Slashdot Mirror

New submitter squideatingdough writes "On InfoWorld, Robert X. Cringely covers a recent case of a blogger accused of libel and defamation. The federal judge ruled that journalists warrant more protection from libel suits than bloggers, but it is obvious from the article that bloggers' rights can vary by state, depending on the 'shield laws' in force." Reader blindseer adds a link to this AP article on the case, and asks "If the government can define who is part of the press, and therefore gets First Amendment protections, then where does that place the freedom of the press?" The slippery slope is a steep one; even some relatively open societies require licensure for journalists (visiting ones included) with predictable results. (And the Labour Party would like to see a similar system in the UK.)

blakieto writes "Mozilla has the Prism project, which turned into Chromeless, which seems to have died [Note: last update was May 31]. I'm seeking a no-interface-what-so-ever cross-platform browser for use as a 'user interface host' to a self-hosted web app. Slight background: I've a professional market web app, with a large portion of the customer base unable to access public Internet connections. So, I want to make a version of my product self-hosted, with the web server and web app and everything necessary to run the web app locally installed on a user's machine. I have everything except a chromeless browser. Oh, and my customers are local police & highway patrol type organizations, most likely running an aged Windows box (probably IE6, too)."

LostCluster writes "For those in Comcast territory, a popular way to get around Comcast's 250 GB monthly cap was to sign up for EarthLink Powered by Comcast Service, where there was no cap. Forget about that.... Earthlink just posted an FAQ explaining that Comcast will enforce the cap against Earthlink customers starting July 1."

bitrex writes "Modern Mechanix recently ran a reprint of a 1934 article describing the problem of offshore pirate radio stations broadcasting advertisements and drowning out local, licensed radio programs. 'The primary purpose of the unlicensed broadcast station was to advertise the gambling, liquor, and other dubious pleasure activities of the ship upon which it was built ... they found other sundry rackets, such as a fortune telling program ... After numerous unsuccessful attempts of a local nature, the floating broadcasting establishment was silenced, but only after the state department at Washington, D. C, had made diplomatic representations which forced a Central American country to cancel the ship's registry.' The article also has a great artist's conception of what might be called a machine age 'data haven' bobbing in international waters in the Gulf of Mexico."

jlbrown writes "In a new benchmarking paper, MIT professor Mike Stonebraker and colleagues demonstrate that specialized databases can have dramatic performance advantages over traditional databases (PDF) in four areas: text processing, data warehousing, stream processing, and scientific and intelligence applications. The advantage can be a factor of 10 or higher. The paper includes some interesting 'apples to apples' performance comparisons between commercial implementations of specialized architectures and relational databases in two areas: data warehousing and stream processing." From the paper: "A single code line will succeed whenever the intended customer base is reasonably uniform in their feature and query requirements. One can easily argue this uniformity for business data processing. However, in the last quarter century, a collection of new markets with new requirements has arisen. In addition, the relentless advance of technology has a tendency to change the optimization tactics from time to time."

Joshua Flory writes, "In response to the story about Earthlink and their version of 'Site Finder', I learned today that Earthlink has provided alternate DNS servers that will remain outside of their 'dead DNS' service. However, this is a completely unsupported service, which begs the question, WHY? Everyone can gain access to public DNS servers, or create their own. The point is that people wanted DNS servers supported by EL that do not include this dead DNS service." Sounds like it's time for Earthlink users to check out OpenDNS.com... they make it easy to turn off the bad-URL behavior.

kenh writes "For years my father has gotten along the Information Superhighway with just an i-Opener and an Earthlink account. However, the internet has moved too far ahead for his burned-in-ROM browser to be useful to him anymore, and dial-up is a bit slow these days. While investigating various options (Apple Macintosh, Knoppix Linux/Ubuntu Linux with USB key file storage, WebTV) I didn't find any that were very appealing, for a variety of reasons. Right now, I'm looking for something that has: dial-up support, no update/anti-virus/etc pop-ups, and no software 'update' downloads, support for PDFs, Flash, Javascript, and other features necessary to accommodate more modern websites. The i-Opener was 'foolproof', and if things went wrong, you could just shut it off and try again, Everything I see today lacks that ability (to varying extents)." What decent i-Opener replacements, if any, exist today?

