Slashdot Mirror
Domain: gmx.net
Stories and comments across the archive that link to gmx.net.
Stories · 74
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Darwin's Voyage Done Over, Live
thrill12 writes "Almost 178 years ago, Charles Darwin set sail in the HMS Beagle, to do the now famous explorations that formed the basis for Darwin's On The Origin Of Species. Now, a group of British and Dutch scientists, journalists and artists set sail again to redo the voyage of the Beagle. This time, they are taking modern equipment with them and they have live connections through Twitter, Youtube, Facebook and Flickr. As they re-explore, and (re)discover, we can join that 8-month-long trip, live over the internet." -
Coder of Swiss Wiretapping Trojan Speaks Out
Lars Sobiraj writes "Ruben Unteregger has worked for a long time as a software-engineer for the Swiss company ERA IT Solutions. His job there was to code malware that would invade PCs of private users, and allow the wiretapping of VoIP calls — in particular, calls made through Skype. In the German-speaking areas of the country, the Trojans were called 'Bundestrojaner' because the Swiss government was involved with their development and use. Unfortunately, Unteregger has to remain silent about the customers of the company. Last night, he published the source code of his Skype-Trojan under the GPL." -
WikiLeaks' Daniel Schmitt Speaks
Lars Sobiraj submitted an interview with Daniel Schmitt of WikiLeaks. "He encourages all readers and warns his opponents — WikiLeaks has the means to make our society better, to create a world which stands united and strong against abuse — locally and nationally as well as globally. Modern, fast, world-wide technology makes it possible. In the interview, Daniel explains in detail how this will be done, with the help of WikiLeaks and all its supporters." -
Reading Guide To AI Design & Neural Networks?
Raistlin84 writes "I'm a PhD student in theoretical physics who's recently gotten quite interested in AI design. During my high school days, I spent most of my spare time coding various stuff, so I have a good working knowledge of some application programming languages (C/C++, Pascal/Delphi, Assembler) and how a computer works internally. Recently, I was given the book On Intelligence, where Jeff Hawkins describes numerous interesting ideas on how one would actually design a brain. As I have no formal background in computer science, I would like to broaden my knowledge in the direction of neural networks, pattern recognition, etc., but don't really know where to start reading. Due to my background, I figure that the 'abstract' theory would be mostly suited for me, so I would like to ask for a few book suggestions or other directions." -
Phoenix Lander Photographs Martian Whirlwinds
Toren Altair recommends a story up on the Space Fellowship site that begins "NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander has photographed several dust devils dancing across the arctic plain this week and sensed a dip in air pressure as one passed near the lander. The Surface Stereo Imager ... caught a dust devil in action west of the lander in four frames shot about 50 seconds apart from each other. 'It was a surprise to have a dust devil so visible that it stood [out] with just the normal processing we do,' said Mark Lemmon of Texas A&M University, College Station, lead scientist for the stereo camera. 'Once we saw a couple that way, we did some additional processing and found there are dust devils in 12 of the images.'" -
Rocket Racing League Flights With Armadillo Engine
Toren Altair mentions that the Rocket Racing League has video and pictures available from their recent flight tests of new Armadillo Aerospace liquid oxygen-alcohol engines. "Founded in 2005 by two-time Indianapolis 500 winning team partner Granger Whitelaw and X PRIZE Chairman and CEO Peter H. Diamandis, MD, the Rocket Racing League (RRL) is a new entertainment sports league that combines the exhilaration of racing with the power of rocket engines. To be held at venues across the country, the Rocket Racing League will feature multiple races pitting up to 10 Rocket Racers going head to head in a 4-lap, multiple elimination heat format on a 5-mile 'Formula One'-like closed circuit raceway in the sky." -
Electronic Arts Delivers OS X Games
pete314 wrote to say that "Electronic Arts had broken its WWDC promise to launch games for OS X on the same day as the Windows version." Thankfully, the company has come through, with four new titles now available for order: Battlefield 2142, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Need for Speed Carbon, and Command & Conquer 3 Tiberium Wars . Thanks to mr100percent for the update. -
Can Apple Find a European iPhone Partner?
