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RMS ^? has sent The Register an email in which he corrects their 'inaccurate' representation of his stance on the GNOME & .NET issue. He states, "I am pretty sure something was garbled in the quotation which has me asking Miguel to 'explain himself to us', because those words would be explicitly confrontational, and I did not have any wish to do that."

A couple of people wrote in to note that Credit Suisse First Boston, which was the underwriter for VA Linux ^? ' IPO, has been fined $100 million for actions they took in that and other high-tech IPO's during the stock market boom. CSFB allocated shares of certain IPO's to customers who made kickbacks to CSFB. Here's their side of the story. There's also an additional statement by the regulators and CSFB's settlement agreement (PDF).

Vanth Dreadstar asks: "While MP3 is okay, I have begun researching other codecs that would be suitable for my home music use. Lossy codecs such as Ogg Vorbis, AAC, and MPC all seem to have promise, not to mention the lossless codecs such as Shorten (otherwise known as .SHN), LPAC, and FLAC. I would like to know what non-MP3 codecs people are using out there, and why."

JFL writes " A petition to request that the Total Annihilation source code's current owner, Infogrames, release the code into the public domain is currently in full swing over at the French site TA Forever. " I recently picked up TA again, and played around with it - while the graphics are looking a bit dated, the design for the system is great - a very extensible design system, and one that you could build some interesting environments on top of. The use of height is something that was, and to a certain extent, still far ahead of other RTS ^? games.

bapya asks: "I am a PhD student working on CFD ^? at National Chemical Laboratory, India. We mainly use commercial CFD code (Fluent from Fluent Inc.) and some inhouse codes. Currently we use SGI machines (Origin 200 and O2 family running IRIX), single and dual processor NT machines, DEC alpha and dual processor Linux (running RH 6.2) machines. Now we are planning to upgrade/expand our computational facilities. For the same amount of money (about 25000$), we can buy either a decent unix(IRIX) server (origin 200 dual cpu) or build a much better performing Intel system (either NT or Linux). My professor is in favor of IRIX system. What I would like to ask is what are the criteria for selecting hardware for such a job? and How can one justify the high prices of branded UNIX systems when other systems of same performance level can be built at much lesser costs?"

Several folks have e-mailed about the formation of Tungsten Graphics, which is composed of quite a number of ex-Precision Insighters. Linuxgames is carrying a bit of a conversation with Frank LaMonica, the CEO of the new company. They've got a contract with Red Hat already in place. Frank's statement summarizes what they are doing well: "The work we are doing involves Mesa ^? and XFree86, including both 2D and 3D multi-screen technology, and we are working very closely with the OpenGL ^? ARB to maintain the integrity of the OpenGL API. We believe that OpenGL 2.0 needs more industry support, so we are working to help generate that support. DRI ^? technology is still in its infancy, and TG plans to help bring it to full fruition. Our first step in that goal is to significantly improve the existing open source DRI driver for the Radeon chipset. That driver is tentatively scheduled for release in late spring or early summer of 2002. "

Several folks have e-mailed about the formation of Tungsten Graphics, which is composed of quite a number of ex-Precision Insighters. Linuxgames is carrying a bit of a conversation with Frank LaMonica, the CEO of the new company. They've got a contract with Red Hat already in place. Frank's statement summarizes what they are doing well: "The work we are doing involves Mesa ^? and XFree86, including both 2D and 3D multi-screen technology, and we are working very closely with the OpenGL ^? ARB to maintain the integrity of the OpenGL API. We believe that OpenGL 2.0 needs more industry support, so we are working to help generate that support. DRI ^? technology is still in its infancy, and TG plans to help bring it to full fruition. Our first step in that goal is to significantly improve the existing open source DRI driver for the Radeon chipset. That driver is tentatively scheduled for release in late spring or early summer of 2002. "

Several folks have e-mailed about the formation of Tungsten Graphics, which is composed of quite a number of ex-Precision Insighters. Linuxgames is carrying a bit of a conversation with Frank LaMonica, the CEO of the new company. They've got a contract with Red Hat already in place. Frank's statement summarizes what they are doing well: "The work we are doing involves Mesa ^? and XFree86, including both 2D and 3D multi-screen technology, and we are working very closely with the OpenGL ^? ARB to maintain the integrity of the OpenGL API. We believe that OpenGL 2.0 needs more industry support, so we are working to help generate that support. DRI ^? technology is still in its infancy, and TG plans to help bring it to full fruition. Our first step in that goal is to significantly improve the existing open source DRI driver for the Radeon chipset. That driver is tentatively scheduled for release in late spring or early summer of 2002. "