Guppy06 writes "Last week, instead of a regular DNS error, EarthLink's DNS servers started to return a redirect to earthlink-help.net, a site that bears a close resemblance to VeriSign's much-maligned Site Finder, to their subscribers. According to their official blog at Earthling, "By presenting users with contextual help based upon the non-existent domain the user entered, we believe we are improving the EarthLink user experience with a system that will not interfere with other network processes." Most of the responses in said blog posting aren't positive."

Vegan Pagan asks: "If the internet was separated into regions, how much would you lose? How often do you visit other countries' web sites? How often do you e-mail people in other countries? Do you ever search in a language other than English, and if you do, how often does it turn up foreign vs domestic sites? What would foreigners lose by not being able to visit US-hosted sites, and how quickly would they be able to recreate what they lost? What other process that we are not normally aware of depend on a borderless internet? I find that although I often read in-depth news about other countries, the sites I get that news from are usually hosted in USA, and I only bother to read in English. Would the Americans who report world news be hindered by a segregated internet, or do they already have the means to overcome such barriers? How much more expensive and complicated would it be to access sites outside of 'your' internet, and how much slower would it be?"

Chris Bradshaw writes "The mass of the nearest white dwarf star to Earth has been measured accurately for the first time. from the article: 'Sirius B is just 12,000 km (7,500 miles) in diameter, similar to Earth, but its mass is 98% that of the Sun. Studying Sirius B has been difficult because of the bright light coming from its neighbour Sirius A, the "Dog Star." The results, published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, come from astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope.'"

Slashback tonight brings some corrections, clarifications, and updates to previous Slashdot stories, including the exoneration of Peter Quinn, the debut of Honda's new ASIMO robot, Vonage customers now all have 911 access, Nathan Peterson pleads guilty to copyright infringement, an interesting follow up to the recent Wikipedia articles, the Citizen e ink clock makes its first real world debut, and a response for criticism of the $100 laptop - read on for details.

Peter Quinn exonerated. An anonymous reader writes "Groklaw is reporting that Peter Quinn, the man who terrified Microsoft by moving part of the Massachusetts government to ODF, has been exonerated of any alleged impropriety concerning his trips to tell others about Massachusetts' move to ODF."

Honda debuts new ASIMO robot. Tomo Hiratsuka writes "Honda's ASIMO robot has received his annual refit and now has the power to carry objects with a cart, serve drinks, and run with both feet off the ground at up to 10mph."

911 now available to Vonage users. Ben writes "Only a month after Vonage 911 Deadline Passed the VoIP phone service announced today that all of its customers now have access to 911 services."

Nathan Peterson pleads guilty to copyright infringement. Chris Bradshaw writes "iBackups' owner Nathan Peterson pled guilty to two counts of criminal copyright infringement for illegally copying and selling nearly $20 million worth of computer software. The FBI was first alerted to possible software piracy by the Software Information Industry Association (SIIA) back in 2003. iBackups was selling pirated copies of software over the internet claiming that they were "backup copies" to be used by software owners in case of system crashes."

Wikipedia still just as effective as normal encyclopedia. AxelBoldt writes "The Australian newspaper The Age reports that Nature has run a formal comparison of the science coverage of Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Britannica. From the article: 'The exercise revealed numerous errors in both encyclopedias, but among 42 entries tested, the difference in accuracy was not great: the average science entry in Wikipedia contained around four inaccuracies; Britannica, around three.'"

Citizen e ink clock makes its debut. Tim Jones writes "The flexible e ink clock that Citizen announced what seems like ages ago is finally making an appearance in the real world. It's apparently going to be displayed at a Tokyo exhibition this week."

