Slashdot Mirror

Oliver writes "Sony officially announced their port of Linux to the PlayStaion2 game console. In the press release they mention that they were moved by demand the community petition (see this story) demonstrated with over 6000 signers. The PS2 Linux Kit page is currently only in Japanese and there's not much info thre yet other than some pictures. But according to it, a Beta version is going to be sold to 1000 members of the community in June for about $200. The Kit is going to consist of an external HDD/Ethernet unit connected to the PCMCIA slot, found on early Japanese PS2 models, a VGA adapterplus USB Mouse and Keyboard. Kits for oversee models are supposedly in planning. The kit will include a complete Linux/X11 environment with all sources, technical hardware manuals for the EE, GS and vectorunits plus a low-level API and Mesa drivers for graphics. " Won't work for us unfortunate american PS2 junkies. But its a sweet step.

Craving at least some small bit of followup to old stories? Well, sit comfortably in your thousand-dollar Relax-the-Back recliner and savor a (minor) update on the fabled and hopefully forthcoming Indrema console, again something to chew on regarding deja again, and more.

The name of Gildred's project has me hooked ;) impaler writes: "Looks like Indrema's Game Exchage site is up. There are a number of free and commercial projects already started. Now, when do people get to fjear my insanely low gxc UID of 15 (I was the first non-indrema person added to the database). Seems like they are even closer to becoming a reality (even though the launch date seems to have been pushed back). So, start writing cool games!"

I wrote to Indrema honcho John Gildred recently to inquire about the console's current status, hopefully we'll have an update on that soon. In the meantime, you may prefer to visit the English-language version (kudos, Oliver) of the Linux-on-Playstation petition mentioned shortly ago.

"Whither newsgroups?" is not an idle question. Ronda Hauben wrote to point out her essay newly posted at Telepolis about the recent sale of the Usenet Archives by Deja to Google,Inc. She writes:

"The culture of the online community is based on fostering collaborative activity and online contributions.

How does the technical and research community continue to foster the online contributions and collaboration? Is there any problem having such contributions bought and sold? Is there a way to have nonprofit or academic or research institutions involved in archiving such collaborative contributions like Usenet?"

To read and ponder; hopefully someone at Google will have some things to say as well. And when you're done, check out more at Netizens.

Apropos the former, the following: wdavies writes: "A previous article suggested that Idealab's new company New.net would provide a plug-in -- this article suggests otherwise -- more of a series of deals with large ISP to support the resolution of TLD with private DNS. The article suggests there might also be a plug-in available, but seems to hammer home the point they are planning an end-run around ICANN decision making on TLD's. Interesting, what if they can indeed undermine ICANN's role using commercial pressure ? Good or Bad for the internet ?"

And finally, please don't do this. And getting worse and worse since the last time it was mentioned on Slashdot, Midnight Thunder writes: "There is a great page on how to write unmaintainable code. Now that you have insured that you will keep the job, now for the demands ;-)"