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Personally, I think "funny" should definitely count to positive karma. Quite often, especially in the terser and deeper discussions, someone is needed to prick other people's bubbles, or to otherwise alleviate the tension.

If someone's just being cruel, or taking cheap shots, then maybe they shouldn't be given a higher rating. Or maybe they should -- isn't that why we have moderators?

Being funny has its place, along with being informative, or being insightful, in making /. an interesting place to be. Or don't you agree that being funny is important? :)

Here's the LinCity URL:
http://www.floot.demon.co.uk/lincity.html

I agree, it totally rocks! It's probably the best Linux game there is... A word to the wise though. It's not a SimCity clone, despite the similarity of name, so don't approach it as one. It's rather different, despite sharing the same overall premise.

I love SimCity, but I honestly have to say that I like this one better. It's got a few quirks to it that give it a lot of character (I think), as well as making gameplay much more interesting.

Well, that's my plug anyway!

(No, I am not connected in any way with the people who made LinCity. I just love the game.)
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- Sean

The physically most interesting primes correspond to primes near prime powers of two: at this stage not possible to explain why electron corresponds to Mersenne prime M_127 or intermediate gauge bosons correspond to M_89.

What does this mean? Well, aside from the fact that 89 is a bit more awkward for my NVM theory than I might like, I would suggest it means that there is less of a conflict between "computer science" and the study of nature than people might otherwise believe.

The core laws of von Neumann's quantum logic (e.g.: S' = T**-1 S T ) are presented by von Neumann as being based on a great deal of "physics". However, they have been shown by Tom Etter of the Alternative Natural Philosophy Association as being theorems of the relational calculus that have important engineering ramifications for quantum computing!

I don't know about you, but this is the sort of result that makes me glad I work with computers -- well -- at least glad that I've been investigating relational semantics as the proper foundation for programming environments since the early 80's rather than committing Occam's Chainsaw Massacre.

Second, every copy of Lotus Notes carries an explicit NSA backdoor, called the "Cryptographic Differential Work Factor". Essentially the point is that part of every secret key is encrypted with the NSA's public key, so where we would have to brute-force 128 bits to get in, they have to brute force only 40. So there's precedent; it's not as implausible as some people here seem to think. It may not be a back door in the simplistic way some people are thinking of, though.

The algorithm the guy used to find the key is documented in Adi Shamir and Nicko van Somoeren's paper "Playing Hide and Seek with Stored Keys" - you can find a link to the paper here alongside my implementation of the technique described.
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However, the point is moot, unless someone can provide an economical solution by September 2000.

You enumerated a few, the ones I've heard most about; but these and many, many (, many, many) more are listed on J.R. Stockton's ``Critical Dates'' site... all sorts of critical dates, mostly relating to rollover dates of various sorts, and mostly clustering around this era (of course). He appears to have updated it just this week, too.

There's the uCLinux and the Turbo Tortise to name a couple.

So I'll be skeptical of this claim unless I see some hard evidence.

So I'll be skeptical of this claim unless I see some hard evidence.

There are some tanks for sale at here. Admittedly, the ad is a bit sketchy but it was the first one I found and I didn't want to spend more than a couple of minutes looking.

If you follow the URL back up, you will find that there are all sorts of interesting military vehicles for sale there including some armored cars.

BTW: a friend of mine used to own a White half-track and while a half-track is a long way from a tank, it can go pretty much where you want in traffic! :-) Yes, it had the rubberized tracks for use on asphalt.

Actually, I see the same site as above has a White half-track for sale here. This one only has "4-50 cal repo machine guns" but assuming "repo" means "reproduction", you could get real machine guns if you wanted!

There are some tanks for sale at here. Admittedly, the ad is a bit sketchy but it was the first one I found and I didn't want to spend more than a couple of minutes looking.

If you follow the URL back up, you will find that there are all sorts of interesting military vehicles for sale there including some armored cars.

