Slashdot Mirror

Alien54 writes "NASA has been taking a beating about their in ability to get the really important things done. ABCNEWS has a story that reveals exactly what they have been working on: Computer control of things like joystick interfaces and keyboards by reading the muscles directly. No more joysticks or keyboards. Just gestures to control, say, an aircraft. A more advanced gaming interface indeed! There is also a short video showing the current state of the art." Imagine what this device could do for the por-- I mean, gaming industry.

Gnight asks: "After reading a recent article at ABC News stating that U.S. citizens work more than any other industrialized country, I have started to wonder more about the subject. So my question is, how much does the average slashdot reader work in a week? Where do you live? and What do you do?" Slashdot did an informal poll on this a long time ago, but it was more from the workday standpoint, though it looked like the majority of us were working 9-10 hour days. Is it still the same today as it was almost 2 years ago?

dachshund writes: "ABCNews.com has an article on some scientists who have managed to bring a corpse's brain cells back to life in a Petri dish. Yikes. Doesn't seem to be a Frankenstien scenario, though-- the main applications have to do with stem cell research. Sort of makes you think, though..."

Cormac writes "Here's an interesting article about scienists in the Korean Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) who are developing see-through flat speakers which (they claim) could be rolled/folded up and put in your pocket or even be pinned to a wall." I wonder about the fidelity, but there could be some excellent potential here: it irritates me that my center channel is on my TV. Without getting a projector and putting the speaker behind a screen, something like this could just be built onto your TV. But can it sound good?

GeHa writes "ABCnews has a story about the possible recovery of a hidden Japanese gold cache. Remember Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon?" A search on google brings up several interesting stories on this Thai gold hunt, including one to a 1996 article which includes a photo allegedly showing the entrance to the cave holding this cache. Now I have to re-read Cryptonomicon;)

cornflux writes: "Seems like every day they're 'cracking' the genetic code for something. Tuesday was the day for the genus Streptococcus, which causes the lovely illness we call strep throat. ABCNews.com has the story." From the article: "The bacteria cause thousands of human illnesses each year, including strep throat, impetigo, pneumonia, toxic shock syndrome, blood poisoning, scarlet fever, rheumatic fever and a flesh-eating disease called necrotizing fasciitis."

cornflux writes: "Seems like every day they're 'cracking' the genetic code for something. Tuesday was the day for the genus Streptococcus, which causes the lovely illness we call strep throat. ABCNews.com has the story." From the article: "The bacteria cause thousands of human illnesses each year, including strep throat, impetigo, pneumonia, toxic shock syndrome, blood poisoning, scarlet fever, rheumatic fever and a flesh-eating disease called necrotizing fasciitis."

PeterMiller writes "ABC News is running a story on a US federal appeal court that threw out a record $109 million verdict against anti-abortion rights activists. From the article: 'If defendants threatened to commit violent acts, by working alone or with others, then their [works] could properly support the verdict,' Circuit Judge Alex Kozinski wrote. 'But if their [works] merely encouraged unrelated terrorists, then their words are protected by the First Amendment.' My question is, what does this do to every other lawsuit claiming a website, movie, video game or song lead someone to a violent act?" Readers may recall that this case involved an anti-abortion website which published the names and addresses of doctors who provided abortion services, and cheered whenever one of them was killed. Our previous stories are here and here. The Appeals Court's opinion reviews the history of the case, and the finding that the statements on the website were not true threats under U.S. law and were thus protected speech. There used to be a number of mirrors of the site available - most of them seem to have disappeared, but this one is still up, minus the lists of doctors.

PeterMiller writes "ABC News is running a story on a US federal appeal court that threw out a record $109 million verdict against anti-abortion rights activists. From the article: 'If defendants threatened to commit violent acts, by working alone or with others, then their [works] could properly support the verdict,' Circuit Judge Alex Kozinski wrote. 'But if their [works] merely encouraged unrelated terrorists, then their words are protected by the First Amendment.' My question is, what does this do to every other lawsuit claiming a website, movie, video game or song lead someone to a violent act?" Readers may recall that this case involved an anti-abortion website which published the names and addresses of doctors who provided abortion services, and cheered whenever one of them was killed. Our previous stories are here and here. The Appeals Court's opinion reviews the history of the case, and the finding that the statements on the website were not true threats under U.S. law and were thus protected speech. There used to be a number of mirrors of the site available - most of them seem to have disappeared, but this one is still up, minus the lists of doctors.

shaniber writes "Animation pioneer William Hanna, co-creator of such classic cartoons as The Jetsons and The Flintstones, has passed away this week. ABCNEWS is also carrying the story." Besides giving me Tom and Jerry and The Jetsons, I think the thing that I respect most about Hanna is the fact that a show like Space Ghost Coast to Coast was allowed to take their characters and do something truly unique with them. He even lent his voice to the show in one episode. Not a lot of people would be willing to allow one of their creations to be twisted like that, but the original Space Ghost was one of my childhood staples, and C2C stands in a class all its own proving that creativity isn't dead on TV.

