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honestpuck (Tony Williams) writes "Many years ago I bought a second hand Ford Cortina in dubious condition. I kept it running with the assistance of a marvelous volume purchased at a specialist bookstore that was referred to as "the shop manual." It wasn't much help teaching you how to drive or how to park but if you needed to know how to perform an oil change, flush the radiator or bleed the brakes it told you all the details. Now James Duncan Davidson has given me a shop manual for Macintosh OS X Panther." Read on for Williams' review of the O'Reilly published Running Mac OS X Panther. (And for the curious, here's what google has to say about "Ford Cortina.") Running Mac OS X Panther author James Duncan Davidson pages 292 publisher O'Reilly and Associates rating 8/10 - Excellent book, a little thin on details in a few places reviewer Tony Williams ISBN 0596005008 summary A good shop manual for those running Panther

This volume assumes you know how to use your Mac, how to perform all the routine changes that are easily accomplished with the GUI. Davidson also assumes you don't want to know how to get a movie running as your desktop, or get an Exposé blob floating on the screen or any of the usual sort of 'hacks' or 'hints.' What he gives is a good guide to lifting the hood and performing serious mechanical work or tweaking the performance of your Mac with enough background information so that you can feel confident taking your own steps.

It was good after a few near misses to read an O'Reilly book that was once again well written, well edited, tight and crammed full of information pitched at just the right level. Davidson has done an excellent job with this book.

Davidson starts with a little history, and from the viewpoint he presents, this is not a waste of space; he spends his time explaining exactly how we arrived at the current version of the Mac OS.

Then we have a chapter titled "Lay of the Land" that explores the file system, including both the Finder view and the view you get from the command line. It also explains the four file system domains and the 'Library' directory. The third chapter is a quick (20 pages) look at the Terminal and shell.

Then we get 'Part II: Essentials,' which is the 120-page core of the book. This starts off, logically, with system startup and the login (and log out and shutdown). This is followed by short chapters on users and groups, files and permissions, monitoring, scheduling and preferences and defaults before a marvelous long chapter on the file system. Davidson goes into great detail and closely covers each of the topics, making sure that you get all the details not just 'recipes.'

Part III ("Advanced Topics") starts with a chapter on Open Directory that I found particularly useful. It includes coverage on Kerberos and single sign-on that explains it well, as well as the command-line Open Directory tools. The chapter on printing could have had a bit more guts. It covers the obvious but leaves out such joys as CUPS apart from a half-page sidebar; since sharing printers has caused me more than a little grief I would have appreciated more detail here. The final chapter on networking is better, and provides more useful detail.

It must be said that this section concentrates more on user level detail and leaves out real information on server level software and options. Given the target group for this book, and that a book has to draw a line somewhere, this is quite fair.

Davidson has picked his topics well, almost everyone will find all of Part II useful and educational. Part III is perfect for people wanting to run Panther in a corporate environment. He has balanced the command line and GUI well, pointing out where you can do a job with both and explaining the details.

Oreilly's page for the book has a table of contents and index but no example chapter. If you go to Davidson's page at O'Reilly there is a link to a short excerpt on scheduling tasks as well as several earlier articles Davidson has written for MacDevCenter.

I would recommend this book to any Panther user with a moderate amount of experience. It is not for the newcomer to the Mac, perhaps, but everyone else will benefit from this book.

You can purchase Running Mac OS X Panther from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page

markclong writes "Federal agents in Phoenix and elsewhere in the country raided schools and other targets in a national crackdown on pirated music CDs and movies. The schools lost Internet access including emails to and from elsewhere on the Internet." Despite the assertions in the article, Google doesn't currently pick up any indications of a national school sweep.

Frisky070802 writes "Technology Review, the MIT alumni magazine, has an article by Simson Garfinkel that compares the huge distributed systems run by Google and Akamai and speculates that Google might even consider buying Akamai. It also discusses the flame-out of Akamai after its tremendous IPO."

herrvinny asks: "What is the best weblog script to use on a personal web site? SourceForge and Google show plenty of weblogging systems available, but I just need a simple, powerful solution. Movable Type has been recommended to me, but I've heard of problems with spam, exploits, and comment flooding. I'd like to have a decently good comments section, where visitors can reply to my ramblings and have a fairly large toolset in which to do so, i.e. smilies, some limited HTML (bold, italic, etc). A small Polling plugin would be terrific as well. Which weblogging systems do Slashdot readers use and recommend? Some complexity isn't a problem; I can work in Perl, HTML, C (among other languages) if I need to. Also, what do people think of adapting Slashcode for such purposes?"