Slashback with ever more on ... the massive bust of illegal software producers reported on last week, the gaping security hole moaned at by those confined to the Microsoft asylum, another review of the new Linux+Java Zaurus from Sharp, and how to get the binary watch you've always wanted. Enjoy!

Too bad there isn't a lot of good Free software. aka-ed writes: "A small update on the "Drink Or Die" busts: Apparently, the feds' move has borne preventative fruit. According to this post from one of the major commercial Usnet services, binaries traffic on Usenet has taken a noticeable hit since the bust, for reasons speculated upon in the post itself."

Open wide, and say "mmmmghrfgghfgr." atreus42 writes: "Microsoft has released a patch to fix the Gaping Security Hole(TM) in Internet Explorer 5.5 and 6.0. This security bulletin details the file extension/content header spoofing bug that would allow bad people to disguise a downloadable executable file as text. The internet isn't doomed after all..."

How to make my Visor look slow and lowly. Sindre Lia writes "Sharp's new Zaurus SL5500 is the first PDA device from a major manufacturer in a long time that uses a new operating system and a new user interface.

According to preliminary reports from infoSync staffers Larry Garfield and Janice Karin that attended the launch of the SL-5500 and got hands-on experience with the new device, the GUI still needs polishing and to some degree also the hardware, but the device has according to them a lot of potential if some first-generation problems can be fixed.

See all the pictures of the new OS here!"

At least this letter is not in binary ... Dog and Pony writes with a lengthy letter (informative, if you have odd taste in watches). "Slashdot recently ran a story about a pretty silly binary watch. Well, anyways, being a silly person, I thought one would be cool to have, even though I normally don't wear watches.

Problem was, they only shipped inside Norway... so I sent them a polite mail, asking them to notify me if they would start shipping internationally. And today I got an answer.

Too bad it seems a really cumbersome process to get that watch... have these guys never heard of PayPal? And offering payment via the www in 2003? 'Course, you gotta have goals...

Here is a copy of the mail:

> Dear Customer

> Please note the binary watch is released World-Wide Sale

> To be able to expedite your orders please follow instructions below

> 1.0
> Order Your watch by using or online home page:rsi-digital.com

> 2.0
> US$ 35 must be transfer from your local bank to

> ATT
> NORDEA BANK NORWAY
> Middelthuns Gt 17
> Postboks 1166.Centrum
> 0107 OSLO

> ACCOUNT NUMBER: 6527 05 04641
> Research & Supplier International A/S
> Postboks 236
> 4201 Sauda
> Norway

> 3.0
> Original receipt must be faxed to +47 52 78 88 01 or send scanned and send by mail to arramsta@online.no

> 4.0
> Your order will than be expedite from our sales office

> Delivery time is estimated to be 10 to 14 days after received confirmed payment by fax or mail as stated above

> 5.0
> Note: RSI will from 2003 offer payment by using WWW.

> 6.0
> Payment 35USD cover cost of watch 28 USD handling and postage 7 USD
> Total:
> =35 USD

> Best Regards

> Tone Yven
> Sales engineer

I am still thinking that black one....

On a side note, to us non-native English speakers, that has spent too much time in Dilbert-land, "Sales engineer" really sounds like an oxymoron."

Alan asks: "I'm looking for a way to do document management at the office. We have windows people and linux people, some writing documents that are a few lines (developer notes for example) and others are full of charts, graphs, etc. Currently we have a file server that has shares set up for the documentation, but it lacks any sort of revision control, and with the salespeople writing in Microsoft Word there are cross-platform issues. We were thinking of setting up an wiki or an everything-based site, but as it is only text, it's not good enough for everyone. There is also the matter of getting our master documentation (which is in PDF format) accessable to everyone as well, possibly in an XML format that can be imported into indesign or Pagemaker or something. There are lots of solutions that work for different departments and different systems, but it would be nice to have something that works for everyone."