DaHat writes "ABC News.com is reporting that the latest round of Big Brother Awards are out. This years list includes the FBI's carnivore system being named "Most Invasive Proposal." The NSA won a "Lifetime Menace" award for, allegedly, "50 years of spying" on Americans and others and even the Florida company ChoicePoint was named "greatest corporate invader," for their actions during the Florida recount. Get the whole scoop and whole article here." We should have a different award, the Stalin award or something for entities advancing the destruction of the first ammendment. We can nominate the evil organizations oppressing freedom of speech like the RIAA, the MPAA, and Slashdot.

DaHat writes "ABC News.com is reporting that the latest round of Big Brother Awards are out. This years list includes the FBI's carnivore system being named "Most Invasive Proposal." The NSA won a "Lifetime Menace" award for, allegedly, "50 years of spying" on Americans and others and even the Florida company ChoicePoint was named "greatest corporate invader," for their actions during the Florida recount. Get the whole scoop and whole article here." We should have a different award, the Stalin award or something for entities advancing the destruction of the first ammendment. We can nominate the evil organizations oppressing freedom of speech like the RIAA, the MPAA, and Slashdot.

xpccx writes: "I've seen in several scientific journals articles about a device called a 'Smart Probe.' It's a device from BioLuminate which is licensing technologies from NASA and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. (Read more.)

From the press release:

Sensors on the tip of the probe measure optical, electrical and chemical properties that are known to differ between healthy and cancerous tissues. The "Smart Probe" can detect multiple (5 to 7) known indicators of breast cancer. Tissue measurements are made in real time in both normal and suspect tissue.

I did a Google search and information can be found here(1), here(2) and here(3) amongst others.

It's still an invasive procedure, but if it does work it would be a great relief to women who would normally go through unecessary biopsies. "In the U.S. each week, approximately 16,000 women undergo unnecessary, surgical breast biopsies on suspicious tissue that turns out benign.""

Wendy writes "Oral arguments in the Microsoft Case appeal are scheduled Monday and Tuesday before the full D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. In a first, the court is offering live audio streaming through ABC News and C-SPAN. Arguments begin at 9:30 a.m. -- monopoly maintenance and tying Monday; attempted monopolization, relief, and Judge Jackson's conduct of the trial Tuesday. Microsoft is, of course, appealing Jackson's breakup order and final judgment."

twivel writes "According to ABC News and this article, scientists are working on creating a bacteria that destroys CO2 and other greenhouse gasses. I wonder what happens if the bacteria works too good?" I thought green slime was vulnerable to fire and crushing weapons, just not edged weapons.

twivel writes "According to ABC News and this article, scientists are working on creating a bacteria that destroys CO2 and other greenhouse gasses. I wonder what happens if the bacteria works too good?" I thought green slime was vulnerable to fire and crushing weapons, just not edged weapons.

alumshubby writes "The Washington Post, undoubtedly among others, reports that the AOL & Time-Warner merger has gone through. Note that it was unianimous, and the FTC extracted a promise that the new behemoth would 'protect consumer choice.'" And, on the more amusing side check out this alternative coverage. On a more serious note, we've also got information from the FTC, and coverage from CNNfn, and ABCNews.

Let's start this off with SanLouBlues's submission about a video made by splicing old 8bit video games (I don't think it'll work on Linux, but it's worth finding a box to watch this). And now, the senseless destruction portion of the show: stevenma sent an ISP's excuse letter, including a photo of the bullet damage from the wire! friedo knows how to make a hard drive squeal, but on purpose. If that's not enough destruction for you, knisa sent in a story about a meteor destroying a 1980 Ford. Slightly less-destructive violence was submitted by Steve Stag, who notes that Nerf has discovered that their weapons appeal to adults too. (well duh!) An anonymous reader noted that Liam Neeson's lightsaber from Phantom Menace is being auctioned off for charity. WhyPanic sent us a site that talks about Vintage Unix. An anonymous reader noted that in Finland, you pay traffic violations based on your income, and this dot-com millionaire was fined $70,000 for 20 miles/hour over the speed limit! Speaking of dot-coms, warland wonders if todays dot-coms would get funding if they tried to pitch their ideas today? And now for the truly strange stuff: conraduno sent in a palindromic C program. NinjaPablo sent in a link about a guy breaking a centipede 14-year-old record by scoring 7,111,111 points (and I thought breaking 200,000 on joust made me cool ;) head_the_mongoose sent us "Call Me Darth", a Darth Vader site that simply needs to be seen.

Last week I came out in favor of electronic voting. Over the weekend, it turned out that its opponents' worst fears came true. Not only was some computer software buggy, but it actually threw a state election the wrong way. And though not very likely, it's even possible that this state will determine our next president! Have I changed my mind about electronic voting?

