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JRAC writes: "Not long ago, anyone with a winmodem had pretty much no hope getting it to work under Linux. Now with projects like linmodems.org, Linux users with a dreaded winmodem actually have a chance at getting Linux to detect their modem. I myself am a Linux user with a winmodem which works fine, because mine has a Lucent chipset, which has fairly good Linux driver support. But I am trying to migrate to FreeBSD. I knew when I installed BSD that I had no chance getting my modem working, but it didn't bother me. Now after spending hours searching Google trying to find some Lucent drivers for FBSD, I have started to wonder when is someone going to start a BSD winmodem project? Aren't there any winmodem users out there running BSD that are tired of downloading drivers only to find they don't work. What we really need is bsdmodems.org"

Nos. writes: "CNet is reporting that not only Google but other search engines are finding password and credit card numbers while doing its indexing. An interesting quote from the article by Google: 'We define public as anything placed on the public Internet and not blocked to search engines in any way. The primary burden falls to the people who are incorrectly exposing this information. But at the same time, we're certainly aware of the problem, and our development team is exploring different solutions behind the scenes.'" As the article outlines, this has been a problem for a long time -- and with no easy solution in sight.

visnu writes: "I've been waiting for this for 2 years now -- a REAL glass-like windowing system. And yes, it's Microsoft to do it. Ever since W2k came out, and they included alpha-blending in the GDI, I was tempted to write a little tool to turn on any window's transparency, but of course I'm way too lazy to do that. These guys weren't though: glass2k runs in the systray and handles turning on any window's transparency. yes, here's a screenshot. I'm not too sure about the speed in W2k, but in XP w/ the newest Nvidia drivers and a somewhat recent video card, it's hardware accelerated, and yes, you should be drooling." Update: 11/26 19:00 GMT by T : Links updated, so hopefully you'll be able to actually get to the content again :)

lam0r writes: "I can't find a newslink for this, but CNN had on their news ticker that 37 nations, including the United States, had signed a treaty designed to make tracking and prosecuting 'hackers' easier and more efficient. What exactly is defined as 'hacker' is something I haven't been able to find out. ... Why was the public not made aware of this until it was done? Anyone know more about this item than me?" This is the Cybercrime Treaty, which was signed today by 30 nations and which we have posted about before. This analysis is probably the best so far - it might be a little out of date since the treaty has been revised once or twice since it was written, but the basics are still the same.

Rabenwolf writes: "In the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, the first ISP (ISIS Multimedia) has given in to pressure from the state government and has started to block foreign websites with supposedly "illegal content" by changing the corresponding DNS entries. ISIS customers trying to access these sites are redirected to the website of the local government. ISPs in North Rhine-Westphalia will have to pay a fine if they continue to provide access to sites with "illegal content" through their DNS servers. It's not as bad as China or Saudi-Arabia, but it makes you think... An article from the heise newsticker is here, and if you don't sprechen Deutsch, Google might help." Update: 11/22 15:23 GMT by T : As sqrt points out, this report is misleading: "A single technican altered the DNS Entries to demonstrate it is possible. His changes were already reversed. Heise already posted a new story about this today."

technodummy writes: "Wired is reporting how CERN is driving the Linux-based, EU funded, DataGRID project. And no, they say, it's nothing like Seti@Home. The description on the site of the project is: ' The objective is to enable next generation scientific exploration which requires intensive computation and analysis of shared large-scale databases, from hundreds of TeraBytes to PetaBytes, across widely distributed scientific communities.'" If you're interested in this, check out the Fermi Lab work with LinuxNetworkX data as well as the all-powerful Google search on the Fermi Collider Linux project. As jamie points out, "Colliders produce *amazing* amounts of data in *amazingly* short time periods... on the order of "here's a gigabyte, you have 10 milliseconds to pull whatever's valuable out of it before the next gigabyte arrives".

bobdinkel writes "While I know it isn't the most glamorous thing, mailing lists are a fact of life. And they gotta be managed by someone. In my organization, that someone is me. For whatever reason (they won't exactly say) the powers that be do not want to use majordomo and sendmail. So I pose this question to you, dear reader: What is the best MLM - MTA combo in the Unix world?" One only needs to shake a stick to see the amount of software available that handles mailing lists. Which ones have suited your needs?

benb from Beonex writes: "mozilla.org agreed upon a policy how to handle reports about severe security vulnerabilities. It is about to be implemented. In the future, you will find information about most security bugs at the known vulnerabilities page; there will also be an announce mailing list. In case you are interested, you can read my own review (and the security module owner's response) of the policy."

Bill Kendrick asks: "I've been reading a few PDA-related Usenet groups lately, and I've been noticing quite a number of problems people have been having when trying to sync their Palms (and other PDAs) under WindowsXP." According to Palm, the new Palm Desktop (version 4.0.1) should be compatible, yet it seems that a lot of people are experiencing problems. If you've managed to get a Palm to sync successfuly with a Windows XP system, what did you have to do to get things working?

Reader samjam sent in an interesting piece about his dream handheld PC, sort of a cross between a subnotebook and a wireless web pad, with the kitchen sink thrown in. Mmmmm, light-emitting polymers. I can't decide if this kind of thing is right around the corner or just a fantasy - after all, normal notebook computers sell, and at a nice high premium - and web pads are less than successful - why would anyone spend the money to develop a device like this? samjam writes: "My dream handheld is not available though some things come close. The technology is becoming available.

Though it may take a few months, here is what I would put together if I had the chance. Including Bluetooth, IButtons, solar panels and light emitting polymer screens...

For links to other linux handhelds, try linuxdevices.com.