pete314 writes "A Vnunet.com article claims that European mobile operators are unwilling to concede to Apple iPhone partnership demands. Several operators went as far as to say they 'will never offer the iPhone.' In the US, Verizon reportedly passed on the device, and AT&T is rumored to have engaged in a revenue-sharing deal that includes monthly payments to Cupertino." In Europe, unlike in the US, Apple has the option of selling the iPhone through its own dealer network without a simlock. -
Red Hat Develops Online Desktop
pete314 writes "Red Hat announced this week at their San Diego Red Hat Summit that they are planning to compete with Microsoft on the desktop by building an 'online desktop' that will integrate local data with online services. Red Hat CTO Brian Stevens argued that: 'To user the desktop metaphor is dead. We don't believe that recreating a Windows paradigm in an open source model will do anything to advance the productivity in the life of users.'" -
Microsoft Looking to Run Windows on OLPC
pete314 writes "Microsoft has been provided with a number of test models of Nicholas Negroponte's One Laptop per Child computers and is trying to get Windows installed on them. The current design runs a custom version of Red Hat's Fedora Linux. Running Windows will take quite a bit of additional memory: the OLPC has 512Mb of Flash, where XP requires a minimum of 1.5Gb storage." -
Open Source Databases "50% Cheaper"
pete314 writes, "Open source databases can cut the total cost of ownership of a database by up to 60% compared to the cost of running proprietary databases from Oracle, Microsoft or IBM. According to data collected by Forrester Research, the savings average about 50%. Open source databases however still struggle to reach mission-critical enterprise applications because enterprises perceive them to be less secure and stable." -
Belgium Chooses OpenDocument
Freggy writes "The Belgian government decided today that all public services should use open standard file formats for the exchange of office documents ( press release in Dutch, French). The reason is that they don't want to force people to have to buy a proprietary program to be able to read official documents. All federal public services should be able to read ODF files by September 2007. If no problems arise after a study, the use of the file format will be obligatory from September 2008." -
Sun to Release Java Source Code
pete314 writes "After resisting for years, Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz at JavaOne this morning said that he will release the source code for Java. The company is asking developers to provide feedback on how to best get there and prevent forking and fragmentation." -
EU Gears Up for Another Patent Fight
DirkFromEurope writes "Heise Online is reporting on the Digital Europe meeting of the Progress & Freedom Foundation in Prague. From the article: 'Proponents for a broadening of industrial property rights in the computer sector have declared a new round in the fight about software patents in the EU opened. "It starts again", announced Günther Schmalz, head of SAP's software department.' Günther also 'expressed hope that his camp will be better prepared this time than during the last struggle. A "bridge position" must be reached, which both sides could live with.'" -
Yahoo Map Engineers Prank Google
pete314 writes "Yahoo engineers apparently couldn't help themselves, and Yahoo Maps had a great prank on the folks at Google. The beta of the new Yahoo Maps for a short while listed 'The Dude's Fish Store' at 1600 Amphiteatre Parkway in Mountain View, CA. The address is better known as the headquarters for Yahoo's competitor Google." From the post: "The phone number listed is for guy named Ruben Suterwitz (or that's what it sounds like on his voicemail). His voicemail gives the option to get assistance, forwarding callers to the Google front desk. There are several hints pointing to a Google prank. The search engine's co-founder Sergey Brin was born in Russia and both he and his buddy Larry Page were students at Stanford when they founded the company. " -
Rootkit Creators Turn Professional
pete richards writes "Signalling a trend towards increased 'outsourcing' of some elements of malware creation, worm authors are increasingly turning to commercially available rootkits to help their creations slip past virus detection engines. Those root kits in the mean time are becoming more professional. Antivirus vendor F-Secure reported last week that it had detected a first rootkit designed to bypass detection by most of the modern rootkit detection engines." -
Florida DUI Law and Open Source
pete314 writes "A Florida court this Friday will hear arguments in a case where the accuracy of a breathalyzer is being scrutinized because the manufacturer refuses to release the source code. A state court ruling last year said that accused drunk drivers are entitled to receive details about the inner workings of the "mystical machine" that determined their guilt, and defense attorneys are now using that ruling to open up the device's source code.Is this part of a larger trend? With software bugs being a fact of life, consumers and organizations could claim that they need to be able to verify an application's source code before they accept that their calculations are accurate. Think credit card transactions, speed detecting radar guns, electronic voting machines..." Here is our previous story when this first became an issue in Florida. -
TPM Security Chip For Your Cell Phone
pete314 writes "The Trusted Computing Group has unveiled that it is working on a mobile version of its TPM security chip. It should prevent the phone world from being hit by the same virus and hacking issues that face computers. However, the EFF is not amused, stating that the chip will be used for DRM, and could even limit which software the owner installs on his cell phone." -
SteamWatch Offers Forum for Displeased Customers
paniq writes "SteamWatch has opened a forum to discuss the pros and cons of Valves online distribution software Steam 'due to constant deletion of complaint threads in the official Steam forum', as the site states. Installation of Steam to play Valves newest cutting edge shooter Half-Life 2 is mandatory, but forum members criticize Valve for meager Support, violation of consumer rights and formulate alternative ideas for Steams implementation. A 'Steam Watch' news section covers articles and rants about Steam found on the net." -
Simulating Network Latency?