No, because the punchline is: New Mexico still uses dead trees. The bug was in the software that counts paper ballots.

New Mexico was given to Gore on election night by 6,800 votes because of buggy computer software. That software "failed to read" straight-party votes (oops!), and worse, it "also chose at least one candidate from another party."

If computer flaws had thrown an electronic-vote election, you'd be reading about it on the front page of every newspaper across the country, and pundits would be telling us (sometimes in ways very funny) how foolish we were to trust our votes to those nasty computers.

How many presidential elections does our 19th-century technology have to nearly destroy before the alternatives get serious consideration?

A friend in Sweden tells me that the U.S.A. is now being referred to as the B.R.A., the Banana Republic of America. Maybe by the 21st century we can have 20th-century voting machines installed at our polling places, what do you think?

(New Mexico could decide the election if Florida's votes are thrown out, Oregon goes to Bush, and one or two more improbabilities occur.)

Voting, right here in River(side) County Riverside County, California, used touch-screen voting in this last election. This is very different from internet voting since there was no network to the outside world. I think this is an important step and certainly should be done first.

ABC News's report describes Riverside's system and shows a photo. Randall Gardner points out that the local paper has a great story with an overview of the system and reactions from voters -- glitches, yes; late tally, yes; but all in all it sounded like a positive experience.

With a capital V and that rhymes with C and that stands for Canberra Dracophile points out an article from the Fairfax IT News website, which:

reports that voters in the Australian Capital Territory (in which our nation's capital, Canberra, lies) "could be the first in the nation to trial electronic voting at next year's territory election", according to the territory's Chief Minister, Gary Humphries. They're hoping to pass legislation next month to bring this about. Sounds cool, but the article goes on to quote Humphries as saying, "You might as well be doing it from your own home." Is it just me, or does this raise the possibility of voters being coerced into a particular vote where this sort of thing can't be seen? I'd prefer to see electronic voting available only from polling booths.

No grunge typefaces please User-interface wonks should enjoy this pure-and-simple design contest. Web Memes, Inc. is asking you to design a ballot, preferably one as unconfusing as possible while still using (spit) paper. You also get to make up your own candidates and issues.

(If the competition were digital, instead of paper, it would be a tough call between Amazon.com's new user interface and AmIPresidentOrNot.)

Busily coding your next election... ...is Jason Kitcat, who says "I'm working really hard on the next release and haven't given it the PR time it deserves." Allow me.

FREE is "Free Referenda & Elections Electronically," "the first open source system for conducting electronic votes." We're now jumping from mere electronic tallying of votes in polling places to actual internet voting, so please keep your hands inside the browser at all times.

Originally an academic thesis, FREE is now GPL'd, written in Java, and its design background is available in whitepapers. I haven't tried running it. Someone let us know if the project could be useful.

See also thebell.net, which comments:

...the majority of paper punching systems used in the U.S. do not produce repeatable results when ballots are tallied more than once, which means that election officials lack the means to objectively distinguish between fraud and error under these circumstances. ...we should in fact be looking to Internet voting systems in order to try to reduce those faults and thus provide for more security than what is available today -- not less security.

The seriously skeptical view Let's end on a sobering note. Scoffing at The Bell's claim to have tackled the subject a mere six months ago, Rebecca Mercuri points out (on Dave Farber's IP list) that others have been thinking about internet voting for over a decade. She writes:

Internet systems indeed DO promise FAR LESS in the way of auditability (recounts) and anonymity (privacy) than do the paper and other manual systems presently in place. To promote the belief that Internet voting, in any way provides a SAFE VOTE, is wholly erroneous.

She has an intimidating collection of links to (mostly) academic papers on the subject on her Electronic Voting page.

And in conclusion The only viable form of government is perl-based: we need a bicamel legislature with an eclectoral college. Thank you and good night!

And now for something completely the same! A note from timothy: The next piece in our continuing Hellmouth Revisited series is online. Feel free to go read it.

Let's start this off with some violence! BigBlockMopar answered the age-old question: what happens when a tank runs over a hard drive. NeoCode sent the The Illustrated Guide To Breaking Your Computer, and finally, matticus discovered The Overclockerz Store is selling burnt-up athlons/durons made into keychains. Now that we've got that out of our system, lets get some schoolin' by learning about the facts of life: spankweasel sent in the invisible condom. Now math: Jonathan Hayward sent us A four-dimensional maze. And some history: John Willemin sent us a nostalgia inducing Microsoft Ad from the days of yore. After a hard day of education, why not travel home on your lawn mower powered hoverboard at a cool 15mph? (thanks LenZ) Then we can play some dot-com monopoly (thanks to gmag3) and see what's on TV. MTO sent us Trailers for the Dune miniseries, and David Hume sent an abc article about Vinyl Video which attempts to generate images from your records. Finally, we better check the weather channel to find out what the weather is gonna be like ... on Mars (thanks noctis).

eastMike writes "ABC News has an article that tells of how "a good chunk of the Internet crashed ? spectacularly" during the election in 1996. I wouldn't have thought this would be much of a concern, but if it had that much of an effect in '96, then who knows. The internet has come a long way since then, but there are also a lot more people using it now." Sort of like the old Victoria's Secret/Super Bowl problem, over the whole net. I doubt we'll see much this year, but it still will be interesting.