herrvinny asks: "What is the best weblog script to use on a personal web site? SourceForge and Google show plenty of weblogging systems available, but I just need a simple, powerful solution. Movable Type has been recommended to me, but I've heard of problems with spam, exploits, and comment flooding. I'd like to have a decently good comments section, where visitors can reply to my ramblings and have a fairly large toolset in which to do so, i.e. smilies, some limited HTML (bold, italic, etc). A small Polling plugin would be terrific as well. Which weblogging systems do Slashdot readers use and recommend? Some complexity isn't a problem; I can work in Perl, HTML, C (among other languages) if I need to. Also, what do people think of adapting Slashcode for such purposes?"

jbecherv writes "According to LinuxDevices.com, new-fangled Montreal parking meters run embedded Linux (Google Cache). The City of Montreal is planning to roll out 500 to 800 wireless, solar-powered parking payment stations based on embedded Linux. There is even a device profile (Google Cache) that show some details about the meters... These meters run kernel 2.4.19 on a 206MHz StrongARM SA-1110. Each system has 64MB of RAM, boots from a CF device, and is networked wirelessly via GPRS."

jbecherv writes "According to LinuxDevices.com, new-fangled Montreal parking meters run embedded Linux (Google Cache). The City of Montreal is planning to roll out 500 to 800 wireless, solar-powered parking payment stations based on embedded Linux. There is even a device profile (Google Cache) that show some details about the meters... These meters run kernel 2.4.19 on a 206MHz StrongARM SA-1110. Each system has 64MB of RAM, boots from a CF device, and is networked wirelessly via GPRS."

jbecherv writes "According to LinuxDevices.com, new-fangled Montreal parking meters run embedded Linux (Google Cache). The City of Montreal is planning to roll out 500 to 800 wireless, solar-powered parking payment stations based on embedded Linux. There is even a device profile (Google Cache) that show some details about the meters... These meters run kernel 2.4.19 on a 206MHz StrongARM SA-1110. Each system has 64MB of RAM, boots from a CF device, and is networked wirelessly via GPRS."

rjnagle asks: "While trying to access a recipe web page of a friend Mary Anne Mohanraj from work, I was dismayed to find that Webwasher, my company's content filtering application, had blocked it. It's true that Mohranraj's site contains some tastefully written text-only erotic stories, (Mohanraj has published several distinguished books and anthologies ), but apparently Webwasher's filtering rules block everything from the domain--including her writing diary, Sri Lanka travel photoessay, poetry and yes, her reading list of Indian writers. Leave aside for the moment the question of whether employees should do personal surfing on company time or what type of material is appropriate to view from work. Please answer these questions: How can content creators prevent their entire domain from being blacklisted because of a small amount of controversial content? Given that Webwasher's corporate customers rarely tweak Webwasher's default blacklist settings, doesn't this imply the need for Webwasher to make their filtering algorithms readily available? (Apparently, even the product's installation documentation is password-protected). If content filtering programs like Webwasher have a tough time distinguishing between a teacher's educational philosophy and hardcore erotic fiction, shouldn't the software company offer an online form for content creators to appeal being blacklisted? Having lived in Eastern Europe, I've seen firsthand how content filtering (ostensibly for reasons of social utility) has produced a society of ill-informed, unquestioning citizens."

Phil Windley writes "In his inimitable style, Tim O'Reilly tells us why GMail matters. The piece is entitled, 'The Fuss About GMail' but that doesn't begin to properly identify the real meat of what Tim's saying. Tim does discuss some of the privacy concerns on GMail and why he's not concerned, but he also breaks new ground on why GMail is not just another free email system. For example, Tim talks about how GMail might herald an era of large centralized computing and calls for APIs to allow GMail content to be move back and forth between it and other systems." Reader chris mansley writes "Google is quietly responding all the flak being given to their new email service. They have added a statement to quell the growing list of concerns. No more keeping email forever is at the top of the list. The reviews have been sparse on details and screenshots, but now Google is providing a sneak peek here and here." The only thing I didn't like about Gmail was their apparent intention to keep your mail forever, regardless of your wishes. Since they've now clarified that they don't plan to do that, it doesn't seem like there's much of a problem any more. Yahoo and MSN already link your searches on their respective engines with your account profiles on their respective free email services, and no one seems to care (maybe because no one uses MSN or Yahoo as a search engine these days, but still).