ixmo asks: "I've just come around an interesting problem: to simulate low-bandwidth network links without buying expensive WAN simulators, I can connect two old Cisco routers back to back with serial cables, and control the bandwidth via the 'clock rate' IOS command, but how can I simulate network latency? Is there some OS tool or patch (for Linux/OpenBSD) that allows for tuning of network delay? Any hints?" -
Wiring a Neighborhood?
mklencke writes "I'm part of a project that is developing a small neighborhood of about 30 houses in the Netherlands with technology, durability and ecological features in mind. We are looking at centralizing the Internet, TV, phone and radio access. Options we have come across are a central satellite dish, a central subscriber line, etc. Preferably, fiber optics will be used. However, it is very difficult to have a good overview of possibilities, and fiber optics technology is apparently very expensive to implement. Have any Slashdot readers been engaged in a similar project? Do you have hints or resources on how to go about wiring our neighborhood?" -
Debian Removes Binary-only Firmware From Kernel
mbanck writes "The Debian Linux kernel maintainer has announced that he will remove firmware from GPL'd drivers which obviously lack source code in its preferred form (i.e. something more appropriate than a hexdump inside a char[]), in accordance with the release manager's decision. The alternatives are user-space loading of the firmware via hotplug's request_firmware() API or making the vendors aware of the issue. How do the other distributions handle this?" -
Real 'Akira' Motorcycle
News for nerds writes "At Tokyo Motorcycle Show in Japan (2/3/4 Apr.), the official licensed model of the motorcycle in the anime movie Akira (poster) is displayed. This Kaneda bike is not a mere replica, but a full working model (more pics at ITmedia) with twin-steering system and 249-998cc water-cooled 4-cycle engine, and on its cockpit is DVD-navi-system + trackball & ten-key + custom computer-controlled LED meters - all licenced by the author and the publisher of Akira. Though at the show only miniature figures are sold and real price or release date is unclear, you can check out the manufacturer's website for later info." -
Unhealthy Sniffing
Simon Doring writes "Stefan Esser did it again. Yesterday he reported 13 remote root vulnerabilities in Ethereal. Time to teach all those sniffing kiddies an unhealthy lesson. The next LAN party will be a lot of fun." -
GameCube-Powered Webserver
Daniel Kolph writes "The GameCube Linux Project has just released, what they call the GameCube Linux Alpha This is an 1 MB busybox-based Linux system that contains screen output, network code, a telnet server and a webserver. They also provide a kernel patch. (Screenshots/Download)" -
OpenBSD Gains "Fuzzy" User Profiling IDS
NaveWeiss writes "According to the OpenBSD Journal, major work has been done on an innovative new OpenBSD feature termed 'fuzzy user profile' intrusion detection system' - or 'fupids.' According to Steffen Wendzel, the code 'creates profiles for every user who does an execve() syscall on obsd systems.'" -
Kernel Exploit Cause Of Debian Compromise
mbanck writes "The cause of the recent Debian Project server compromise has been published by the Debian security team: 'Forensics revealed a burneye encrypted exploit. Robert van der Meulen managed to decrypt the binary which revealed a kernel exploit. Study of the exploit by the RedHat and SuSE kernel and security teams quickly revealed that the exploit used an integer overflow in the brk system call. Using this bug it is possible for a userland program to trick the kernel into giving access to the full kernel address space'. This issue has been fixed in 2.4.23. Thus, the Linux kernel compromise was not Debian specific." -