Start this one off with a creative hack: tim.kerby sent in just that: using a tortilla as a bread board when your local radio shack is out. Future creative hacks may involve i4u's link to camborg which tracks wearable cameras. Ant found cats and robots. You can practice by playing Kitty Lick 3, an FPS you play as a feline (thanks bjorky) But If cats aren't your pet of choice, how about pigs? Rookie sent in linkage to a story about a one in first class that you'll swear is fiction (but it isn't). radiator sent in a hilarious parody: first aid for a dying dot com. Some auctions worth noting: drDugan sent a picture autographed by Linus being sold on eBay (and donated to charity). Dirty Yanni noted that Metallica/Napster parody t-shirts are for sale on eBay. And the last auction (but not on eBay) is Spock's original ears from the original trek. Oh, and how about t-shirts mocking the MS breakin & source code theft? CArnesen noted that Anime Expo 2001 has been scheduled for this summer. I'm seriously considering going. Mothy notes that famed Rubber Chicken vendor Archie McPhee is now selling the Linux Voodoo Penguin (however the ad features a "Sysadmin" wearing a tie! Have to much free time? Ant does! He sent us a reflex tester (I've managed a .24) but thats nothing compared to Am I Hot or Not which is fun for hours on end if you're the type that amuses easily. And finally, tshell noted that that now that there is a complete O'Reily ate my balls site, the Internet is now complete. You can all go home now.

hyperstation writes "An article at abcnews.com says that Mir will stay up, thanks to a $27 million donation (that's 750 megarubles) from Russia. Look's like they're not broke after all." *sigh* Someone wake me up when Mir finally falls to the planet.

Lets start things off with a thing of beauty: ChazeFroy notes that Malin Space Science Systems has tons of really excellent images from the Mars Global Surveyor. Now something of evil: TsEA sends us HTML magic: a true guideline for HTML usage. 3 things that prove that The net Will destroy humanity: BlackNova sent us a Magic 8-ball powered by Lego Mindstorms, Cuban sent us the pantscam (which is exactly what it sounds like) and _martini_ noted an online thermostat where you can twiddle the temperature at some guys house. Its only a matter of time before technology fights back: NMerriam sent us the truth about what computers think of us in this weeks Onion. But let us not forget that science has given us many wonderful things, like for example, lunatik17 pointed us at a bit about shooting your lawn with lasers instead of mowing. However, science has also given us gmr2048's story about testicular implants for animals so I guess we're kinda even so far. I suspect the only way to defend ourselves from technology is to understand it, and who better to teach topics like ISDN then sent a great way to have celebreties like Alicia Silverstone. Or Mr. Rogers teaching the RS232 pinout, Tonya Harding explaining a Cisco 700, and best of all, Darva Conger on the configure register of Cisco routers (thanks Ex Machina who got it from Memepool) Ever want to be a female olympic marathon champ? Jaster this years winner believes hornet stomach juice is the secret, so get started! Of course, to much of that stuff could wind you up on sent us the the next Darwin Awards (from Gambit Thirty-Two) Ant sent us a pair of stories about poop! (what does this guy do with his time?) What happens when your space toilet doesn't flush? All I know is I hope that I have some custom printed toilet paper to keep things under control. Finally, many people noted that you should call 1-800-888-3999, and select option 7. No, really.

Katydid writes "Got sunscreen? It's UV exposure season in Antarctica again, and for the first time a city in South America - Punta Arenas, in Chile - was directly under the area of missing atmosphere we know and love. At 11.4 million square miles, the hole is 'more than three times the size of the United States.'"

Reader dcigary pointed to this "nice writeup on the new Sony Super CD." Though the explanation of the difference between supposedly revolutionary "DSD" recording over conventional digital seems to get by with a knowing mumble, the piece does mention the price (high) and that competition from audio-only DVDs may cripple acceptance of the new format. Even if I like the idea of ultra-fidelity, my faith in the Nyquist theorum is too strong to spend a grand and a half on a CD player anytime soon ...

SEWilco writes: "ABC News reports the head of the State Aerospace Bureau says China will explore the Moon. They've conducted an unmanned test of their first capsule, but not much else is known about their project. The comments were made at U.N. World Space Week, on the Sputnik 1 43rd anniversary."

kylv writes: "Check out this article on abcnews.com telling how a New Mexico group is trying to make the site of the first lunar landing into a National Historical Site."