BTW: a friend of mine used to own a White half-track and while a half-track is a long way from a tank, it can go pretty much where you want in traffic! :-) Yes, it had the rubberized tracks for use on asphalt.

Actually, I see the same site as above has a White half-track for sale here. This one only has "4-50 cal repo machine guns" but assuming "repo" means "reproduction", you could get real machine guns if you wanted!

(Wow, my question actually got posted!)

Yes, i heard about that, but its far from where I would need it to be, at the moment anyway.

Since asking slashdot, I discovered a neet little gem, its not quite exacly, what i was looking for, but it is close, you can find it here, It allows you to transfer files between systems. Which would at least allow me to get some work done, but heres a question, what formats do Psion's Spreadsheet/Wordprocessor/everything else use? are they standard formats?

BTW if NT is so ludicrously insecure, how come www.bbc.co.uk has never been cracked ? They seem to use IIS as well as NT ...

b) No. Apart from being first, its not very good. For a detailed critique from someone with more literary background than myself, look here.

Last I checked, the source for ADOM wasn't available, so you're out of luck if you run a UN*X other than GNU/Linux, I guess. (although the author has stated he will release the source when he reaches version 1)

Roguelike News has a good set of links for Nethack, Angband, Omega, and the rest of the crew.

On the subject of old classics (although this from the world of micros, AFAIK)... anyone recognise my nick? :-)

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Repton.

Email isn't anonymous to begin with, unless you're bouncing through one or more anonymous servers. All this service does is provide an easier way to track down the server that originated the crap and look up publicly available info on that person. Kinda like looking at the postmark on a letter and finding contact info for the postmaster in that town.

Personally, I have blackmail set up. If a DNS check on the host name provided with EHLO fails, if a DNS check on the domain the from: line has fails, or if the To: address == From: address, I don't see the email. Occasionally, a valid email bounces. More often, it just means I don't have to deal with most of the UCE I get sent. And I post to Usenet with my real address, too.

This particular site is just using common or garden analogue scanners. American/Canadian mobiles are still analogue (can you imagine that! No international roaming, loads of static- it must be like still living in the 80's).

If US/CA citizens are stupid enough to broadcast their private conversations on an open channel, that's their look out. They can have all the laws they like but it doesn't change the fact that analogue transmissions are no more private than standing on top of a hill and shouting (and what kind of idiot would draft a law that makes it illegal to own a pair of ears?).

I too live near Cheltenham and I take your point about GCHQ. However if GCHQ have a need to listen in to anything, no matter how it is transmitted or encrypted, they will. GSM or GPO, PCN or PGP it makes no difference. The most obvious way of doing this is by being present at the time of encryption or decryption, or by stealing the key physically, NOT by doing the maths. That's why we still pay our spies- to break in to places, plant bugs, and steal things.

The question is... do they WANT to be listening in to your or my lives? The answer I'm afraid is that they have loads more important things to do.

I know enough people there to know that, on the whole, they're an okay bunch of people. Sure there must be more than a few maneovolent bad apples but on the whole, they're good guys.

If you are going to worry about people hacking GSM or PCN then you are going to go very, very mad.

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This particular site is just using common or garden analogue scanners. American/Canadian mobiles are still analogue (can you imagine that! No international roaming, loads of static- it must be like still living in the 80's).

If US/CA citizens are stupid enough to broadcast their private conversations on an open channel, that's their look out. They can have all the laws they like but it doesn't change the fact that analogue transmissions are no more private than standing on top of a hill and shouting (and what kind of idiot would draft a law that makes it illegal to own a pair of ears?).

I too live near Cheltenham and I take your point about GCHQ. However if GCHQ have a need to listen in to anything, no matter how it is transmitted or encrypted, they will. GSM or GPO, PCN or PGP it makes no difference. The most obvious way of doing this is by being present at the time of encryption or decryption, or by stealing the key physically, NOT by doing the maths. That's why we still pay our spies- to break in to places, plant bugs, and steal things.