A reader wrote to us about a summary article regarding IDS ^? . This is an interesting article in so far as it attempts to prognosticate what the future will be for detection, and that draws in some interesting work on security modelling. T: Readers may also want to see this vnunet article on IDS products -- guess what comes out on top?

Our friends at Salon have an article "The Return of Lord British" about what Richard Garriot has been up to in the last year since he's left Origin. It is mostly about Lineage (a mmporpg ^? ), but it touches on EA mismanagement (new tagline "We create write-offs").

Madfishmonger asks: "I'm putting together a live computer rig for a band to play back backing tracks as well as simultaneously transmit MIDI program and control changes to various synthesizers and digital mixers. Are there any Linux-based apps (especially Linux PPC ^? , since we'll be running an older PowerBook) which can replace software like Logic, Cubase and ProTools for simpler tasks like managing MIDI ^? program changes and audio playback simultaneously, or which are even capable of rudimentary hard disk recording tasks, and will also work with the more common multi-IO MIDI interfaces from makers like MOTU and Emagic? I haven't heard of anything comparable to the current Mac and Windows-based technologies like TDM ^? , VST ^? , RTAS and ASIO, but is there anything in the works which could give the music community a third platform to work on, or do I have to wait for the big name proggies to come out on OS X?"

Madfishmonger asks: "I'm putting together a live computer rig for a band to play back backing tracks as well as simultaneously transmit MIDI program and control changes to various synthesizers and digital mixers. Are there any Linux-based apps (especially Linux PPC ^? , since we'll be running an older PowerBook) which can replace software like Logic, Cubase and ProTools for simpler tasks like managing MIDI ^? program changes and audio playback simultaneously, or which are even capable of rudimentary hard disk recording tasks, and will also work with the more common multi-IO MIDI interfaces from makers like MOTU and Emagic? I haven't heard of anything comparable to the current Mac and Windows-based technologies like TDM ^? , VST ^? , RTAS and ASIO, but is there anything in the works which could give the music community a third platform to work on, or do I have to wait for the big name proggies to come out on OS X?"

Madfishmonger asks: "I'm putting together a live computer rig for a band to play back backing tracks as well as simultaneously transmit MIDI program and control changes to various synthesizers and digital mixers. Are there any Linux-based apps (especially Linux PPC ^? , since we'll be running an older PowerBook) which can replace software like Logic, Cubase and ProTools for simpler tasks like managing MIDI ^? program changes and audio playback simultaneously, or which are even capable of rudimentary hard disk recording tasks, and will also work with the more common multi-IO MIDI interfaces from makers like MOTU and Emagic? I haven't heard of anything comparable to the current Mac and Windows-based technologies like TDM ^? , VST ^? , RTAS and ASIO, but is there anything in the works which could give the music community a third platform to work on, or do I have to wait for the big name proggies to come out on OS X?"

Madfishmonger asks: "I'm putting together a live computer rig for a band to play back backing tracks as well as simultaneously transmit MIDI program and control changes to various synthesizers and digital mixers. Are there any Linux-based apps (especially Linux PPC ^? , since we'll be running an older PowerBook) which can replace software like Logic, Cubase and ProTools for simpler tasks like managing MIDI ^? program changes and audio playback simultaneously, or which are even capable of rudimentary hard disk recording tasks, and will also work with the more common multi-IO MIDI interfaces from makers like MOTU and Emagic? I haven't heard of anything comparable to the current Mac and Windows-based technologies like TDM ^? , VST ^? , RTAS and ASIO, but is there anything in the works which could give the music community a third platform to work on, or do I have to wait for the big name proggies to come out on OS X?"

ikekrull asks: "After looking to see how I could set up my company's LAN to be multi-homed ^? , I found that it would be next-to-impossible for me to do this. 'Providerless' IP addresses are no longer allocated to anybody in this part of the world (New Zealand) by APNIC ^? , unless you meet requirements (financial and political) that are pretty much unmeetable by anyone but a large ISP. Does this put control of the entire internet further and further into the hands of large corporate players, and and is anyone particularly interested in changing this situation?"