$100 laptop not quite so ineffectual. segphault writes "Ars Technica posted a response to Intel chairman Craig Barret's criticism of MIT's $100 laptop. From the article: 'Despite Barret's criticism, interest in the $100 laptop remains as strong as ever, and lightweight, affordable technology continues to weave its way into the classroom with great results. Young students in Olathe, Kansas now read their textbooks on Palm handheld computers. According to survey statistics, 28 percent of American school districts offer handheld computers for student and teacher use. A study done at a high school in South Dakota in 2001 found that the the availability of school-provided handhelds actually improved student grades. Eric Johnson, educational sales director for Palm, says the public schools represent a US$300 million market. If handheld computers can do so well in the public school system, surely the $100 laptop can too.'"

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "A new motion to dismiss an RIAA peer-to-peer file sharing case has been made, this time in Brooklyn federal court, in Atlantic v. Huggins, reports Recording Industry vs. The People. As in Elektra v. Santangelo, the RIAA had served a boilerplate complaint alleging generally 'downloading' ,uploading', and 'distributing', but without naming any specific acts. Defendants' lawyers argue that "the Complaint alleges in conclusory fashion and upon information and belief that defendant used "an online media distribution system" to download and distribute certain alleged copyrighted recordings to the public, and/or to make such recordings "available for distribution to others." but "makes no attempt to describe the specific acts of infringement or the dates and times on which they allegedly occurred.""

AndersBrownworth writes "Earthlink Research and Development has released a firmware load for the Linksys WRT54G wireless access point that supports end-to-end IPv6. They suggest features such as extremely large address space, stateless autoconfiguration and low cost restoration of end-to-end addressability will revolutionize IP communications. It would be interesting if releases like this significantly boost the IPv6 take-up rate but as far as I know, Earthlink doesn't supply end-to-end IPv6 yet."

An anonymous reader writes "Running Debian (or Linux generally) on a Mac mini is old news. Silas installed rechargable batteries inside the case, delivering a couple of hours of runtime while retaining the small form factor. Although it runs fine without wires, he had to plug in the monitor to be able to show that it was really up."

An anonymous reader writes "Running Debian (or Linux generally) on a Mac mini is old news. Silas installed rechargable batteries inside the case, delivering a couple of hours of runtime while retaining the small form factor. Although it runs fine without wires, he had to plug in the monitor to be able to show that it was really up."

Unqualified code-monkey Garote submits his annotated version of Neal Stephenson's In The Beginning Was The Command Line, updated to discuss UI design theory and fill in some of the gaps from the last five years. (And yes, he has been granted permission from Neal to do this.) There's plenty more to cover of course: Will the command-line last only as long as the keyboard? How will desktop search technology change our workflow? What about the 3D interface? Scroll to any random paragraph in the essay and you'll find something worth expounding on. What's ahead for the next five years?

Unqualified code-monkey Garote submits his annotated version of Neal Stephenson's In The Beginning Was The Command Line, updated to discuss UI design theory and fill in some of the gaps from the last five years. (And yes, he has been granted permission from Neal to do this.) There's plenty more to cover of course: Will the command-line last only as long as the keyboard? How will desktop search technology change our workflow? What about the 3D interface? Scroll to any random paragraph in the essay and you'll find something worth expounding on. What's ahead for the next five years?

kernel panic attack writes "This week's deadly Asian Quake and Tsunami may have been so powerful, that it changed the rate of Earth's rotation. In a Reuters article, a NASA geophysicist theorizes that the quake compacted the Earth enough to speed up the planet's rotation by 3 microseconds. A second article says the quake moved undersea tectonic plates by up to 98 feet, shifting islands near Sumatra out to sea an unknown distance. Also, a USGS team wants images from commercial satellite operators to help pinpoint coastline damage. Lastly, an interesting article from the Australian Spaceguard Survey about the need for a Tsunami warning system in the Indian Ocean. The author comments that tsunami warnings may not help much, as people often flock to the coastline to see the giant waves." The current estimated death toll is now nearly 70,000; Amazon and Google, among others, have added front-page links to simplify donating to the disaster relief effort.

scubacuda asks: "I'm looking for a good "all you can eat" cellular data plan for my laptop. So far, I've looked into T-mobile, Earthlink, and Verizon's wireless Internet options. Any suggestions on price, availability, and speed? The real kicker for me is Linux support, which, I've been told by all three companies, is NOT available. (Any and all hacks would be greatly appreciated!)" This particular market is still in a great degree of flux, especially with landscape-changing deals like the AT&T/Cingular merger going on in the background and issue of going for cellular or WiFi connectivity service. Are there any wireless carriers that you've been able to get working on a Linux laptop? If so, what did you have to do to attain your wireless laptop nirvana?