The question is... do they WANT to be listening in to your or my lives? The answer I'm afraid is that they have loads more important things to do.

I know enough people there to know that, on the whole, they're an okay bunch of people. Sure there must be more than a few maneovolent bad apples but on the whole, they're good guys.

If you are going to worry about people hacking GSM or PCN then you are going to go very, very mad.

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Besides, there's still nowhere to go, and no point in going there.

My God, are you really that unimaginative? Can you really not see the potential of manned space exploration and colonization? If nothing else, the energy and raw materials mean we'll eventually be able to build things in space without having to "shuttle" everything up from the Earth's surface.
Try looking at this.

And as far as spending millions on space:

The millions get spent on Earth - we don't stuff hundred-dollar bills in a cannon and shoot them into the sun.

This country spends much more money on lipstick than it does on Space exploration.

Solar Power Satellites, anyone?

Our eggs are in one basket, Earth. Can you say "Single Point Failure" ?

I live in what is called a "conservation area" which forms part of a rural area of the UK called the Cotswolds. Think Agatha Christie murder mysteries or Jeeves and Wooster and you've about pictured my neighbourhood ( We Are Here). This means:

• Telephone bandwidth limited to 33.6kbps. No "Home Highway" (lo-cost ISDN), in fact no ISDN at all.
• I am not allowed to put a satellite dish on my house nor in my garden.
• The roof tiles must remain as clay thus preventing me from putting a dish in the loft (clay blocks signals).
• I'm not anywhere near a town with cable. In fact not anywhere near a town at all.
• Due to low population my area is "low priority" for digital terrestrial TV (digital multichannel TV through an arial).

Now what I want to know is why people in towns need high bandwidth. If you want to go shopping, chat with friends, or watch movies, you just go to the mall, the pub or the cinema, right? I can't do this without having to drive a heck of a long way first.

So I would be prepared to pay MORE for high bandwidth. It would save me money (travel).

Rural areas have the greatest need for bandwidth- and are prepared to pay more- yet where is the bandwidth the worst? Rural areas, of course. And then we get hit for petrol (gas) tax because we use our cars more! WTF???

Now what I really want is a 512kbps satellite downfeed which I could then redistribute along our row of cottages using a LAN (I already have a home LAN).

Thankfully I don't live in the USA so at least I have excellent digital mobile 'phone reception with free email to my handset. Nice.

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I live in what is called a "conservation area" which forms part of a rural area of the UK called the Cotswolds. Think Agatha Christie murder mysteries or Jeeves and Wooster and you've about pictured my neighbourhood ( We Are Here). This means:

• Telephone bandwidth limited to 33.6kbps. No "Home Highway" (lo-cost ISDN), in fact no ISDN at all.
• I am not allowed to put a satellite dish on my house nor in my garden.
• The roof tiles must remain as clay thus preventing me from putting a dish in the loft (clay blocks signals).
• I'm not anywhere near a town with cable. In fact not anywhere near a town at all.
• Due to low population my area is "low priority" for digital terrestrial TV (digital multichannel TV through an arial).

Now what I want to know is why people in towns need high bandwidth. If you want to go shopping, chat with friends, or watch movies, you just go to the mall, the pub or the cinema, right? I can't do this without having to drive a heck of a long way first.

So I would be prepared to pay MORE for high bandwidth. It would save me money (travel).

Rural areas have the greatest need for bandwidth- and are prepared to pay more- yet where is the bandwidth the worst? Rural areas, of course. And then we get hit for petrol (gas) tax because we use our cars more! WTF???

Now what I really want is a 512kbps satellite downfeed which I could then redistribute along our row of cottages using a LAN (I already have a home LAN).

Thankfully I don't live in the USA so at least I have excellent digital mobile 'phone reception with free email to my handset. Nice.

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I'd give it a try. Netscape's crashed on me for the third time today. I could do with another well-featured browser on Linux.