"ISPs aren't advertizing routes for competing ISPs, and since IP blocks are heavily filtered upstream, this won't do much good anyway. The reasons for this are clear (Routing table growth was getting way out of hand), hence the introduction of CIDR ^? , and the allocation of IPs to ISPs, with a resulting lockout on availability of routable IP space to individuals or smaller groups.

With the availabilty of IPv6, and the cost of RAM, I find it somewhat hard to believe that either IP address blocks are scarce, or that the size of routing tables are unmanageable any more. This might have been true with an 8MB Cisco 10 years ago, but surely it would be a negligible cost to put 1-2GB of RAM on even a reasonably budget router at todays prices.

Obviously, IPV6 isn't really here yet, but i would like to think that when (if) it arrives, we will see a more open routing system.

Is anybody working on returning some kind of equal standing to 'the little guys' when it comes to internet routing infrastructure, and how a more 'open' system could work in practice on tomorrow's (or today's) internet?"

ikekrull asks: "After looking to see how I could set up my company's LAN to be multi-homed ^? , I found that it would be next-to-impossible for me to do this. 'Providerless' IP addresses are no longer allocated to anybody in this part of the world (New Zealand) by APNIC ^? , unless you meet requirements (financial and political) that are pretty much unmeetable by anyone but a large ISP. Does this put control of the entire internet further and further into the hands of large corporate players, and and is anyone particularly interested in changing this situation?"

"ISPs aren't advertizing routes for competing ISPs, and since IP blocks are heavily filtered upstream, this won't do much good anyway. The reasons for this are clear (Routing table growth was getting way out of hand), hence the introduction of CIDR ^? , and the allocation of IPs to ISPs, with a resulting lockout on availability of routable IP space to individuals or smaller groups.

With the availabilty of IPv6, and the cost of RAM, I find it somewhat hard to believe that either IP address blocks are scarce, or that the size of routing tables are unmanageable any more. This might have been true with an 8MB Cisco 10 years ago, but surely it would be a negligible cost to put 1-2GB of RAM on even a reasonably budget router at todays prices.

Obviously, IPV6 isn't really here yet, but i would like to think that when (if) it arrives, we will see a more open routing system.

Is anybody working on returning some kind of equal standing to 'the little guys' when it comes to internet routing infrastructure, and how a more 'open' system could work in practice on tomorrow's (or today's) internet?"

ikekrull asks: "After looking to see how I could set up my company's LAN to be multi-homed ^? , I found that it would be next-to-impossible for me to do this. 'Providerless' IP addresses are no longer allocated to anybody in this part of the world (New Zealand) by APNIC ^? , unless you meet requirements (financial and political) that are pretty much unmeetable by anyone but a large ISP. Does this put control of the entire internet further and further into the hands of large corporate players, and and is anyone particularly interested in changing this situation?"

"ISPs aren't advertizing routes for competing ISPs, and since IP blocks are heavily filtered upstream, this won't do much good anyway. The reasons for this are clear (Routing table growth was getting way out of hand), hence the introduction of CIDR ^? , and the allocation of IPs to ISPs, with a resulting lockout on availability of routable IP space to individuals or smaller groups.

With the availabilty of IPv6, and the cost of RAM, I find it somewhat hard to believe that either IP address blocks are scarce, or that the size of routing tables are unmanageable any more. This might have been true with an 8MB Cisco 10 years ago, but surely it would be a negligible cost to put 1-2GB of RAM on even a reasonably budget router at todays prices.

Obviously, IPV6 isn't really here yet, but i would like to think that when (if) it arrives, we will see a more open routing system.

Is anybody working on returning some kind of equal standing to 'the little guys' when it comes to internet routing infrastructure, and how a more 'open' system could work in practice on tomorrow's (or today's) internet?"

cayle clark asks: "In April I will be on a tour that spends 5 days in Tokyo, and on one of these days I hope to break away from the planned cultural events for a visit to the Akihabara, the world-famous electronics market district, partly just to gawk, partly in hope of finding a deal on a really whizzy mini-notebook or handheld pc. But... can a gaijin ^? who doesn't speak or read Japanese get around in this place? Would anyone who's been there comment on prices, selection, or experience with the many duty-free shops?"