Guppy06 writes "MosNews.com has an interesting article on the thoughts and opinions of everyday Muscovites on the rampant music (et al) piracy in their country. It seems that some of them don't have much trouble justifying it to themselves, with quotes like 'Yes, I know that some of the sellers are here with burned CDs. But they have to earn a living too, I can understand them.' The article also mentions 'In a country where the average monthly salary is about $240, buying the latest album for $15 is a grotesque luxury, let alone spending $600 on Adobe Photoshop or a similar computer program.' Apparently, catchy slogans like 'Listen up, you pirate, I choose copyright!' just aren't working."

Ant writes "From my ant message board thread (trying to pick names related to ants for World of Warcraft), Myrmecos mentioned Curiosities of Biological Nomenclature that lists scientific names of organisms are not usually known for their entertainment value. They are indispensable for clarity in communication, but most people skip over them with barely a glance. Mark Isaak, the author, collected those names that are worth a second look. Some names are interesting for what they are named after (for example, Arthurdactylus conandoylensis, Godzillius), some are puns (La cucaracha, Phthiria relativitae), and some show other kinds of wordplay (such as the palindromic Orizabus subaziro). Some have achieved notability through accident of history, and many show the sense of humor of taxonomists."

Kaseijin writes "'We believe that if peer-to-peer flourishes, the Internet flourishes.' Earthlink's Research and Development division has released SIPshare, a prototype file-sharing application based on SIP. The code is available under a BSD-style license."

Anonymous Coward writes "Hi All: My Space Archive web site covers the activities of Vandenberg AFB, a military and civilian spaceport on California's central coast. After several weeks of work, I have finished extensively revising and expanding the Viewing Vandenberg AFB Launches page on my site. I've been observing and photographing these launches for several years. Some are visible over much of the western U.S., but there is little information about them. As far as I know, this is the only article ever written on observing these launches. Regards, Brian Webb"

Chuck1318 writes "The Piraha tribe in the Amazon has only three words used in counting, that mean one, two, and many. A psychologist testing them has found that they are unable to accurately perform tasks involving quantities as few as four or five. He says that this shows that, at least for numbers, language shapes and limits how people can think." I can't help but be reminded of the gully dwarves from Dragonlance when reading this.

Chuck1318 writes "The US is halting its national nuclear fusion energy project, FIRE, and pinning its hopes on the internation fusion research program ITER. However, ITER is stalled over a dispute on where to locate the facility. The dream of fusion power is getting no closer..."

Chuck1318 writes "Articles in Nature and New Scientist indicate that corals are more adaptable to global warming than previously thought. Large areas of coral reefs had been devastated by bleaching due to the loss of the coral animals' algae partner, which is sensitive to changes in water temperature. Some scientists had projected that coral reefs would all be gone in 20 to 30 years. Now it is found that a more heat-resistant strain of algae is able to colonize the bleached coral, returning them to life."

Chuck1318 writes "The Japanese ISAS (Institute of Space and Astronautical Science) announced the launch and deployment of the first ever large-scale solar sail. In the news release they state "Because it carries no fuel and keeps accelerating over almost unlimited distances, it is the only technology now in existence that can one day take us to the stars.""

Chuck1318 writes "MSNBC reports the discovery of a species of bone-eating worms that live on whale carcasses on the sea floor. The female worm grows "roots" into the whale bones, which contain bacteria that help the worm digest fats from the bones. The tiny males live inside the female, sometimes over a hundred inside a single female. Whale falls provide important oases of nourishment on the sea floor, somewhat analogous to the communities of life around hydrothermal vents."