Phil Windley writes "In his inimitable style, Tim O'Reilly tells us why GMail matters. The piece is entitled, 'The Fuss About GMail' but that doesn't begin to properly identify the real meat of what Tim's saying. Tim does discuss some of the privacy concerns on GMail and why he's not concerned, but he also breaks new ground on why GMail is not just another free email system. For example, Tim talks about how GMail might herald an era of large centralized computing and calls for APIs to allow GMail content to be move back and forth between it and other systems." Reader chris mansley writes "Google is quietly responding all the flak being given to their new email service. They have added a statement to quell the growing list of concerns. No more keeping email forever is at the top of the list. The reviews have been sparse on details and screenshots, but now Google is providing a sneak peek here and here." The only thing I didn't like about Gmail was their apparent intention to keep your mail forever, regardless of your wishes. Since they've now clarified that they don't plan to do that, it doesn't seem like there's much of a problem any more. Yahoo and MSN already link your searches on their respective engines with your account profiles on their respective free email services, and no one seems to care (maybe because no one uses MSN or Yahoo as a search engine these days, but still).

Phil Windley writes "In his inimitable style, Tim O'Reilly tells us why GMail matters. The piece is entitled, 'The Fuss About GMail' but that doesn't begin to properly identify the real meat of what Tim's saying. Tim does discuss some of the privacy concerns on GMail and why he's not concerned, but he also breaks new ground on why GMail is not just another free email system. For example, Tim talks about how GMail might herald an era of large centralized computing and calls for APIs to allow GMail content to be move back and forth between it and other systems." Reader chris mansley writes "Google is quietly responding all the flak being given to their new email service. They have added a statement to quell the growing list of concerns. No more keeping email forever is at the top of the list. The reviews have been sparse on details and screenshots, but now Google is providing a sneak peek here and here." The only thing I didn't like about Gmail was their apparent intention to keep your mail forever, regardless of your wishes. Since they've now clarified that they don't plan to do that, it doesn't seem like there's much of a problem any more. Yahoo and MSN already link your searches on their respective engines with your account profiles on their respective free email services, and no one seems to care (maybe because no one uses MSN or Yahoo as a search engine these days, but still).

Phil Windley writes "In his inimitable style, Tim O'Reilly tells us why GMail matters. The piece is entitled, 'The Fuss About GMail' but that doesn't begin to properly identify the real meat of what Tim's saying. Tim does discuss some of the privacy concerns on GMail and why he's not concerned, but he also breaks new ground on why GMail is not just another free email system. For example, Tim talks about how GMail might herald an era of large centralized computing and calls for APIs to allow GMail content to be move back and forth between it and other systems." Reader chris mansley writes "Google is quietly responding all the flak being given to their new email service. They have added a statement to quell the growing list of concerns. No more keeping email forever is at the top of the list. The reviews have been sparse on details and screenshots, but now Google is providing a sneak peek here and here." The only thing I didn't like about Gmail was their apparent intention to keep your mail forever, regardless of your wishes. Since they've now clarified that they don't plan to do that, it doesn't seem like there's much of a problem any more. Yahoo and MSN already link your searches on their respective engines with your account profiles on their respective free email services, and no one seems to care (maybe because no one uses MSN or Yahoo as a search engine these days, but still).

An anonymous reader submits "Forbes.com has what looks to be the first hands-on review of Google's forthcoming Gmail service. Aside from the 1-gigabyte storage, the searching features sound pretty useful for what the writer calls 'email packrats' which I think fits me pretty well. But I can't say I agree with the writer's opinion that privacy fears, as discussed this Slashdot thread, about the Gmail service are 'overblown.' Still and all, I'm curious to try it myself and see what I think." Update: 04/13 00:55 GMT by T : notEA writes "A California state senator is drafting legislation to block Google from releasing Gmail. Seems kind of silly, since all anti-spam filters read your messages anyway."