More Info on Debian.org Security Breach
mbanck writes "James Troup (part of the Debian System administration team) has published more information on the recent compromise of four debian.org machines. The attack vector seemed to be a sniffed password of an unprivileged account, from which the attacker somehow managed to gain root and install the suckit rootkit and crack the other machines. As the machines were fairly uptodate with respect to security, an as-of-yet unknown local root exploit might be in the wild, so keep an eye on your boxen.Note that the main ftp archive running on a sparc machine was not compromised, so the exploit might not yet be ported to non-i386 architectures." -
Nobel Laureate Agre Fears for Scientific Freedom
Scared Scientists writes "Peter Agre, who has just won the Nobel Prize for research on cell membranes, is finally a scientist with enough recognition to speak out about the policy of intimidation against scientists by the Bush administration. He says, with respect to Thomas Butler, a plague expert, "He was arrested and taken away in chains ... This is something that's bothered many of us". Many scientists have been outspoken about these problems thus far, maybe a Nobel Prize laureate has enough influence to finally move something. He even wants to use some of his prize money to battle the intimidation by the government." -
GUI Toolkits for the X Window System
TeachingMachines writes "Leslie Polzer has written a nice summary of the current state of GUI Toolkits for the X Windows System (article title of the same name). Those of you who are planning to spend hours and hours scouring the Internet for a mature cross-platform GUI toolkit may save some time and trouble by reading this summary. Leslie's review covers the pros and cons of using GTK+, Trolltech QT, FLTK, wxWindows, and the FOX Toolkit." -
Network Chat as a Tool for Corporate Communications?
rimmon asks: "I'd like to know what experience have you made with [network-enabled chatting programs] as tools to communicate with your boss, with your employees or your customers? Does your company utilize [Instant Messenger or IRC] as a communication tool (to communicate with customers, between employees and Pointy Haired Bosses? If you use or provide [chatting systems]: Is this technology an effective tool to communicate? What are the Pros and Cons? What type of chat technology do you use and what flavor of chat (open, moderated, etc.) works best for you?" -
Online Scientific Information Portals?
Knacklappen asks: "On August 5th, vascoda, Germany's new central access point for comprehensive scientific information, goes online. It will incorporate 23 virtual libraries and 4 scientific information networks, and offer these information for free. For the paying customer, there will also be access to electronic journals. What freely accessible scientific information portals do you use? I usually turn to the following when searching for articles: arxiv.org, AVEL, CiteSeer, dissonline.de, DOE Information Bridge, DSpace, ETD, NDLTD, OAIster, OPUS, TheO. Are there any others that you can recommend?" -
Dave Stutz's Parting Advice To Microsoft
thasmudyan writes "Like probably many others I followed the recent link to Heise only to get a much more interesting story than the one about Mozilla/OpenOffice: Dave Stutz, an influencial guy at Microsoft, is resigning his position. He posted an open letter to his ex-employer and this rest of the world, explaining what MS is doing wrong in his opinion. I thought it made an interesting read, maybe Open Source projects should consider some of the key points (as MS seems to be too slow to adapt, it may be good time to move faster than 'the industry')." (Read this Slashdot post from 2001 to see an interesting interview with Stutz about "shared source" and .NET.) -
Infinite Games?