An anonymous reader with a lot of time on his hands writes "As seen on Slashdot b e f o r e, the Newton refuses to die. Since Apple discontinued it, it got ATA, WiFi, Bluetooth, Zeroconf and even a NES emulator. Now, several Mac news sites r e p o r t, Newton users founded an association with John Sculley, who pushed the Newton at Apple, as its honorary president. They're organizing a conference in Paris in September. How long until all these users switch to new hardware?"

Chuck1318 writes "July 16 is the 10th anniversary of the first impact of pieces of the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 on the planet Jupiter. The Planetary Society is marking this occasion with a call for applications for Shoemaker grants to fund "amateur and underfunded professional observers anywhere in the world." Shoemaker-Levy 9 created impact features on Jupiter that were larger than the Earth and helped stimulate the search for possible earth-impacting objects."

joncrie writes "The Telegraph is reporting that British MoD scientists are now testing a new electric armor to protect light armored vehicles against RPGs. The new electric armour is made up of a highly-charged capacitor that is connected to two separate metal plates on the tank's exterior. When an RPG warhead fires its jet of molten copper, it penetrates both the outer plate and the insulation of the inner plate. This makes a connection and thousands of amps of electricity vaporises most of the molten copper. The rest of the copper is dispersed harmlessly against the vehicle's hull. The initial development was mentioned previously."

GhostCypher asks: "I've been a Mac user for nigh on 12 years, and recently made the reverse-switch (yes, Mac to PC) due to an unfortunate accident to my PowerBook. Now that I have this spiffy new HP laptop, I want to run Linux or Unix of some flavor on it, but I don't know the best one to run. I've been considering FreeBSD and OpenBSD, as well as SuSE Linux, Fedora, and Mandrake. Could the wisened Linux gurus here offer some insight as to the best package for a former Mac user to introduce him to the greater world of Linux without major headaches in setting it all up?"

jtprice writes "At a time when spam levels have exceeded 80%, there's growing momentum behind Microsoft's email CallerID, the SPF effort, Yahoo!'s DomainKeys, and the IETF's new MARID Working Group initiatives to address various email abuse problems including spam, joe-jobbing, phishing, and so on. Sendmail has already implemented DomainKeys and CallerID. 10,000+ domains have turned on SPF now. Where the heck are we going with this? Are these efforts at cross purposes, confusing at best or likely to be consolidated? Seems to be less about the end of spam and more about the end of open, uniform, standards-based email as we know it. Apparently the people behind these initiatives are getting together for the first time for something called the Open Email Accountability Symposium next month, at the Inbox Email Conference in San Jose, with the intent of outlining their proposals and answering questions. Any thoughts about all of this, or hard questions that should be asked of these people? Is the email dilemma creating just another monopoly opportunity to force email into proprietary territory?"

bjarvis354 writes "The San Diego Union Tribune is reporting that the Department of Labor Secretary Elaine Chao unveiled new rules that seem to specifically target IT workers and other white collar workers for exemption from overtime pay. The Oneonta Daily Star claims that 'According to new exemption tests, the employee isn't guaranteed overtime pay if primary duties involve office or non-manual work,' and 'Computer employees are not guaranteed overtime pay if they make $455 a week, or if their hourly rate is $27.63. Affected employees include computer systems analysts, programmers, software engineers or anyone with a similar title.'"

WoodenRobot writes "This article claims that Earthlink have discovered that the average user's PC has 28 spyware programs on it. More details can be found on Earthlink's spyware auditing page." Compare to a university study. The FTC is hosting a Spyware Workshop.

Ray Radlein writes "How about a good old-fashioned Sports story? With its multitude of different statistical measures, baseball has always had the highest Geek Quotient of any major sport. Alpha Geeks of Baseball have included former relief pitcher Rob Murphy, who put his Computer Science degree to good use writing software to evaluate thoroughbred race horses, and Boston Red Sox ace and probable future Hall of Famer Curt Schilling, who not only runs a company that makes hex-based war games, but once got embroiled in an on-field feud due to Everquest. However, Baseball Geeks have a new hero to look up to: Jason Szuminski, who on Sunday became the first MIT graduate to pitch in a major league baseball game. His degree in Aerospace Engineering must have stood him in good stead as he observed the ballistic trajectory of a Barry Bonds fly ball which just barely stayed inside the Padres' new stadium."