ScottMan writes: "I found this link over at ABC News about some new pictures HST took. It shows a dying star, much like our own sun. Kind of interesting to see what our solar system might look like in another 5 billion years or so."

ScottMan writes: "I found this link over at ABC News about some new pictures HST took. It shows a dying star, much like our own sun. Kind of interesting to see what our solar system might look like in another 5 billion years or so."

pezpunk sent in a link to an ABC News story about Prince putting his two cents in about Napster. Prince has actually been on the cutting edge of distribution technology for years. Say what you want about his style, but Prince knows where it's at. He's been running his own label, Paisley Park, for a while, and he features artists like George Clinton.

SmooC writes "This is SecurityFocus's reaction to Fred Moody's article, claiming that NT is more secure than Linux. Ran on slashdot last wednesday. Ben Greenbaum who manages the Microsoft Focus Area, sees it from a different perspective."

I avoided posting this because it really is pretty lame, but its getting submitted a lot. Basically Fred Moody says Linux Sucks on ABC. He calls it the worst operating system ever based on the fact that bug traq lists more bugs for it then any other operating system. Stories like this just make me roll my eyes: the thing will get tons of traffic from you guys and his editor will say "Good Job Fred" because they got to sell lots of banner ads on it. *sigh*

The reaction to the turning off of Napster's servers has been fast and furious. Whether you feel that unauthorized copying of music is a basic human right, the moral equivalent of "sharing" for yourself merchandise from Tower Records' loading dock, or somewhere in the fuzzy gray area between, you should at least know how the decision to turn off Napster for the moment has focused the various public reactions. Read on to see just a sampling of the numerous stories throughout the media related to this story.

Point Of Order, Point of Clarification Justin Maurer writes:

"it's come to my attention that a lot of news organisations, and napster themselves, have been twisting words around in this whole napster case. if you'll bear with me for a second, i can try and clear up a little bit of it.

everyone (including napster) keeps saying that the judge ordered napster to be shut down. this is not the case. the judge ordered them to make sure no one is trading copyrighted material, and the result is that napster is telling everyone they've been ordered to shut down. if you'd like, i can provide sources for this information, though i'm going to bed now :)"

[Note from timothy: Here is a link to the Preliminary Injunction Brief (pdf file) from the RIAA site; given the way Napster works, though, it does seem like its grant would have effect of shutting all but the chatroom, doesn't it?]

Are Bassists Smarter Than Drummers? JHancock17 reminds anyone who hasn't to read Courtney Love's speech as reprinted by Salon a while back, and res0 points to this ABC News interview with Chuck D. in which the P.E. frontman continues his eloquent tirade against the music industry as a whole. But Mr. D and Ms. Love have been famous outspoken in favor of Napster and electronic music exchange for a while: Now those stalwarts are joined by another big name. srcosmo writes "Radiohead have become the first British band to condemn the injunction against Napster. Their bassist, Colin Greenwood, showed enthusiasm for the availability of Napsterized live recordings, saying "We have just finished a tour, we played in Barcelona, the next day the entire performance was up on Napster and three weeks later when we got to play in Israel the audience knew the words to all the new songs and it was wonderful." An interesting change from the Metallica look at things- hopefully more artists will follow their lead."

Follow Your Conscience: What You Can Do cLn writes "Napster has been shut down and irc mp3 channels are being flooded by desperate mp3 junkies. What they don't know is that there are ways around this small problem. Napigator is a windows program that'll help the napster client connect to other servers other than the few it trys. Tripnosis works alot like napster, but you can download other files (zip, arj, rar, mov, avi, mpeg, jpg, gif, ect...), you can also search through online users files using the sites search engine."

And DrEldarion points to "http://www.kripto.org/blocks/, "an anonymous distributed file transfer system designed for people with permanent 'always on' Internet connections;" good explanation on the site itself of how it differs from other such systems.

Mad Ross (Ross McKillop) writes "Everyone now knows of the recent decision about napster's future. This is unfortunate and many still agree unreasonable but I am attempting to gather all the open source clients and alternative servers in one place and create an organised network of replacement napster servers... If anyone is interested in helping by...

• contributing a client
• helping as a server operator
• running a napster server
• etc...

or just want's to be kept informed about what is happening then please please eMail napsterlives@madross.co.uk or visit madross.co.uk -- there should be napster related pages there by the time you read this.

What Else You Can Do: Alert The Media (Mavens) battery841 writes "In light of Napster getting an injunction against it by the courts, someone decided to register riaaboycott.org and setup a petition. You sign the petition, and once it's gotten enough signatures, it's going to be sent to numerous sources, including Napster and the RIAA." And as CmdrTaco posted the other day, there are boycotts in the air.