Anonymous Coward writes "BBC is running a story on how US scientists are working on improving AI - with potential benefits for coming games. The system, called Liquid Narrative allows to avoid scripted storylines, and finally gives us, the gamers, full freedom to do whatever we want to do. R. Michael Young, the project coordinator, says: 'Game companies are realising that story telling has a lot of potential that has not been tapped yet.'" -
Lindows' Heavy Hand Leads to Summit Dropouts
shawk writes "With Lindows becoming more popular the company's confidence seems to be growing. According to a news item on Desktoplinux.com Lindows unilaterally adjusted the agenda of a planned vendor-neutral summit in a way that is not tolerable for others supporting the conference. A related article on CNET reports HP having withdrawn from the summit as well." -
MS Proposes Disclosing Windows Source To India
raghuram writes "Interesting news from Economic Times of India, I found an interesting story, Microsoft Planning to Share Code with India." He excerpts from that article: "Microsoft has already made a proposal to the ministry of information technology (of India) for sharing the Windows source code with one government body. The nature of the body has not been spelt out; it will presumably be worked out after discussions between the company and the government officials. Interestingly, the offer comes at a time when state governments are showing interest in rival Linux operating system as the latter's source code is free and downloadable from the internet." -
Thursday Release Party
taktile writes "I started the project about a week and a half ago after learning about Apple's ASCIIMoviePlayer. QuickASCII is an Open Source project to add improvements to Apple's player." Another user writes, "There is a small group collaboration program called iStorm that is out. It anyone gets tired of severely delayed collaboration over the Internet, maybe he should try an almost telepathic experience with this program." ludeyork writes "I just saw that BBEdit 7.0 has been released and it's got great new features." It's very cool, and by cool, I mean totally sweet. The CVS integration is worth the upgrade for me. yuck72 writes "Apple has just released version 5.2 of its WebObjects application server. Improvements include better J2EE integration, easy tools for building SOAP-based web services and Java Webstart support. Applications can be deployed on any machine with a Java 1.3.1 compliant JVM. Apple's 'best-kept secret' really deserves more attention than it currently gets considering that it plays in the same league as Websphere and Weblogic." Oops, maybe I should have given it its own story. -
Antibiotic Resistant Staph Infections
LinuxGeek8 writes "There's a news update on a previous article about the first case of antibiotic resistant staph infections. The woman who has the infection is being kept up to 6 months in an isolation room. She is taking an antibiotic that is working, after many others did not. "In the scheme of public health threats, this has to rank close to the top," David Ropeik, director of risk communication at the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis, said of antibiotic resistance." -
What To Expect From KDE 3.1
Moritz Moeller - Her writes "As most of you desktop users already know, the KDE Project recently released KDE 3.1beta2, which will be the final development release before KDE 3.1. The good news is, KDE 3.1 is scheduled for release in just a few weeks. The following page gives a nice overview about what is coming with many screenshots. It will certainly be the best KDE ever." -
Survey On Security Investment Trends
whoisjoe writes "Information Security Magazine has an interesting article (although it's in PDF) on the trends and effects of security spending by organizations. Basically, organizations tend to spend less per machine as they grow, and the effectiveness of their investment tends to depend more on the share of the IT budget than the absolute amount." -
iPod on Linux... with GPLed software
Anonymous Coward writes "gnuPod 0.2 has just been released. It's the first GPLed program that allows you to use your iPod under Linux. It has support for playlists and stores information in a XML file, so it's very easy to edit the data or write a frontend. Still a bit 'beta' but its ready for every-day-use and it works well together with iTunes. A mac-ipod2win-ipod howto is also included." -
EBone/KPNQwest Network Shutting Down
reginald.barclay writes "As KPNQwest has filed for bankruptcy some time ago, also EBone, which they aquired some months ago, goes down the drain. Together, these two companies carried betwenn 1/3 and 1/2 of European IP Traffic (and, in the case of KPNQwest, an unknown portion of voice). Employees at Ebone were laid off last week and told to abandon their NOC. But instead of getting drunk and over with it, they occupied their former workplace. Now even their time is running out, and one of Europes oldest backbone carriers will probably be shut down today, at 1700 CET. I wonder how many of their customers (mostly ISPs and VBCs themselves) have managed to run to the competition in time. Nevertheless, I expect the routing in large parts of Europe to be very interesting (in the chinese sense, of course) over the coming weekend and early next week." Update: 06/14 18:02 GMT by M : Apparently KPNQwest's creditors have agreed to pay to keep the place going until the end of June. -
MacSlash Up at macslash.org
M. Uli Kusterer writes "After the recent problems with its .com domain expiring and the notice from dotster being eaten by mac.com's over-eager spam filter, MacSlash now has registered the www.macslash.org domain. So, tell your friends and surf over there again :-)" It came back up for me over the weekend. Read of the events that led up to this. The short of it: mac.com, without MacSlash's knowledge, filtered as spam their domain renewal notice, and someone swiped the domain when it expired. -
Processor Problems w/ Toshiba s504 & s507 Laptops?