Keith Young asks: "Over the past month, we have seen a 1500% increase of spyware denials on our firewall primarily due to WildTangent 'spyware' installed with AOL IM 5.5 and adware installed with Weatherbug. Since many of these widely-installed types of applications have an automatic upgrade feature, how can these be tested for license agreements, spyware, and security 'irregularities'? Is this another reason to approach management to choose only open source alternatives?"

danimlp writes "An article at SearchEngineWatch states that Google and Yahoo have become as almost parts of the operating system, a 'layer' above Linux, Windows or Mac OS. Another article at Kottke.org says that Google is building a a huge computer with a custom operating system that everyone on earth can have an account on. Some people predicts that, after Gmail, Google could start a new instant message service or even its own electronic currency."

dave writes "GNU/Linux vendors Debian, Mandrake, Red Hat, and SUSE have joined together to give a common statement about the Forrester report entitled "Is Linux more Secure than Windows?". Despite the report's claim to incorporate a qualitative assessment of vendor reactions to serious vulnerabilities, it treats all vulnerabilities are equal, regardless of their risk to users. As a result, the conclusions drawn by Forrester have extremely limited real-world value for customers assessing the practical issue of how quickly serious vulnerabilities get fixed."

iswm writes "MozillaZine has announced that the Mozilla 1.7 branch will become the new long-lived stable branch, replacing 1.4. The stable branch is intended to act as a baseline for developers building Mozilla-based products, with critical bugs fixed on the branch as well as the trunk. Mozilla Firefox 1.0, a new milestone of Mozilla Thunderbird, a new Camino release and several third party Mozilla based products will be based on Mozilla 1.7, so the Foundation is making efforts to ensure that it is high quality."

rjelks writes "The Register is running an article about Google's new email service that was mentioned earlier, here. The story details the new privacy concerns about Gmail's privacy policy and Google's tracking habits. The policy states that Google will not guarantee the deletion of emails that are archived even if you cancel your account. 'The contents of your Gmail account also are stored and maintained on Google servers in order to provide the service. Indeed, residual copies of email may remain on our systems, even after you have deleted them from your mailbox or after the termination of your account.'" Reader cpfeifer writes "Rich Skrenta (founder of ODP, and Topix) speculates in his blog that the real product Google is creating isn't web search or email, but a massively scalable, distributed computing platform. 'It's a distributed computing platform that can manage web-scale datasets on 100,000 node server clusters. It includes a petabyte, distributed, fault tolerant filesystem, distributed RPC code, probably network shared memory and process migration. And a datacenter management system which lets a handful of ops engineers effectively run 100,000 servers.' If he's right, the question isn't what product will Google announce next, but what product will they not be able to announce?"

xandroid writes "Just a couple days after talking about free hardware, Bill Gates has sent an email to customers saying that Microsoft will continue to focus on security, titled 'A Microsoft Progress Report: Security' (MSNBC story, PC Magazine story, Google News' related stories). The email mentions that fast-spreading and destructive viruses and worms are 'threatening the potential of technology to advance business productivity, commerce and communication', but says that to counter the threats, Microsoft will make 'major investments in customer education and partnerships that will help make the computing environment safer and more secure'. He also talks about the XP Service Pack 2, and says that Microsoft is 'working with microprocessor companies, including Intel and AMD, to help Windows...support hardware-enforced data execute protection (also known as NX, or no execute)'." Reader Zephyr_in writes "Macworld reports that the beta-release of Longhorn is likely to be postponed to early 2005 because Microsoft is concentrating first on a security-focused update (SP2) to Windows XP. Earlier this week Gates said Longhorn is 'not a date-driven release.' and said the speculation that the operating system will come out in 2006 is 'probably valid.'"

ameoba writes "The next season of The Simpsons is in doubt as the voice talent is on strike due to a pay dispute. Fifteen seasons of some of the greatest prime-time TV around seems worth the money to me. ."

Thanks to an anonymous reader for pointing to an Eidos Interactive financial presentation, originally from late 2003, but only noticed recently, mentioning the development of Deus Ex: Clan Wars, a previously unhighlighted title that continues the popular stealth action series. The game is mentioned in context of an "Example WIP [Work In Progress]", and a newer financial presentation on the Eidos UK site indicates Clan Wars may only be a working title, since it lists 'Deus Ex 'Action' game' on release schedules for the next financial year. Online rumors suggest Clan Wars may be a PlayStation 2/Xbox title that's in development at Eidos-owned Crystal Dynamics, who is also developing the new Tomb Raider title, and elsewhere, the recent Eidos financial presentation lists other unheralded forthcoming titles, including "Commandos 'Tactical Shooter'", presumably an extension of the Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines franchise, and new IPs called "Crash N' Burn" and "25 To Life".