Another Angle On The Big Picture: Danse writes "Salon is running an article with reactions from all sorts of people connected to the music industry, Napster, Napster alternatives, etc. It's pretty interesting reading. Everything from the arrogance of Jack Valenti to the apparent cluelessness of Erwin Drake to the insightfulness of Glenn Reynolds to the amazingly short (obviously not written by Lars) comment by Metallica. To sum things up, the industry thinks this is a big win and that they now have a chance to offer consumers music downloads on their own terms. This displays their current lack of understanding of the real problems that users are seeking to remedy with Napster and the other music/file trading options. Napster supporters and alternatives feel that it's a loss for free speech, but that in the long run it will only hurt the record industry as people move to litigation-proof solutions."

webword writes: "Did it slip under the radar that Go.com's content engine is now Open Source? The engine powers sites like ESPN.com, NFL.com, ABCNews.com and GO.com. Not too shabby." More to the point, it powers Mr. Showbiz, one of my favorite movie sites. The license is based on the Apache License.

CharlieG points out this story at ABCNews.com. The White House wants to make law enforcement jump through the same hoops to intercept e-mail as it currently must to intercept phone calls. CDT approves of the plan. The ACLU is understandably focused on Carnivore (FBI: "trust us") and is "disappointed" that Clinton didn't take the opportunity to put the kibosh on it. I can't tell from the news reports whether the proposed legislation would only affect law enforcement, or whether the private sector would also be held to the same standard.

wecoyote writes ABC News has an article on the completion of the Human Genome Project. Apparently, there is supposed to be a presidential announcement this morning regarding the accomplishment. "

Whatever happened to those drives at Los Alamos? Is my Mattell software worse than Back Orifice? Have the French courts cowed Yahoo!? Did I or didn't I buy a license for Windows? These and other ponderables have been glued in place below for your leisurely weekend perusal.

Can't you just see this happening at your workplace? snowbike writes: "The missing hard drives at Los Alamos have been found. Apparently they fell behind a copy machine. It will probably be attributed to the closure and evacuation associated with the fires. Read all about it at CNN. Looks like there is still plenty of heat to go around regarding this--now the UC contract to run the lab is in danger." OK. So a little bit of data went missing. Are you perfect? Are you saying you've never misplaced a floppy, or left a few nuclear secrets behind the copy machine? More coverage can be found at ABC News, at The L.A. Times and at The Washington Post .

This is for your own good. In regards to Xday's discussion of privacy violations in Mattel software, Moses Lawn writes: "I'm an ex-Broderbund programmer that wrote all of the code for this, and I just posted a comment about exactly what it does, how, and why. It's actually pretty benign. (Hopefully my comment wound up in the right place - first-time posting and all.)"

Not a single Earth-destroying collision yet! People are pretty excited at Brookhaven National Laboratory, as RHIC (the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider) just saw its first collisions. There are pictures and a press release here. That page also has links to some animations and more info on how RHIC and its component systems work. RHIC is the new particle accelerator at Brookhaven. Its main goal (among many) is to look for a quark-gluon plasma. This is the result of about 18 years of work, and it will be the premiere facility for high-energy physics research until about 2008.

Tell me again how this makes things easier? snoogans writes "I just received this from my Dell account rep. As deep a hole as Microsoft has dug, do they really need to do this? How can they force all OEM's to implement this BIOS lock thing?

'The contents of the OS media kits that are shipped with Dell systems for Windows 95, Windows 98SE, and Windows NT4 will be changed as of June 1,2000 (New OS media kits are already shipping for Windows 2000 Professional) Systems impacted: All OptiPlex, Dimension, Precision, Latitude, and Inspiron systems. Implementation will be worldwide and include all languages. Why? The changes to the OS media kits are required by Microsoft in an effort to reduce software piracy What is changing (exactly) Dell-branded OS media replaces the Microsoft-generic OS media. Artwork on CD will change from "Microsoft Windows X" to "Dell Product Recovery CD -- Windows XX" In addition to a copy of the OS, the OS media will include a BIOS lock that prevents the OS media from being installed on a non-Dell system. Microsoft requires the BIOS lock to help prevent software piracy. The set-up diskettes have been removed because customers can now boot directly from the CD The functionality of the OS media remains the same -- whenever the user is asked to insert the "Microsoft Windows XX" CD, such as when they are reinstalling the OS or when they are changing the configuration of their system -- they will use the Dell Product Recovery CD The Certificate of Authentication (COA) will no longer be attached to the front of the Product documentation. Instead, it will be on a label affixed to the outside of the system chassis. The COA label should not be removed from the chassis -- the label will tear into small pieces if there is an attempt to remove it and it will become unusable. The product key located on the COA label is a mechanism used by Microsoft to ensure that the operating system loaded on the system is legal - the product key cannot be used by other users to compromise the security of the system. Your ability to re-install the OS from CD has not changed, the Dell Product Recovery CD replaces the functionality available in the Microsoft OS media kits'"

It would be great if hordes of programmers and interface designers worlwide would come up with a freely distributable alternative that was more stable than Windows and obviated the need for such presumption.;)

Blowing their nose in the general direction. MissKitty writes: "Even though I deplore Naziism and have got to wonder about the people who collect this stuff as memorabilia, I was amused that someone had the guts to tell the French Court to push off. Under French law it is illegal to exhibit or sell objects with racist overtones. They were wanting for Yahoo to filter France's access to these things (that came up on their auction site). "Asking us to filter access to our sites according to the nationality of Web surfers is very naive," Yang, co-founder of Yahoo! said. Score one for political incorrectness."