Diridari asks: "The are some serious overheating problems with the Toshiba 5005-S504/S507 notebooks that Toshiba will not officially confirm. Many people been sending their boxes to the Toshiba depot more then once, but nothing was fixed. Since this notebook has a GeForce4go and is advertised as a desktop replacement, it should definitely be a nice gaming/multimedia notebook, but it isn't. The problem is that the CPU is a desktop CPU and during a Direct3D gaming session, or any CPU stressing application, it gets hot (Toshiba's cost reduction strategy by using the desktop CPU; I call it design flaw). I had a temperature of 65-73 Celsius during a test gaming session of DarkAgeOfCamelot with hmonitor. At 75 the box would shut down. The BIOS update from Toshiba throttles the CPU speed from 1.1G to 500MHz as a 'solution', which is not acceptable for a box that costs $2000. If I just wanted to read emails on this box, I would have spend $800 for a notebook." Has anyone had luck either getting Toshiba to properly handle this situation to their satisfaction, or via some form of workaround?"If you want to read more about these problems, you can check Compuserve's Toshiba Forums [C: expect long load times] and search for "Still overheating" and Google for more information and user comments.
The Toshiba customer service is not helping at all. What can be done? How can I get the box that was actually advertised by Toshiba and not a very-expensive 500Mhz-for-email-only box? Do I have rights as a customer?" -
Setting up an Internet Cafe?
ioquatix asks: "Hi there... I am planning (not 100% sure yet) on setting up an internet cafe in Christchurch, New Zealand. However, there are many interesting issues that I must resolve first, such as location, staff, security (thats one of the big ones, unfortunately), and computers. The question I want to ask is, who out there (there is bound to be a few) has set up an internet cafe, and what advice can you give?""What kind of set up did you start off with: 10 computers, 256kbit DSL, a dedicated T3 or something else? I am currently looking at 8 computers with some form of DSL (this should be the most cost effective solution). Cable might be available, but it depends on the location.
This internet cafe is primarily aimed at gamers, and I am interested to know how much success small internet cafes have had with bulk software purchases (say X = number of computers (8 to 10), X licenses for Half-Life and X licenses for Starcraft etc). I think I can get into contact with suppliers in Australia, but X licenses may still not be enough to be bulk. What suppliers (in the Australia/Pacific region) have other internet cafes delt with and bought software from? Please pass along any lessons learned if so.
What kind of times are the most popular? Being open all day costs a lot, so I was thinking of being open 5~6pm to about 11pm, seven days a week, and also having an 'all night special' on friday nights. What times do you run your internet cafe? What kind of special all night things do you have? For the readers out there, what times would be optimal for you and what kind of 'specials' would you want?
I am also interested how you deal with security. I have been thinking of basically hiring a bouncer to deal with gatecrashers and such (but this is rather expensive). Is security this much of a problem? I mean, how do you deal with a car of five drugged and drunken idiots intent on (as in smashing window/door down intent) getting some counterstrike goodness (or just seeing what happens when you stick someones head inside a broken monitor)? Do internet cafes attract this kind of person? I was talking to my parents, and they were saying that drunken people just drive around looking for a joint to gatecrash, and being open at 11pm just sounds like trouble to me. So does your internet cafe hire bouncers or some other form of security?
I had thought I would get people to 'register' first, and then book appointments beforehand - perhaps even some sort of video security system on the front door (or maybe even fingerprint ID/keycards). Has anyone tried anything like this and has it been successful? Can you recommend any such systems in existence? Any kind of 'register' before use system will always cause hassles for new users, and put off the casual gamer, which is also a problem...
The security situation also has a lot to do with location. I am currently looking at an area close to the local university, and also a location within the university. Getting a site within university would solve a lot of the security problems (university has its own security staff) so this would help, but I am not sure if there is a space currently for rent.