2bot_or_not_2bot writes "Spam: The Phenomenon is a detailed analysis of spam: products, scams, viruses, obfuscation methods, etc. Failed, and doomed-to-fail, methods of blocking spam are described. A general solution is proposed that does not: invade privacy, perform wide censorship or blacklisting, or involve payment and cooperation with corporations (beyond the transport and storage of data)." Hmmm.

JCMay writes "You know that film we've all seen on TV where a large, hairy creature is walking through the woods, looks back over his right shoulder at the camera, and continues walking on? WorldNetDaily is reporting that a man has admitted to a 1967 bigfoot hoax where he was filmed walking through the woods wearing a gorilla suit."

Green and Geeky writes "That Marvel of a PDA, the Newton MessagePad, has always been a good product. It does a lot of things: plays MP3s, connects to the Internet wirelessly, can be used to bludgeon someone, fits in your pocket (if you're a giant), etc. Now, it plays Nintendo games. Strange, yes, but still pretty cool. I can't play Legend Zelda, Final Fantasy, or Dragon Warrior on my Palm V." And I don't need to waste money on a Game Boy Advance!

G. Holst writes "NASA technicians are preparing to wipe Spirit's flash memory clean of science and engineering files that have stymied its software. The fix, likely to be made Friday, could completely restore Spirit. "I think it will be perfect again," says the Mission Manager. Chalk this one up for earth!" There are numerous stories about Spirit and Mars: one describes being careful with rm -rf. Reader Tablizer sends in an interesting site: "I discovered Bill Momsen's website where he describes his experiences working on the first successful photographic mission to another planet: Mariner IV to Mars."

StarWreck points out this article in The Atlanta Journal Constitution citing "experts who believe the worm was put out for criminal profit motives by spammers and not by Linux Advocates." Further on that, deadmonk writes "MessageLabs is reporting that the recent Mydoom virus seems to have originated in Russia. A place where nobody gives a wet slap about a court case in the U.S. Personally, I'm looking for a serious apology (or at least a retraction) for the 'alleged' link between this ugly little nasty and Open Source / Linux users." Of course, there could be evil spammers who also like Linux (or don't like SCO), but until someone's caught, or fesses up, it's impossible to say. Read on for some more MyDoom updates, including a new variant (with a new payload), ramifications for Australians, and a forensic analysis of the worm.

fudgefactor7 writes "Hot on the heels of the last virus, Mydoom.b is on the loose. According to Computerworld, this variant has a larger payload and targets Microsoft's Web site for a distributed denial-of-service attack on Feb. 1, instead of The SCO Group Inc. Patch those systems and keep your A-V up to date. Definitions are available currently."

decaying writes "With the amount of virus-laden emails flying about due to the latest virus, Australian ISP Optus have started selectively blocking port 25 outbound. Optus say they are acting in accordance with their "Terms of use", quoting that they reserve the right to restrict access to any TCP/IP port. The only option is to use Optus' SMTP server and nothing else. Community site Whirlpool has an on-going discussion about the issue."

carnun writes "Just another link on MyDoom. Apparently the FBI are also getting in on the act. Interesting to see such a fast response." And to me, the most interesting one: Zeriel writes "After much discussion on a mailing list discussing trojan horses, some people have reached the conclusion that MyDoom doesn't accomplish its stated goal of DDOSing SCO at all! Choice quote from the analysis: "I have the new critter in a test environment where we conducted a preliminary and rudimentary functionality and threat analysis...I have played with the date, etc, but still no activity directed toward www.sco.com." The link also includes disassembly and analysis of the worm code."