Tirelessly flogging the dead horses of industry, crunching gravel where Angels fear to tread past sundown, gathering wool that no sheep has ever known, and shooting nanodarts packed with moss spores deep into any stones which happen to roll by, here's another helping -- Large but not SuperSized -- of assorted errata and addenda. Even some lizards.

Igor, throw that switch, would you? It's getting drafty in here. After all the attention that the various projects working to codify the the Human Genome have gotten in the past few years, the audacity of what Celera and the Human Genome Project itself are doing has seemingly faded into the commonplace. That may change soon, as first drafts of the genetic sequence of a human being are expected both from Celera and the HGP.

Phasers back on stun, and bring us back to DefCon 3. Turn down that klaxon, ensign. According to this CNN story, that darn Serbian Badman Trojan may not have been much of a threat; despite dire predictions otherwise by NetSec echoed by everyone from CNN to Slashdot. At least, the FBI doesn't seem too concerned. Thanks to ghoti, who alerted us to the downgrade.

All I want is friggin' sharks with friggin' lasers on their heads ... If you enjoyed reading Time-Digital's recent Neal Stephenson interview, you may be intrigued by the article contributed by The Original Bobski, pondering questions like ""How can the future-fiction business hope to compete against our reality of humanoids who wear life-altering computers and elongate their lives with superdrugs and genetic mutation? How is it possible for any self-respecting science fiction writer to hope to stay ahead of the headlines?" Neal himself is quoted, along with a passel of SciFi writers who might be familiar to regular readers of the Slashdot Book Reviews section. Seems that The Future just keeps on arriving ...

iCrave TV: OK for Sasketchewanians, not Pittsburgers. julez writes "Back in April www.icravetv.com was taken offline because of numerous lawsuits. This article on CBC online says that they are set to relaunch their service in the fall on a subscription basis. Some stations will remain free, but, like cable, "specialty channel packages" will cost you $8-$9 a month. And of course, it will only be availble to Canadians via some unnamed security software." From the article: "The privately held Internet company showed 17 Canadian and U.S. stations when its site started last November. The service drew more than 800,000 viewers in its first month." That's a market, folks. ("Quick, shut it down! Somebody might make some money if we're not careful!") Read more about iCrave on Slashdot.

If Nike builds sneakers like this, we'd happily worship the swoosh. After the wall-climbing robot tech that hemos pointed out a few days ago, ABCNews.com serendipitously featured some more information about the Real Thing. Real Geckos, that is. How do they stick to walls? Well, here are some hints: no glue, no suction cups, no bubble gum and no special effects.

PJRC2 writes "ABC News.com has an article about a man who claims he commited no crime in sending millions of AOL users porn and make-money-fast spam and making the messages appear as though they came from ibm.net. " We're going to see more of this in the future. I think forged spam should be punishable by death, but I probably get more of it than most people ;)

PJRC2 writes "ABC News.com has an article about a man who claims he commited no crime in sending millions of AOL users porn and make-money-fast spam and making the messages appear as though they came from ibm.net. " We're going to see more of this in the future. I think forged spam should be punishable by death, but I probably get more of it than most people ;)

nd writes: "The NDAs for AMD's new Athlon Thunderbird reports just expired, and the benchmarks have been pouring in. Tom's Hardware's coverage (in German) is here , a translation to English is here - Anandtech also covered the new CPU release. For those of you who want to learn more about the Thunderbird, here is an interview with AMD on the processor release. Overall, the Thunderbird is performing quite well, and will be sold at the same price as current Athlons. "

sheckard writes: "ABC News is reporting about the world's fastest 'supercomputer,' but the catch is that it doesn't do much by itself. The GRAPE 6 supercomputer computes gravitational force, but needs to be hooked up to a normal PC. The PC does the accounting work, while the GRAPE 6 does the crunching." The giant pendulum of full-steam-ahead specialization vs. all-purpose flexibility knocks down another one of those tiny red pins ...

matty writes: "A judge has said that Bidder's Edge could no longer use its crawler to gather information from eBay. 'Even if its searches use only a small amount of eBay's computer system capacity, Bidder's Edge has nonetheless deprived eBay of the ability to use that portion of its personal property for its own purposes.' So what about Yahoo! and all the other search engines? Don't they use similar technology? Read the article and see for yourself." Or maybe it's not such a bad precedent; it'd be interesting if such a ruling helped discourage hard-drive searching by software which searches for "undesirable" content without your consent or knowledge.