qtp writes "Wired reports that a group called the National Cyber Security Partnership, which consists of 'leading software companies' including Microsoft and Computer Associates and industry organisations such as the BSA, has asked the Department of Homeland Security to regulate what they call 'Cyber Security'. Representatives from Microsoft, Computer Associates, and the BSA headed the Security Across the Software Development Cycle Task Force that submitted this report to the Bush administration today. (For all of you who dread reading 123 page reports, there is a three page summary available as well. The Washington Post, Forbes, and Other Sources are covering this story as well. I hope this is just another [late] April Fools Day joke, but I'm afraid that this looks too scary to be real."

Brad Barnich was one of countless readers to note that Google has begun accepting job applications for its new Copernicus data center. I imagine this will eat a sizable portion of their IPO profits, however with this new center not opening until 2007, they at least can take their time!

An anonymous reader writes "I'm considering naming my first-born child either Br4d or J4n37, depending on gender. My wife isn't too keen on the idea but there's plenty of time left to persuade her. Anyway, it had me wondering whether there are any people out there with real l337 speak given names (or even just a digit in their name). Do you know of any? Other than people saying your dad is a l4m3r, What are the possible pitfalls of having a digit in your name? Is it legal to have a digit in a name? Am I guaranteeing my child becomes a misfit? Am I the misfit?" Ask Jennifer 8. Lee.

hrbrmstr writes "Marcos Weskamp and Dan Albritton have created Newsmap, an extremely cool way of visualizing news stories. The site takes the aggregated content from Google News (globally) and maps it out into a visual space. That way, you get an immediate feel for news patterns (what the media in any particular region is gravitating to) - there's quite a bit of potential here."

tstoneman writes "Wow, according to the New York Times (free reg. req.), looks like Google is really trying to push the envelope by offering 1 GB free storage for e-mail users via a service called Gmail, still in the testing phase, so that users never need to change their e-mail address. In addition, they want to offer their searching capabilities so that users can search through their entire set of e-mail, I guess forever. CNET News also has more details." Update: 04/01 02:38 GMT by S : The Google site now has an official press release, naturally dated April 1st.

Anonymous Coward writes "The Milken Institute (site is cnn/msnbc/wapo dotted it seems) has released a study claiming MA is the best state for technology while Texas has dropped to 26th. I'm curious on everyone's thoughts on this. It seems to me Arizona and Austin are most attractive because of the low cost of living and lots of open space. I just don't see (in my job hunting) very many start-up or expansion in the states they list at the top. Lots more at Google News." Reader footh adds a link to a PDF of the results.

Sir Pallas writes "Intel settled a patent infringement suit over SSE and Hyperthreading for $225mil with Intergraph. Furthermore, Dell, also named in the suit, claims that their indemnity agreement with Intel applies in this case and requires Intel to take any bullets headed Dell's way." Update: 03/31 17:49 GMT by T : philthedrill writes "The Intel/Intergraph article title is incorrect. Technically," (according to this story at out-law.com), "Intel/Dell and Intergraph settled a longstanding suit which dealt with Itanium (not SSE/Hyperthreading). Another company, MicroUnity, is now suing Intel and Dell over SSE and Hyperthreading."

Ryan Barrett writes " Google is just overflowing with news today. Along with the recently announced UI redesign, they've launched a personalized search engine on Google Labs. It's still beta, but it looks pretty cool. (Note that it probably uses technology acquired when they bought Kaltix last year.) Other announcements include Web Alerts, a 'numrange' command, and image search built into Google News."

Ryan Barrett writes " Google is just overflowing with news today. Along with the recently announced UI redesign, they've launched a personalized search engine on Google Labs. It's still beta, but it looks pretty cool. (Note that it probably uses technology acquired when they bought Kaltix last year.) Other announcements include Web Alerts, a 'numrange' command, and image search built into Google News."

Ryan Barrett writes " Google is just overflowing with news today. Along with the recently announced UI redesign, they've launched a personalized search engine on Google Labs. It's still beta, but it looks pretty cool. (Note that it probably uses technology acquired when they bought Kaltix last year.) Other announcements include Web Alerts, a 'numrange' command, and image search built into Google News."