DarnComputers writes "5G Wireless (FGWC) announced that it has documented a long distance Wi-Fi shot of 15 miles at a throughput of 4Mbps upload and download speed. The shot was completed this last weekend, in a competitive Wi-Fi shootout at the Defcon convention in Las Vegas, Nev. There were many participants with both commercial-grade and homemade entries in a variety of categories at Defcon's first annual Wi-Fi shootout.http://home.earthlink.net/~wifi-shootout/"

andrebsd asks: "I'd like to make myself some sort of webpage where I could startup my system with 'Wake on Lan', and once it is started, use VNC to login. Once I'm done doing what I need the system for I would then like to shut it down again. I'm wondering how one might go about putting something like this together. VNC has various scripts for making that part work, but I haven't seen any scripts that can function as a 'Power on/Power off' button for a webpage. Thanks to anyone with any way of doing this." While there are helpful reference for Wake-on-LAN tools, how would you integrate all of these into a coherent system? How might one keep such a system (relatively) secure?

Shadowfax0 asks: "Recently, when I was attending the International Scout Jamboree in Sattahip, Thailand, I became friends with a fellow Scout from Uganda. One day we decided to both visit one of the small internet cafes that had been set up at the jamboree. I went in, and for only a few baht, was on the internet. My friend from Uganda was amazed, 'How do they do this?' he asked. I told him that in a lot of places in the world these are quite common; he was awe. "'ot in Uganda' he said to me. He told me that at the university he attends there are only three computers; and only one of them has the ability to get on the internet. In the spirit of the jamboree and of scouting, I told him that I would very gladly help him set up something similar at his university. Herein lies my question to the readers of Slashdot: How can I set up a small network for my friend in Uganda where the only fast internet connection may be a DSL line?"

" I was hoping to use thin-clients because they are very durable and create very little load for a server, however, I am not experienced enough to administer them properly using Linux (the same going for Solaris), and do not have enough money for Windows licensing (and also hope to have them be as reliable as possible). I would like to use Apple computers because that is the OS I am most well-versed in, and know that when I leave Uganda and if a problem were to arise, that there would be hope of the problem being rectified. I'm more looking to donate these computers to his school as opposed to set up an internet cafe; so I would be looking to have 6-20 computers and a server. I have never set up a network on a large scale and will need to know about what type of router/hub/network configurations would be plausible (I have a very basic knowledge of administering networks, something I hope to fix soon).

I thank all of you for your input, I hope we can make this happen!"

Anonymous Coward writes "After months of silence and a week of hopeful half-truths, Japanese space officials have finally confirmed that their Mars-bound Nozomi probe is teetering on the brink of failure in its five-year quest to explore the Red Planet. The Nozomi orbiter is one of four spacecraft that are due to converge on Mars in the next two months. The other three probes -- the European Space Agency's Mars Express and NASA's two Mars Exploration Rovers -- are still on track and in good working order, according to the latest status reports. Mars Express is due to enter Martian orbit on Christmas Day and send a British-built Beagle 2 lander to the surface, while the NASA rovers should arrive on Jan. 3 and Jan. 24."

Anonymous Coward writes "Researchers using Japan's Subaru telescope in Hawaii have discovered a galaxy 12.9 billion light-years from Earth -- the most distant found to date. The latest finding extends the distance of the known farthest galaxies from Earth by about 3 million light-years." Toward the other end of the scale, JamesD_UK writes "Astronomers at the 2Mass project appear to have found the closest galaxy to the milky way yet, overtaking the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy. The galaxy is only 25,000 light years away and is being torn appart in a collision with the milky way. More information on the The Two Micron All Sky Survey is available here."

techno-vampire writes "JPL announces that a pair of telescopes used as an optical interferometer have detected a galaxy 40 million light years away, smashing the previous record of 3,000 light years. This feat, using infrared, has given us a far more detailed look into the center of a galaxy, and opened up a whole new field of research."