Skipping, hopping (and bumbling amd wheezing) toward inevitable perfection, we're pleased to bring you another handful of updates, re-instatements, "that is no longer the operative statement" disclaimers and at least one general thought provoker.

After francokleptomania, restoring GNOME dignity. Bob Smith writes: "KDE beta was anounced but GNOME beta wasn't." Well, GNOME's latest freeze stage on the way to 1.2 was announced back in January, and Miguel answered questions about the state of GNOME in March, but point taken. With all the developments in GNOME, neither Miguel or his programs are likely to hurt for Slashdot coverage. You can grab the beta Bob mentions here.

Now, gentlemen, is there a way to perhaps merely maim this Golden Goose? Misch writes to point out this item on "ABCNews [which]reports that the House of Representatives has passed an extension of the Internet Tax Moratorium. Looks like it's tax free time on the Internet (depending on where you shop)."

Barely enough for a coven ... nullstar writes: "The NTIA has posted its report to Congress concerning the comments it received in regard to section 1201(g) of the DMCA, which deals with exceptions to the prohibition on circumventing encryption techniques intended to protect access to copyrighted materials. They basically claim, 'it's too soon to tell what effects the restriction will have on encryption research, etc., as the exception doesn't go into effect until October, so we're not yet recommending changes in the wording of the law.' Only 13 people submitted comments. "

Conflict of interest is an interesting term here ... full_tide writes "2600 has posted some news about how the MPAA is trying to get Martin Garbus (2600's hot-shot defense attorney) disqualified for a conflict of interest. Cryptome has posted a very long, but equally interesting, reply brief Mr. Garbus has writting in response to the injunction (damn, he's good). Also, the MPAA's web site is back up after a DDOS attack a few weeks back, and much downtime since. They appear to have added some fresh, juicy propaganda concerning the case."

Yessir, the gen-yoo-ine article, you betcha, mate. Jai From Insane Hardware writes: "Well, you may have heard all the rumours and whatnot about the Australian Fake Athlon deal and I confirm that it is true. But we have more info on the subject like on how they came about arriving in Oz and how they leaked thru the channel. This issue is very "close to home" for me so it's worthwhile reading for all the Aussies that go to your site. We also have exactly how the chips were modded. link " Meanwhile, Netsnipe wrote to point out that "Lucien Wells has updated his Web site Techwatch's coverage of the AMD Athlon tampering scandal. "Techwatch has now received press releases from two distributors involved, DMA and RTV Computers which claim that 'Neither RTV Computers Pty Ltd nor DMA (Direct Memory Access Pty Ltd) whom have their stickers on the CPU's knowingly at fault in this situation. At present legal action is underway to find the source of this problem.' At this stage AMD has not yet responded to Techwatch's requests for more information, says Lucien."

jacobm writes "All the news sources- CNN, ABC News, Security Focus, CNET news, and everyone else on the planet- are reporting that a man in the Phillipines has been arrested in the ILOVEYOU virus case. It appears that the virus had identifying information all over it, which makes me a bit suspicious that this could be a set-up, but on the other hand, you should never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity." Update: 05/08 12:50 by J : Because you haven't yet read enough about ILOVEYOU, read this (Gates opines that breaking up MS will lead to more viruses).

Phexro extended our congratulations to Bruce and Valerie on the birth of Bruce 2.0, otherwise known as Stanley Charles Perens. this is jimmy asked us all to compete in the great Beltsander Races. Need to send crazy Aunt JoAnne some E-mail? Try something from the Great Spam Archive, sent in by Jones. Nezumi-chan wasn't the only one to write in with this one, but all I can say is Oh, yes. ahaning wrote in to tell us about the Obsolete Computer Museum. Want something to plug them into? blizzard shared Electricity from Giant Artichokes. Also, check out the Ultracade, which is cool unless you're a video game purist like me. Dropkick wrote in about a cyber-riffic washing machine. Last but not least, Penguin_99 writes in about cool photos from Galileo. That's it, folks. Thanks to AfterY2K for the title inspiration.

ThaJungle was the first to write us with the news that the U.S. Government may recommend a drastic remedy against Microsoft in its anti-trust suit. This would be the recommedation from the DOJ and the 19 states involved in the suit, not necessarily what Judge Jackson would recommend.

Danborg writes "ABCNEWS has the story. Evidently Mr. Katz died of complications from chronic alcoholism. A sad end to a true pioneer in the field of data compression. Who doesn't remember converting all their files to .zip format back in the BBS days?" The fact of his death has been out for awhile, but its circumstances only came to our attention yesterday (through *many* submissions). Genius and tragedy are too often linked.

the coose writes: " Got an HDTV set yet? Wait before getting one; here's why ... " Honestly this doesn't really bother me, except that I really want HDTV to start being a reality soon.