Ryan Barrett writes " Google is just overflowing with news today. Along with the recently announced UI redesign, they've launched a personalized search engine on Google Labs. It's still beta, but it looks pretty cool. (Note that it probably uses technology acquired when they bought Kaltix last year.) Other announcements include Web Alerts, a 'numrange' command, and image search built into Google News."

whereiseljefe writes "About 12:00 am Central Time, at least when I saw it, Google changed it's face. Before it was a simplistic search engine, with a minimal front page, and now has become even more so. Those pretty tabs we have become accustomed to are now gone, and in the search results, the "summary" section at the top is now a faded blue bar (see here with a search returning ads). And the ads are a little more low key. Nice to know they are cutting back on their interface rather than adding spastically like Yahoo." Other folks noted that they've added Froogle and Local Directory pages have now been given links on the front page. Which is good, since inclusion in the main page tends to mean ready for prime time.

whereiseljefe writes "About 12:00 am Central Time, at least when I saw it, Google changed it's face. Before it was a simplistic search engine, with a minimal front page, and now has become even more so. Those pretty tabs we have become accustomed to are now gone, and in the search results, the "summary" section at the top is now a faded blue bar (see here with a search returning ads). And the ads are a little more low key. Nice to know they are cutting back on their interface rather than adding spastically like Yahoo." Other folks noted that they've added Froogle and Local Directory pages have now been given links on the front page. Which is good, since inclusion in the main page tends to mean ready for prime time.

whereiseljefe writes "About 12:00 am Central Time, at least when I saw it, Google changed it's face. Before it was a simplistic search engine, with a minimal front page, and now has become even more so. Those pretty tabs we have become accustomed to are now gone, and in the search results, the "summary" section at the top is now a faded blue bar (see here with a search returning ads). And the ads are a little more low key. Nice to know they are cutting back on their interface rather than adding spastically like Yahoo." Other folks noted that they've added Froogle and Local Directory pages have now been given links on the front page. Which is good, since inclusion in the main page tends to mean ready for prime time.

whereiseljefe writes "About 12:00 am Central Time, at least when I saw it, Google changed it's face. Before it was a simplistic search engine, with a minimal front page, and now has become even more so. Those pretty tabs we have become accustomed to are now gone, and in the search results, the "summary" section at the top is now a faded blue bar (see here with a search returning ads). And the ads are a little more low key. Nice to know they are cutting back on their interface rather than adding spastically like Yahoo." Other folks noted that they've added Froogle and Local Directory pages have now been given links on the front page. Which is good, since inclusion in the main page tends to mean ready for prime time.

JT Olds writes "Apparently George Mason University is running a project to document differences in speech and accents from different backgrounds and the like. They have a paragraph that 306 sample readers have read and recorded, and all of these sound files are categorized by background, gender, age, and other things. They say that this is primarily for teaching and learning, and is especially useful for any linguists out there, but I just thought it was cool. The sound bytes are released under the Creative Commons license. Of course, the Google cache of the main frame is here. As a side note, I did get the link to this from Penny Arcade's Jerry Holkins."

The first Slashback in a while, with updates and reactions to previous Slashdot stories, including a Flash-mod supercomputing reminder, the upside of microwave-tested currency, CUPS' user-interface foibles, an alternative to MD5 sums, and more. Read on for the details.

Reminder of your scheduled spontaneous appointment. Zero_K writes "As previously posted on Slashdot and the NY Times, the University of San Francisco's, Computer Science department is building a 'flash mob' supercomputer on April 3rd. On their newly updated official web-site (Main Site, ISO's) the team has now posted the ISO image of their custom morphix that will be used to boot all the computers into the cluster, documentation is on the website (under 'downloads') and on the CD (index.html). I personally plan on downloading and testing this ISO tonight. And after the cluster is taken off line, there will be a massive LAN PARTY (Possibly one of the biggest in San Francisco...) On a 10-Gigabit LAN...Oh sweetness ... So if you are in or around the SF Bay Area on April 3rd, be sure to sign up and bring your laptop or desktop to campus and help make history."

Whaddya mean, "no pun intended"? Rudiger writes "After the dust (no pun intended) has settled around the whole Operation Dust Bunny thing, McAfee updates their signature database classifying Dust Bunny as an application. To be more specific: 'This program is detected as a "potentially unwanted application."' They also say 'This is not a virus or trojan.' Should we leave it to the experts this time?"