Anml4ixoye asks: "I currently work for a county government as their senior webmaster. Before that, I oversaw the internet development for a large credit union. In both places I ran into the same issues. What should compose a web services team, and where does it belong within an organization? I notice that larger companies such as IBM have separate departments for their web sites (VP of Web Site Operations). So my question is, should the team that handles the organization's web site be its own entity, being solely responsible for the hardware, programming and implementation of the web site, or can those tasks be effectively split between several sections and still work? Can anyone give some insight into how it works within your organization?"

"For example, at the credit union, the position I was hired into was brand new. They wanted to bring their web site in house. Their solution was to hire a Manager of Internet Development (me) who was responsible for determining the needs of the credit union, setting up the servers, doing the development and programming, and maintaining the site. No staff, and they wanted the site up as quickly as possible. I spent most of my time reporting back and forth between the VP of marketing and the Director of IT. When they finally figured that wasn't going to work and tried to have me report to one department, they couldn't figure out which one it should be so they eliminated the position and outsourced the web site again.

I am running into the same thing at the county. I came on about a year ago to a web site in shambles. The previous 'web team' consisted of an Internet Administrator, a team leader, a webmaster, a web data specialist, and a web temp. The team leader wanted them to be their own section, but unfortunately, he did it by power-playing and burning bridges. The Director of IT came through and broke the team apart, firing the team leader and the web data specialist, releasing the temp, and splitting the remaining team between the Distributed Processing Management (DPM) and the Network Administration sections. The other webmaster left about two months after I came on, leaving me as the sole webmaster for 3 sites of around 80-100 thousand webpages. We are finally back up to staff (another webmaster and a web-data specialist). The challenge we are running into is that in order for items to get on the site, they are designed by the departments, approved through our communications department, then passed on to us to integrate into the site. If we have a server problem, we have to contact Network Administration, even if it is something like having a Data Source Name set up.

To further challenge matters, the manager we report to has 28 people who directly report to him, including us.

With the size of the sites being what they are, it wouldn't take much for the whole thing to fall apart, and I am trying desperately to prevent that from happening. I envision an Information Architecture being put into place which would allow us to work on content management, instead of building these pages by hand. But I seem to run into obstacles every where I turn."

Potato Demon X wrote to us with the story of getting MAME ^? running on the X-Box. Heh. The levels of irony in this amuse me greatly.

yuggler asks: "Ever found yourself in a boring meeting, class or lecture? Sure! Does anyone know of something to do to make time fly? I feel that somekind of simple game, at the most requiring paper and pen would be the ultimate soultion. So, my question to you is: Does anoyone know of a game with childishly easy rules, yet with a depth that can keep the player(s) spellbound for a small eternity? An excellent example of what I'm trying to describe is the game Sprouts which only takes 30 seconds to learn, but will take a good portion of your meetings to fully understand. I am currently being tormented in a Swedish highschool, and feel in desperate need of something to get me through classes like Swedish, and Chemistry, while waiting for the programming and technology-classes."

Bruce let me know that he's written a piece on ZDNet (original home of the for the Window of Exposure idea is on Counterpane ^? ) about the problems of not following full disclosure. Very well written and does a great job of summarizing why full disclosure works. The original piece from Culp @ Microsoft is also available, along with the PowerPoint that they did.

Sarcasmo writes: "Hillary Rosen, CEO of the RIAA ^? , spoke at length (PDF of Speech) yesterday, during the 'O'Reilly Peer to Peer and Web Services conference'. " Update: 11/08 02:15 GMT by H : Yeah, I removed the Rosen text. Sorry.

Jason Perlow of Linux Magazine writes:" With all of the recent computer press coverage of Amazon and Intel converting their web servers and other front end application servers to Linux, many of these stories neglect to mention that the back end systems these companies use still rely on commercial Unixes like Solaris, AIX and HPUX to host their RDBMSes (Oracle, DB2, Sybase, Informix) for their mission critical transactional applications and data mining. Are there any companies out there actively using Linux to host a mission-critical RDBMS ^? or looking to replace UNIX with Linux for this purpose?"

An AC wrote: Forget Beowulf ^? clusters, Jacques Gelinas has made available a kernel patch to enable many virtual servers running on the same machine, even the same kernel. Read his original message posted to the Linux kernel list." Imagine what this will mean for hosting companies...