What kind of system should I run? Obviously most games are only going to run on windows, (and wine is a bitch, and imagine the bitchiness multiplied out against X machines), but I don't want to buy windows licenses (and I also don't want to pirate software) so where can I pick up some second hand windows 98SE licenses for a small cost? Would it be legal, if I was to advertise I will pay $20 for your win98SE license? Or would I be better off buying X licenses for Micro$oft Super Advanced Multigaming iExecution eServer Special Edition?
Anyway, I am not sure I have even thought through all the issues yet, and I am sure there may be something I have forgotten something, but this is just an idea I had, and the figures work out pretty nicely on paper, for a student income ^_^.
If you have any suggestions, please write me! I will be very interested to hear what you think.
Samuel Williams
coolfr3ak@gmx.net
http://utopia5.mine.nu/" -
Setting up an Internet Cafe?
ioquatix asks: "Hi there... I am planning (not 100% sure yet) on setting up an internet cafe in Christchurch, New Zealand. However, there are many interesting issues that I must resolve first, such as location, staff, security (thats one of the big ones, unfortunately), and computers. The question I want to ask is, who out there (there is bound to be a few) has set up an internet cafe, and what advice can you give?""What kind of set up did you start off with: 10 computers, 256kbit DSL, a dedicated T3 or something else? I am currently looking at 8 computers with some form of DSL (this should be the most cost effective solution). Cable might be available, but it depends on the location.
This internet cafe is primarily aimed at gamers, and I am interested to know how much success small internet cafes have had with bulk software purchases (say X = number of computers (8 to 10), X licenses for Half-Life and X licenses for Starcraft etc). I think I can get into contact with suppliers in Australia, but X licenses may still not be enough to be bulk. What suppliers (in the Australia/Pacific region) have other internet cafes delt with and bought software from? Please pass along any lessons learned if so.
What kind of times are the most popular? Being open all day costs a lot, so I was thinking of being open 5~6pm to about 11pm, seven days a week, and also having an 'all night special' on friday nights. What times do you run your internet cafe? What kind of special all night things do you have? For the readers out there, what times would be optimal for you and what kind of 'specials' would you want?
I am also interested how you deal with security. I have been thinking of basically hiring a bouncer to deal with gatecrashers and such (but this is rather expensive). Is security this much of a problem? I mean, how do you deal with a car of five drugged and drunken idiots intent on (as in smashing window/door down intent) getting some counterstrike goodness (or just seeing what happens when you stick someones head inside a broken monitor)? Do internet cafes attract this kind of person? I was talking to my parents, and they were saying that drunken people just drive around looking for a joint to gatecrash, and being open at 11pm just sounds like trouble to me. So does your internet cafe hire bouncers or some other form of security?
I had thought I would get people to 'register' first, and then book appointments beforehand - perhaps even some sort of video security system on the front door (or maybe even fingerprint ID/keycards). Has anyone tried anything like this and has it been successful? Can you recommend any such systems in existence? Any kind of 'register' before use system will always cause hassles for new users, and put off the casual gamer, which is also a problem...
The security situation also has a lot to do with location. I am currently looking at an area close to the local university, and also a location within the university. Getting a site within university would solve a lot of the security problems (university has its own security staff) so this would help, but I am not sure if there is a space currently for rent.
What kind of system should I run? Obviously most games are only going to run on windows, (and wine is a bitch, and imagine the bitchiness multiplied out against X machines), but I don't want to buy windows licenses (and I also don't want to pirate software) so where can I pick up some second hand windows 98SE licenses for a small cost? Would it be legal, if I was to advertise I will pay $20 for your win98SE license? Or would I be better off buying X licenses for Micro$oft Super Advanced Multigaming iExecution eServer Special Edition?
Anyway, I am not sure I have even thought through all the issues yet, and I am sure there may be something I have forgotten something, but this is just an idea I had, and the figures work out pretty nicely on paper, for a student income ^_^.
If you have any suggestions, please write me! I will be very interested to hear what you think.