SpookWarfare writes "To be completely honest I'm good friends with Tom Spurgeon and Jordan Raphael, the authors of Stan Lee: The Rise and Fall of the American Comic Book." So take your grain of salt, and read on below for "an unbiased review of a the most important book ever to be written about the subject of comic books, or any subject for that matter." Stan Lee: The Rise and Fall of The American Comic Book author Jordan Raphael and Tom Spurgeon pages 320 publisher Chicago Review Press rating 8 reviewer Gus Mastrapa ISBN 1556525060 summary Stan Lee

If you don't know who Stan Lee is, you will have little to no interest in this book. But who are we kidding? Any geek worth his or her metal knows Stan "The Man" Lee, the co-creator of Spider-man, The Hulk, The Fantastic Four and countless other beloved Marvel Comics characters. What most people don't really know is the real story behind the creation of these characters. Many have never heard of the artists Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, who contributed a great deal to the creation and development of these superheroes. In the past years a bit of a rift has formed in comics fandom, the hard-core siding with the late Kirby, claiming that Lee and Marvel did the artist wrong. The other side blithely backs the amiable Lee. Through interviews with artists, family members and Stan Lee himself, Spurgeon and Raphael try to shed some light on the subject.

Anyone who's read Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay will notice a great deal of similarities between Stan Lee's origins and the fictionalized settings Chabon created for his book. Both stories start in the time of the pulps, when publishers cranked out fantastic publications by the truck-load. The parallels are fascinating. If you're a comic book fan and you haven't read Chabon's book, you need to read it.

Anyway, the book I'm supposed to be reviewing tracks Stan Lee's star from his position as a lowly writer at Timely Comics, to the editor behind the most famous run of comic books in history; Marvel's Silver Age comics. This is when the Fantastic Four, Spider-man and The Hulk were born. The book doesn't stop there. It follows Lee through the decades detailing his involvement with the Marvel titles all the way. It examines his rocky relationship with Hollywood and decades of attempts to bring Marvel characters to life on television or in the movies. Even more fascinating are the segments of the book that deal with Stan Lee Media and the enormous financial flame-out that occurred when the business went sour.

The book paints Lee in a very humanistic light. It brings his flaws into sharp contrast and at the same time gives him credit for his amazing accomplishments, unceasing drive and wild imagination. Most interesting is the way the book tells the story of all comics in the context of Marvel and Lee's story. As much as underground geniuses such as R. Crumb or Art Spiegelman must hate the association, it's hard to argue that the fates of all comics are influenced by Marvel's gravitational pull.

There's been a mild knee-jerk reaction in the comics community that the book is blatant attack on Lee, being that both Spurgeon and Raphael both worked at The Comics Journal, a publication that has publicly supported Jack Kirby's claims against Lee. To be fair, the authors put an exceptional amount of work into trying to tell the truth, which is reflected in the sheer number of annotated resources they've provided in the book's source notes.

In all seriousness, try to forget for a moment that I'm friends with the authors. As a lifelong comics reader I found the information presented in this book fascinating. It made me want to run to my comics shop and buy reprints of the old issues. Don't take my word for it, though.

There are several excerpts of the book available online. You can read the prologue at the book's official website. Part of Chapter 17, "Stan in Hollywood" is excerpted at The Comic's Journal's website."

You can purchase Stan Lee: The Rise and Fall of The American Comic Book from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Anonymous Coward writes "ABC News is running a story ostensibly about the X Prize but in reality they only talk about John Carmack and his teams efforts to win the prize (or at least compete). Quote: 'Some people have commented that I am trying very hard to make aerospace like software, and that's the truth," he says. "If we looked at what we do in software, if we could only compile and test our program once a year, we'd never get anything done. But that's the mode of aerospace.' "

gwailoh writes "The literary-orientated, text-based multiuser role-playing game TriadCity has implemented an automated character based on the personality - or at least the sayings - of legendary wit Oscar Wilde. 'Oscar' is an AIML-based chatterbot configured around an extensive database of Wilde's witticisms and epigrams. Unlike conventional chatterbots, Oscar doesn't attempt to engage in long-running conversations with meaningful state. Instead, he responds to inputs by choosing the most appropriate epigram in his database, making him a sort of walking repository of clever one-liners."