Kzip asks: "On my modest home LAN we have four computers with around 300Gb of storage. A lot of this is used, but not a lot of it is backed up (certainly not on a regular basis). When I started looking for a backup solution I found that most of the affordable tape backup was way to small (DAT 12/24 is just too small now a days) or too slow (Onstream do 50Gb but on IDE it's only ~1MB/s ... so 6 tapes over 80+ hours!) or just too expensive (HP Ultrium is great, but at £3000 for a drive and £120 per tape it's a little pricey). So I'd like to ask the /. community: Does anyone know of a fast and affordable backup system for home/small office use." After a quick scan of Pricewatch and other sites, it seems that backup solutions >99G are expensive (all the ones I could find were more than $1000US). How long will it be before these and terabyte-backup solutions become affordable for SOHO ^? use?

cyanide writes "Well it has been three years since The WorldForge Project was first announced on Slashdot as an effort to develop open source Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games (MMORG ^? ). Back then we were calling ourselves 'Altima', but since then we've released our first game, Acorn, and are now working on our next release, Mason. The project really is thriving now, and I'd love to see some new blood join us. "

Control-Z has brought our attention to the latest EFF newsletter which speaks out against MAPS ^? and ineffective spam legislation. According to the EFF: "The rights of users to send and receive email must not be compromised for quick and dirty ways to limit unsolicited bulk email. Neither misguided and ignorant legislation, nor collusive, high pressure protection schemes, have a legitimate function or place in our online future " The EFF is reminding us that freedom isn't always easy. I feel much worse for those who haven't figured out procmail yet though.

RoscoHead writes: "S'pose you've already seen this over at Fast Company - a follow-up to their previous article by Charles Fishman. The follow-up includes comments from three different "users" of Lego - including Hemos, alias Jeff Bates, Slashdot's esteemed Lego guru..."

A reader writes "According to this article at space.com, researchers at the University of Toronto have designed and built a working ornithopter. Their design will (hopefully) lift off solely powered by the motion of its articulated wings. First envisaged by Leonardo da Vinci, many will recall ornithopers' prominent role in Frank Herbert's Dune books. The U. Toronto Ornithopter project page is is found at ornithopter.net." "Usul ^? , Base of the Pillar"

Futurepower(tm) was one of the first to write with the news Red Hat reports loss, revenue slips, via Infoworld. Szulik ^? is right in his statement that compared to what's going on in the overall technology segment, RH is doing a good job.

the_ph0x` writes: "An article on Reuters describes a new breed of potato as being resistant to disease, able to grow in low nutrient soil and ... purple. Not all that interesting unless you're from an area where blight is a problem. At least we'll know we can always live on potatos, which who doesn't anyway ... mmm purple tater-tots." Combine it with the hideous green ketchup Heinz is making, and eating can be like a Kadinsky ^? painting!

pgrote writes "eBay won a court battle that brought to light a key provision of the DCMA. The judge says, "Although it may facilitate the sale of pirated material, "eBay does not have the right and ability to control such activity," a standard required by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the judge wrote." So does that mean that the P2P file trading programs are legal since the pirating occurs off the sites? This is could be a very important precedent. " In talking to some lawyer friends, their perspective on part of the Napster case was that by being very difficult in the beginning, Napster almost doomed itself. But, as always, IANAL ^? .

A reader writes: "Berlin ^? testing packages for Debian are available from the Debian website and should soon be moved to unstable, according to their the Berlin consortium website." The Berlin website (which looks great, IMHO) has an excellent architecture FAQ - the Berlin vs. X is very well done.Update: 09/01 12:41 PM GMT by H : A number of people have e-mailed me about some....wonkiness...if you view the Berlin vs X page using Internet Explorer. I'd advise using something else.

nicedream writes "Debian Planet is reporting that Progeny is killing the NOW project. " A reader also submitted the actual e-mail from Ian Murdock ^? . It appears that the current economic climate has had an adverse effect on Progeny - which is not surprising. Ian's also got some musings on the state of computing/networking, which outline some of the thoughts behind the NOW project.

rbb writes "Bryce Wilcox-O'Hearn, aka Zooko, has put together a simple chart that in just a few lines displays the characteristics of each of the most popular Open Source licenses. The table, which is currently in version 0.8.3, makes it easy to see in a glance how the licenses compare to one another." Easily digestible information - good for PHB ^[?] s.