Would you read Atlas Shrugged on this screen? An anonymous reader writes "The so-called 'electronic paper,' being a high-clarity monochrome display to become a foundation for comfortable and inexpensive 'electronic papers,' has finally shown its face. The new electronic paper, which looks a bit like an iPod, has 10MB memory, keyboard, Memory Stick PRO slot, voice recorder, speaker, and headphones output, and USB2.0 interface."

(We mentioned the device yesterday, but this link provides better images of it.)

Now they're Pragmatic Publishers as well -- much success! AndyHunt writes "As you may have heard, the Pragmatic Programmers have started their own publishing company (see Slashdot reviews here and here). We've just signed our first outside author: Mike Clark, editor of the JUnit FAQ and developer of JUnitPerf and JDepend. He'll be writing the eagerly-anticipated Pragmatic Project Automation book, the third volume in our Jolt Productivity award-winning series."

Exactly how many bits, Ma'am? And in what order, did you say? jlcooke writes "Two months (almost to the day) after getting slashdotted for an innocent post to sci.crypt - the MD5CRK project has launched. The aim is to get the thousands of applications and websites to drop MD5 for SHA-1 or SHA-256 by finding a counter-example of a security requirement in MD5. Press Release is here."

How to take criticism, by example. slashdot_commentator writes "Eric S. Raymond has recently written a wonderful piece explaining to the Linux zealot why it may not be the operating system of choice of all users. (Or what user aspects open source developers need to focus on to further Linux World Domination.) The op-ed specifically focuses on the CUPS printing system. (But it would be a mistake to dismiss it as a screed against CUPS.) The CUPS authors surprisingly acknowledged ESR's points, and he wrote a followup to the article."

Hitting them where it figuratively hurts. Ian Wilson writes with a followup to the Slashdot post earlier this month on "website thieves stealing content and designs from others, taken from silicon.com. Well, now silicon.com is reporting that it has contacted the offending site's advertisers and forced them to stop paying ad revenues - thus effectively crippling the illegal site - after all, no revenue, no reason to the run the site."

Express your appreciation with PizzaPal. Chuck writes "After you guys published the article on $20 bills exploding when microwaved, a co-worker of mine went to put his soup in the microwave and found a $20 bill in it. Too bad it was an older one, but someone around the office must have left it in there after reading your article. The co-worker then took me out to lunch. Thanks, Slashdot!"

ack154 writes "The latest competitor in the paid music download business will now open its 'doors,' as Walmart begins selling songs at 88 cents online. It had recently finished a three month testing period and now will open to everyone. According to CNN, however, they don't care so much about selling music, 'Analysts have said the goal for Wal-Mart is to bring more people to its Web site.' Maybe they're taking cue from Apple in trying to sell something (iPod) else by using a music store? Articles can be found at Reuters, CNN and others." amichalo points out that this is really a re-entry, writing "The service was previously launched last December. No explanation as to the re-launch (cough-poor-sales-cough) other than the addition of exclusive artists."

fishy jew writes "Ever want an easy way to make your 'small change' even smaller? Well, Bert Hickman has it - mix a home-brewed machine, 6.5 kiloJoules, and 100,000 Amps of current! On his website, he has descriptions and pictures of his many exploits with large quantities of electricity, notably including shrinking coins, building a Tesla coil, creating Lichtenberg figures (chaotic sculpture), and more! He has extensively outlined the equipment, procedure, and results for each of his experiments, and included many pretty pictures, too. Here are Google caches for when the site gets /.'ed: Main Page, Shrinking Coins, Tesla Coil, and Lichtenberg Figures."

fishy jew writes "Ever want an easy way to make your 'small change' even smaller? Well, Bert Hickman has it - mix a home-brewed machine, 6.5 kiloJoules, and 100,000 Amps of current! On his website, he has descriptions and pictures of his many exploits with large quantities of electricity, notably including shrinking coins, building a Tesla coil, creating Lichtenberg figures (chaotic sculpture), and more! He has extensively outlined the equipment, procedure, and results for each of his experiments, and included many pretty pictures, too. Here are Google caches for when the site gets /.'ed: Main Page, Shrinking Coins, Tesla Coil, and Lichtenberg Figures."

fishy jew writes "Ever want an easy way to make your 'small change' even smaller? Well, Bert Hickman has it - mix a home-brewed machine, 6.5 kiloJoules, and 100,000 Amps of current! On his website, he has descriptions and pictures of his many exploits with large quantities of electricity, notably including shrinking coins, building a Tesla coil, creating Lichtenberg figures (chaotic sculpture), and more! He has extensively outlined the equipment, procedure, and results for each of his experiments, and included many pretty pictures, too. Here are Google caches for when the site gets /.'ed: Main Page, Shrinking Coins, Tesla Coil, and Lichtenberg Figures."