PS, not AC, just forgotten my login/password.
Rachel

Having been a (and still am, though no longer practicing) state-licensed projectionist and worked in more than one theater within the last 5 years, I felt I had to comment... Sorry in advance for the long rant.

A standard 35mm print of a movie costs the studio about $3000. If you add in lab time, transportation, and lost revenue for a stolen print (usually the distributor takes 80% of the ticket sale price for the first 2 or more weeks, with reducing percentages as the run gets longer), then maybe a 35mm print would be worth $60k.

And a 70mm print these days no longer costs the $10k+, and isn't much more expensive than a 35mm film to print. The extra $6k was for the magnetic striping for the soundtrack. Most 70mm prints struck these days (minus 1996's Hamlet) are 70mm DTS prints, which has the same optical soundtrack sync to the DTS CD as a 35mm print.

As far as breaking into a projection booth, it's scarily usually quite easy. I've had to shoo away a number of kids who took a wrong turn going out the back-of-theater exit doors after a show, and ended out in the booth... (Usually we'd just forget to lock the door from the outside.) here in MA, it's actually illegal to have the door locked during showtimes (throwback to the days of nitrate (burns VERY easily) film).

If the booth consists of a large multiplex (usually one projectionist/manager for a booth), one could enter the far end of the (noisy with projectors running) booth, and the projectionist on the other end wouldn't hear you. If the booth is for a small theater, chances are that it's a manager/projectionist, who only enters the booth if there is a reported problem, or to thread or start a film, which leaves the booth unattended for quite some time.

Let me point out here that film reels, trailers (previews), and frames (sometimes called cells on eBay) are all the property of the studio (per the legal stuff at the end of the credits), not the theater or any single person, and MANY people have been successfully sued by studios to reclaim ownership.

Oh, and as for the amount of film stolen... A "reel" could be any of a number of things. If it was a shipping reel, then it could either be a 2000 ft. reel (about 17-23 min. of film), or a ELR (Extended Length Reel), which is 6000 ft. of film (approx. 1/2 the movie).

If the theater is using a dual-projection setup (not likely at a commercial chain multiplex), then the reel could be any of a 2K, 4K, or 6K ft. reels.

Chances are that the theater had the film mounted up on a platter (plays sort of like an 8-track), in one BIG reel for the entire movie. (all of the shipping reels taped together) with clamps or some form of binding wire/rope/string, the whole movie can be easily transported by 2 people, 1 if strong enough (and slung over the shoulder like a tire).

of course, knowing how journalists tend to keep things minimalized so that they don't confuse the public, they just used "reel," which could mean a lot of things.

unfortunately, I do not remember just how much film weighs, only that it is heavy... (when in shipping canisters, even heavier...)

BTW: a good site for techincal information regarding film projection is the rec.arts.movies.tech FAQ.

Left out the www bit in the URL


Please read my article on the future of artists and MP3 here. Cheers. Feeedback appreciated.

Please read my article on the future of artists and MP3 here. Cheers. Feeedback appreciated.

My site contains screenshots of PC GEM (as opposed to Atari GEM).

ihatestarwars.com is pretty foolish, but there's a slightly similar thing here which I thought was hysterical. This one is of course tongue-in-cheek - I doubt anyone who could get seriously worked up about the evils of Star Wars would have the wit to argue their case well.

Nah.. they should copy something a bit more like the Acorn Risc PC:

This great machine had a polycarbonate slice-based system, where if you ran out of space in the machine, you just took the top panel off, added another slice, and put the top panel back on.

They weren't very pretty as consumer devices, but a cool concept... Check these ones out -- a workstation with a built-in pizza oven and kitchen sink!

It's Easter Sunday (Happy Easter to all! He is risen indeed, etc, etc...), a very special day to some people. So it's interesting to see all the offended reactions at a bunch of performance artists who dare to poke some fun at what is apparently the Great Y*hw*h of the West -- El Capitalismo!