Hobart writes "Berke Breathed, author of Bloom County has granted an interview to Tasha Robinson of the The Onion's AV Club. This is the second interview I've seen in six months (previous interview link) after the six years of silence since the end of Outland. He even calls for volunteers to help with his site! ;)"

Hobart writes "Berke Breathed, author of Bloom County has granted an interview to Tasha Robinson of the The Onion's AV Club. This is the second interview I've seen in six months (previous interview link) after the six years of silence since the end of Outland. He even calls for volunteers to help with his site! ;)"

Hobart writes "Berke Breathed, author of Bloom County has granted an interview to Tasha Robinson of the The Onion's AV Club. This is the second interview I've seen in six months (previous interview link) after the six years of silence since the end of Outland. He even calls for volunteers to help with his site! ;)"

Thanks to Dean Pannell (and Paul Ferris for the initial head's up) for pointing out the apology and statement of fact from Kevin Reichard, the Executive Editor of LinuxToday. I think the argument that people would know that "George Tirebiter" was merely a contrivance is weak, but whatever. You can read the previous stories in the astroturf ^[?] ing saga.

A reader writes "MPLS, or Multi-protocol Label Switching, seems to be a popular choice for router vendors nowadays until two AT&T researchers argue it differently. They "say MPLS create serious network management challenges for Internet backbone providers." "Even more dire are their warnings about potential security and privacy problems for companies that deploy MPLS-based VPNs." This issue will be discussed on an IETF meeting held this week in London. More details here ." Related to the IETF ^[?] , this submission came in: The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is now meeting in London for IETF-51. You can watch multicast sessions. "

I don't understand why Symantec classifies a "remote root" exploit as only "medium" damage. Code Red ^[?] is hitting cable modem networks especially hard, as the new variants scan "nearby" IP's in preference to random ones, which has apparently caused enough damage and network congestion that AT&T's residential broadband division (MediaOne) has cut off port 80 across their network to try and halt the spread of the worm, or so several submitters reported. Newsforge has a story about various reactions to the worm, and reader nettdata sent in an interesting story about the worm becoming the main course at a dinner of security specialists.

Cringely can string some words together from time to time, and this week's installment is a pretty good one. He's been reading a little too much Gibson (raw sockets have nothing to do with the spread of MSTD ^[?] 's), but overall, he's probably right. When the time is ripe, I think we'll see a move exactly like this.

We had thought we were done with Code Red last week, but CERT is sending out warnings that the entire internet will cease to exist if the Code Red MSTD ^[?] isn't stopped in its tracks. Even Scientific American has a story about it. Cringely tells us that the true threat is servers with mis-set clocks.

Prior Restraint writes "According to this ZDNet article, Tony Goodhew, a Microsoft program manager, implies that MS will license C# in such a way that Ximian won't be able to implement the ECMA standard." This comes on the heels of Ximian's announcement of working on .Net aka Mono ^[?] .

There's a great Dan Gillmor article, from his blog ^[?] regarding the challenge issued by Tim O'Reilly and Clay Shirky to the computer OEMs, asking them to include the latest Java JRE. As Microsoft has said they won't be including Java in WinXP, but are cool with "letting" OEMs put in other programs, let's see the manufacturers strike a blow for competition, and compatibility, and including a non-"extended and embraced" JRE.

Johnath writes: "Anarchy Online was supposed to be the next big thing in MMORPG ^[?] s. It was huge, it was complex, it was sophisticated. Unfortunately, it was also released far far FAR before its time. The AO forums are filling up with negative posts (which are then apparently being deleted by moderators) and the reviews, which AO reps asked people not to write are starting to come out anyhow." Update: 07/12 5:03 PM EST by CT : Links were randomly redirecting people, so I dropped them.

Newsforge (part of the sinister OSDN keiretsu ^[?] ) has a nice story about getting starting developing for the GNU/Linux desktop. I'm not totally sure this is the best way to start (any guide that starts off "First, learn C++" is not optimal in my book...) but there are some good tips in there.