fishy jew writes "Ever want an easy way to make your 'small change' even smaller? Well, Bert Hickman has it - mix a home-brewed machine, 6.5 kiloJoules, and 100,000 Amps of current! On his website, he has descriptions and pictures of his many exploits with large quantities of electricity, notably including shrinking coins, building a Tesla coil, creating Lichtenberg figures (chaotic sculpture), and more! He has extensively outlined the equipment, procedure, and results for each of his experiments, and included many pretty pictures, too. Here are Google caches for when the site gets /.'ed: Main Page, Shrinking Coins, Tesla Coil, and Lichtenberg Figures."

whoami-ky asks: "If you believe the info on their homepage, HomeCS is 'the Internet's Premier work from home career portal which unites thousands of job seekers and employers everyday.' But, when you try to apply for a job through them, you're immediately asked to pony up $29.95 for a 'lifetime' membership. Has anyone used this company to successfully find a telecommuting job? They have a 100% satisfaction guarantee. Anybody gotten a refund? A quick Google search on the term HomeCS didn't seem to show any positive or negative feedback (I only went through the first 3 or 4 pages of results)."

whoami-ky asks: "If you believe the info on their homepage, HomeCS is 'the Internet's Premier work from home career portal which unites thousands of job seekers and employers everyday.' But, when you try to apply for a job through them, you're immediately asked to pony up $29.95 for a 'lifetime' membership. Has anyone used this company to successfully find a telecommuting job? They have a 100% satisfaction guarantee. Anybody gotten a refund? A quick Google search on the term HomeCS didn't seem to show any positive or negative feedback (I only went through the first 3 or 4 pages of results)."

Phoe6 writes "'Google's goal is to connect searchers with the information they need whether it's halfway around the world or in their neighborhood,' said company co-founder Sergey Brin, as Google is unveiling its location-based search tool local.google.com. This is going heads on with Yahoo, as it put its SmartView content on its maps." Phoe6 also points to this AP story carried by the Houston Chronicle about "Verizon Communications' SuperPages.com, overhauled to deliver more useful local results." Google's service seems to work pretty well -- I've just located a few coffee shops with free wireless within easy walking distance. Update: 03/17 18:33 GMT by T : Here's a no-reg link to the same AP story.

ackthpt writes "Could China be where the battle for top search engine is waged? Reuters is carrying an article on the play for the Chinese search engine market. Already the second largest internet market in the world, there are estimated 80 million users in China and the number growing fast. Yahoo's acquisition 3721.com, Google-styled Baidu.com and Zhongsou.com are already poised and profitable. Where is Google? Blocked at one time, Google has made its way into China. Their handy cached pages are not available, but they do offer the Ad Words service in chinese to lure business. Those unfamiliar with China's rapid adoption of the internet might like to read up on the success of DangDang.Com an online bookseller, on the BBC, where it's noted that houses without heat or running water may actually have internet access. Thanks to China coming in where many growing pains, suffered by the west, have already passed or obstacles such as competing vested interests aren't as influential, so internet infrastructure is going in at a rapid pace."

Frustrated Son asks: "I assume that many Slashdot readers must serve as the IT staff for their parents. My folks get my old machines and just enough software to be productive. I try to protect my parents from the forces of evil by installing automatic OS updates, virus checkers, spyware blockers, pop-up blockers... But still I find that my parents end up with unwanted applications and dangerous software. What software or strategies do you use to protect your parents' PCs? Is it possible for inexperienced users to surf the net in safety?"

TheFuzzy writes "Hey folks, thought you'd like to know that the guys at Cybertec.at have succeeded in porting PostgreSQL 7.4.1 to the Nintendo GameCube. Now you, too, can turn your former video console into the world's most underpowered database server. And before anyone asks... the Windows port is coming real soon now, so be patient - it says something that the GameCube was easier to convert to than Windows, don't it?" Elsewhere in GameCube homebrew development, it looks like the GameCube Linux project is moving along quite swiftly, with "a 22 MB Debian base system image" now available, and an "ARAM block device driver" also created, now allowing 40mb of space for Linux to run in.