Samuel Williams
coolfr3ak@gmx.net
http://utopia5.mine.nu/" -
e-Denounce
Knacklappen writes: "A British organization named Federation Against Software Theft (FAST) will according to this article on Monday launch a plug-in for Internet Explorer that will put an 'F' button on a user's browser. Pressing the button, one can easily tipoff FAST about pirated software. The plug-in captures a live example of the site for evidence as well as other basic information about the site. Great idea, but why not mark the button with 'D' for 'denounce'?" -
Slashback: Decade, Fragmentation, RDRAM
Slashback brings you updates and amplifications on the SSSCA, the future of RAMBUS and Intel, fragmentation of filesystems, a book reviewer who's been publishing online longer than some slashdot readers have walked erect, and more. Read on for the details.A screenplay written by Jack Valenti? cc_pirate writes: "Apparently Sen. Fritz Hollings (D - Disney, er - SC) completed his hearings today on how the media needs to have content protection included in computers. Intel and other high tech companies resist and are chastized by Hollings."
Penguins are the new Turtles. Gerein writes "After many months of extreme lobbying, personal attacks, public petitions and surveys, the war over the future OS of the Bundestag (German parliament) is finally over (previous /. stories). As heise reports (in german, use the fish) Linux won't make it to the desktops (they're going with XP) but will take over the 150 servers. The last critical question over the directory service has finally been decided in favor to OpenLDAP instead of Active Directory. It's not the complete victory for Linux, many had hoped for, but it's a start for more Open Source in the German government."
Full disclosure seems like a nice idea. Merlynnus writes: "Yahoo! is running a story, Copy-protected CD makers lose battle, in which Music City Records, Fahrenheit Entertainment and digital rights management company Sunncomm have 'agreed' to stop collecting personal info, and to label copy-protected CDs as defective, er, play-challenged in certain devices. The agreement came as the result of court action by a Cali resident, Karen DeLise, over the Charlie Pride CD, 'Charley Pride: A Tribute to Jim Reeves.' Did that CD really need copy-protecting?"
This should have been transparent. Metrollica writes: "It turns out the transparent aluminium article at Spiegel was misunderstood. Sci-fighter published a correction. The transparent substance was not aluminium but alumina, shorthand for aluminium oxide. Slashdot reported on transparent aluminium here."
Odds are, somebody's written a thesis on it ... and here one is. Whether in response to this Ask Slashdot question or just a lucky guesser, Cine writes: "The standard filesystem benchmarking tools such as Bonnie++, Postmark , Mongo and others all test the optimum case for the block layouting algorithm. But in practice one also is interested to know how a filesystem performs when it is or was heavily used over a longer period (e.g. months and years).So Constantin Loizides has written a Master Thesis about the performance of filesystems under the influence of fragmentation."
Intel-Rambus break not as simple as portrayed. Controlio writes: "Tom's Hardware Guide has posted a clarification regarding the EBN story with the sensational headline, 'Intel to drop support of Rambus in new CPU products'. The article was also posted on Slashdot. Tom reports:
EBN had the sensational headline Intel to drop support of Rambus in new CPU products, but the story goes on to say, "Intel will continue using Direct Rambus memory with its network processors. Also, although not new products, the next iterations of its 850 and 860 chipsets, supporting a 533MHz front-side, will support RDRAM when they arrive, probably in the second half of this year." A little misleading, wouldn't you say? Hard to tell, but you read it for yourself, and make your own call.
Great. More sensational journalism. Maybe someone should submit Jack Robertson's resume to Fox News."Finally, some congratulations are in order. danny writes (does he ever): "February 28th marks the 10th anniversary of my first book review; there are now over six hundred. I have written an account of ten years writing book reviews, which illustrates something of how online publication has changed over the years."
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On the Subject of OpenGL 2.0
zendal writes "The danger with pixel shaders and vertex shaders is that there is no standard for programmability of graphics hardware. A schism has formed within DirectX between the competing demands of GPU makers Nvidia and ATI. Noted analyst Jon Peddie gives THG an exclusive first look at a White Paper on how OpenGL 2.0 is trying to bring stability and open standards to programmable graphics and GPUs." -
Inside Intel
z71offroad writes: "There is a really interesting article at Anandtech right now showing what goes on inside Intel Labs. Although it doesnt break any NDAs, it is still a facinating look at what goes on inside the chip giant's labs."
