. Wireless sharing is the one big new idea — and if the public seems to respond, Apple could always add that to the iPod."

pescatello writes "Here's a CNET story describing the disappearance of the internet appliances from the market. The latest is the AOL/Gateway/Transmeta Internet Appliance. While it won Comdex's Best in Show in 2000, it hasn't been pushed by either AOL or Gateway, and is now unavailable anywhere. " Meanwhile, my Audrey came in yesterday.

Scott Silver asks: "I want to sell some software that uses SSL for communication with a web server. I would like to use openssl, in fact, any ssl implementation. What legal/contractual hoops do I have to jump through to release the product in the US and outside of the US. Am I restricted to using the RSA ciphers in the US? If not then I can use Blowfish or the like and avoid patent royalties. If not how much will this cost? What specific restrictions do I need to make for downloading the software?" We've touched on this a bit when we discussed distributing encryption a while back, but that conversation really didn't take off. Here's hoping more useful information comes out with a less generic subject.

tilly sent us a really interesting little article on Why O'Reily is Better written from the perspective of one of their authors. Rahga wrote in to comment that the new KDE Mascot Looks like Playstation's "Croc". He's got a little poll. I vote no, but its close. tilly wrote in to note that Sunday's User Friendly is funny- it features a the ultimate choice. And for the best Star Wars quickie today, Sharkey sent us a link to this picture. Just look at it. Somewhat related is this one from an Anonymous reader: The Dark Redemption which is a 26 minute short film being directed in Australia- it takes place 2 days before the beginning of Star Wars, A New Hope and is apparently being done with permission of Lucas. gwendolin wrote in to ask the ultimate question: Do you dare to eat pop rocks and drink pepsi at the same time? This is wierd stuff (both the page, and the fact that a female with a cool homepage submitted a story!) Some Slashdot Sightings: VinceV wrote in to say that Slashdot apparently is mentioned in the printed manual for Caldera OpenLinux 2.2. cymen wrote in to tell us that Slashdot appeared in the Mit Technology Review. No URL, but someone sent me a scan (that I can't post for they fear the Slashdot effect) but its pretty cool. And finally, for some good old fashioned porn parody, gelbardn sent us Geek Erortica which features live strip shows of Ms. G3 and Ms. Dell. (No its not actually dirty, but its quite amusing).

tilly sent us a really interesting little article on Why O'Reily is Better written from the perspective of one of their authors. Rahga wrote in to comment that the new KDE Mascot Looks like Playstation's "Croc". He's got a little poll. I vote no, but its close. tilly wrote in to note that Sunday's User Friendly is funny- it features a the ultimate choice. And for the best Star Wars quickie today, Sharkey sent us a link to this picture. Just look at it. Somewhat related is this one from an Anonymous reader: The Dark Redemption which is a 26 minute short film being directed in Australia- it takes place 2 days before the beginning of Star Wars, A New Hope and is apparently being done with permission of Lucas. gwendolin wrote in to ask the ultimate question: Do you dare to eat pop rocks and drink pepsi at the same time? This is wierd stuff (both the page, and the fact that a female with a cool homepage submitted a story!) Some Slashdot Sightings: VinceV wrote in to say that Slashdot apparently is mentioned in the printed manual for Caldera OpenLinux 2.2. cymen wrote in to tell us that Slashdot appeared in the Mit Technology Review. No URL, but someone sent me a scan (that I can't post for they fear the Slashdot effect) but its pretty cool. And finally, for some good old fashioned porn parody, gelbardn sent us Geek Erortica which features live strip shows of Ms. G3 and Ms. Dell. (No its not actually dirty, but its quite amusing).

Ben Tilly wrote in to write an interesting report on the NetWinders, and the fact that the hardware might be open sourced. I've now heard this rumor from 3 seperate sources, and tho I can't confirm it, it sounds cool. God I want one of those things- especially if the video stuff works under Linux. Anyway, hit the link to read Ben's notes on the subject. Ben writes:

1. The Netwinder is a lot cooler than I thought
2. Corel decided to open-source the internal schematics about 10 days ago
3. Both the engineer and suit said they didn't mind the rumor leaking

So here it is. *Every* netwinder comes with 2 Ethernet ports, EE/ECP port, serial port, IrDA capability, parallel port support, microphone/speaker, duplex stereo in/out, NTSC/PAL video in/out etc. They don't know their target market, so it has built-in hardware support to be turned into a server, router, answering machine/fax, video conferencing (web TV?), etc. Or all at the same time. On a 12V battery. Thinking of getting one? Do it now. Their sales are in the hundreds. They are still trying to find a market. Get one, play with it, show it to friends, and get back to Corel on how to market it. They could really use the support. (Tip. Early next year they will be shipping clusters of these things for high-availability web-servers, Beowulf, etc.) ( CT:San showed me a clustered netwinder cluster at ALS- pretty sweet. And it runs cool so they can slap a ton of them together. And each motherboard talks to the others over SCSI.)

Now for the big news. To try to get mindshare for the hardware platform, they will be making the complete schematics to the daughterboard open source. What they will not open up is the mother-board, or about 20k of code in their boot-loader. (*All* of the rest of their code for this has been open-sourced already.) As Pat said, "If you want to build a clone of the Netwinder we will tell you what we have, who we got it from, and give you phone numbers".

No details on licenses, when official word comes, etc.

CT:Video in/out and full duplex sound? How about these things as a low end video conferencing solution? They make them with decent sized harddrives- how about a CD-ROM drive and mp3 encoder and selling them as an alternative to your stereo? They run on next to no juice, slap on an LCD screen and make laptops. I've heard a lot of people rave about the StrongARM stuff, this thing has a ton of potential. What do you guys think?