Browse through the site. Read the articles and the press clippings. Enjoy! The best humor often contains a grain or two of truth. (I also recommend Petreley's April Fools column, if you haven't seen it yet).

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Have you compiled sound card support into the kernel? How about trying the linuxpnp stuff? That brought my card to life, although I still need to get some tools running under Enlightenment for it to be fully running. Check out PNP Tools. I added them to my startup scripts, and the card is alive now. Now I just need a volume control... (ouch!) I'm still using 2.0.36, so unless 2.2.x has the PNP init stuff built in this ought to work.

I forgot to add the story submission the following question: What is the legality of US Patents outside the US? Answers on a postcard...

James Green

I'm not familiar with the status of the Python/Qt bindings or their quality, though, with the QPL finally looking like a usable licence, I probably should.

Linux is a slowly emerging beast of an OS. It's long-term development cycle is very long indeed when compared to the commercial projects on the Windows platform, but this is applauded as this slow turn-around is, under the microscope, merely testing code down at bare-bones level and getting it right.

The Suits are coming. No doubt about that. With them comes development money to pay for hardware support. Big names are seeing that corporate clients are asking about Linux and this is drawing more and more server software and hardware to the Linux community. Should we be worried about this? I see no reason yet. The Suites know, or will do shortly, that proprietary software will be met by angry mobs in the community, and that will have all but the hardcore running away into hiding until they GPL their work.

Linux is a tough industry to be in. Paradoxically, it's proprietary, and the suits are going to have to change their business models for this industry, but they can do it.

Right now we can see that Linux exists only in server form for the commericially-interested. Proven by Red Hat's investments and big-league products. As the likes of KDE and GNOME develop and mature we will see more Linux Desktops in our homes and places of work, but not yet. Wait until you see the posters in the shop windows advertising Red Hat 7.x and Linux competing evenly on the shelves of your local bookshop; wait until Linux is behind the '/' after Windows 2000 in the ad listings for PCs.

We're getting there

James Green

I've got a feeling this could blow up in MS's face. CSS is positioned by the W3C (note the copyright notice at the bottom of the spec's cover.html page) as the future of web-page presentation. This makes a whole lot of people stand up and take notice; how many web developer websites out there have articles on it? How may people are already using it in their own sites? How many software packages use it in both developmental and rendering modes? IMO This is too big for Microsot to handle - the public are going to come down hard of them this time.

Q: What is the status of U.S. Patents Internationally? Do they apply in other countries?

What's next? Let's narrow it down - what Internet technologies *haven't* been patented yet? Is Linux patented? Can it be? What about browser itself? What about all the RFCs?
What will the W3C do now???

James Green

I assume you didn't see the Mark Thomas Comedy Product the other night?

I did, comedy with attitude. Anyway Channel 4 seem to think that this is the official MTCP site. (more info, 'orrible presentation), one for the bookmarks i'd say.

cleminan.

I try to avoid the practice of obfuscating or protecting my e-mail address, on the grounds that there are better ways to protect yourself from spam. Hiding your e-mail address is just dodging the main issue. No matter how much you hide it, they will get your address. You'll have to put up sooner or later.

Here's what I do to avoid e-mail spam. I think these steps work rather well. My e-mail address is publicized on slashdot, my home page, Usenet archives, and various other places, and yet I get very little spam (once a month at most, never more than once from the same place).

1. Subscribe to the Realtime Blackhole List to dodge known spam hosts.
2. Use the Spam Bouncer to filter out all the spam that the author of the program knows about (which is quite a lot; 200 kb of filters at last count), and send simulated bounce messages back to the spammers.
3. Run blackmail over sendmail to block relays and allow for additional manual filtering (e.g. if Netscape, Microsoft, or some loser sends me unwanted mail, they're not ever mailing me again :)

OS/2, Mac, Win95; hell no. That's the MUI 2.3 widget set for the Amiga, down to the font and pixel. Check out aMozilla for the new screenshots...