My ideal handheld is the size of an A4 pad of paper, so I have to hold it on my left forearm with the fingers of my left hand curled over the end. A4 gives me plenty of screen space for watching real TV, reading real books, writing real emails, browsing real web pages and doing some real showing off.

The front cover is a solar panel, but I can't decide if the cells should be on the inside or the outside to help charge it while I use it or while I'm not using it. Hard one that.

The screen is not heavy-breakable LCD but LEP (brief technical primer, more on Google) or perhaps Xerox Electronic Paper seemingly available under the name Gyricon, pictures here and slight details here.

The choice of processor doesn't bother me much; I'd like to think there are many versions available of my handheld by many manufacturers (to drive the price down) and so many processors will be available but let's pretend the first release will run on a Transmeta just to keep excitement running high.

60 GB or so should be plenty of disk space, 2.5" IDE to keep weight down.

Input via stylus or sticky finger of course, with support for Graffiti, as used on the Palm and many others, also Quickwriting as featured on Slashdot as well as regular handwriting recognition (take your pick) and other pluggable input modules with popup keyboard for those times when you just can't manage to input a tilde (~) or backtick (`) properly.

Connectivity will be provided via a multitide of USB ports (where real keyboards can be plugged), Bluetooth (useless link) in action (good link), wireless ethernet as well as perhaps as many as 4 PCMCIA slots for things that change a lot like GPRS adaptors &c, or radio and TV tuner cards. Yeah! Why not add some Compact Flash while I'm at it? And boring 100 base T ethernet.

In fact I'm going to use the mobile phone card, along with my sound system to make the whole thing into a mobile phone for voice, not just data access. Talking of phones, the built in web cam can be used for video conferencing with (for example) Gnophone.

Better stick some firewire ports on there, too, for good measure, along with a few IRDA ports pointing in a few different directions for those more subversive inter-classroom networks as well as controlling my grannies telly to show off. And talking to my old non-bluetooth mobile which I can't afford to upgrade cos I spent it all on my handheld.

It will have integrated Ibutton support for security and authentification, maybe even built into the BIOS.

What more do I need? Oh yes, an Operating System. Pick your own.

I shall be running Linux with Ximian Gnome because it looks cool (and Bill Gates was nearly right, eye candy counts for a lot if only not to distract you by means of ugliness). I will be running redhat because I find up2date (or redhat channels of RedCarpet) invaluable effort-free way to remove those exploits, and I will finally get round to playing with Rebol.

The first thing I will need to develop is some network scavenging software to grab internet connectivity where it can for syncing imap folders and news, updating "offline web pages" [yikes! MS concept there]. Code to hi-jack available SMTP relays (*cough*). Does this smell a bit like Jini or something like it? I'll need to register my changing location for Gnophone so callers can find me. Perhaps the first thing for company visitors in the future will be to checkin their Ideal Handheld to the company network.

I will load all my favourite books into it as well as the entire classical Mormon works, copies of conference talks Doctrines of Salvation, Journal of Discourses etc, along with the Bible, Book of Mormon, and all of Project Gutenberg.

What will you do with yours? Have I missed any gizmos out? Or gadgets even?"

Slashback tonight with a followup on the Australian scramjet test, comparing audio formats with numbers (not just complaining about them), and questionably reasonable ways to sneak abuse-begging Internet laws in "for the children," (or plaintiffs, as the case may be). Read on.

Everything that rises must come down under. spam-it-to-me-baby writes: "The Australian trial of a scramjet engine has fizzed. 'The experiment at the Department of Defence's Woomera Prohibited Area, 500 kilometres north of Adelaide, was not successful because the [United States-supplied] rocket experienced flight anomalies prior to the scramjet experiment,' an analysis of what went wrong says. Not to worry, another test is tentatively scheduled for next week, assuming researchers can work out what went wrong with this one on the way up."

Not to be confused with this previous scramjet test, also unsuccessful.

Ah, much better, I thought you were being unreasonable there for a minute. After Jamie drew attention to it in a Slashdot piece on Saturday, SafeSurf changed their legislative proposal. In Jamie's words, "Woo!"

That's not all he said, of course: "Please note that, now, they ONLY want to fine you thousands of dollars for failing to label anything you write that is harmful to an 8-year-old. What a relief! "The penalty for a first offense of failing to label or mislabeling material harmful to minors shall be limited to a fine of under five thousand dollars."

Bennett Haselton passed on this commentary as well:

"If you go to http://www.safesurf.com/online.htm in Netscape and "View Document Info", it shows it was last modified on October 29, 2001. (This function doesn't work in IE.)

The original OCPA is [at google]. SafeSurf apparently removed this paragraph from section 6:

Publishers may be sued in civil court by any parent who feels their children were harmed by the data negligently published. The parents shall be given presumption in all cases and do not have to prove that the content actually produced harm to their child, only that the material was severe enough to reasonably be considered to have needed a rating label to protect children.

and replaced it with:

Publishers may be sued in civil court by any parent who feels their children were harmed by the data negligently published. The parents/plantiffs shall be given presumption, if the case involves graphic images, and do not have to prove that the content actually produced harm to their child, only that the material was severe enough to reasonably be considered to have needed a rating label to protect children.

and then added three new paragraphs listing more exemptions from this rule."

Can you hear that pea through the mattresses? For the audio objectivists, a good update to CmdrTaco's recent MP3 v. Ogg Vorbis inquiry: E1ven writes: "Everyone is always arguing about whether Vorbis sounds better than MP3, or vice versa. Here is your chance to see who is right! ff123 is doing a set of Blind Listening tests and could use your help. The more ears the better!"

dcd asks: "It is interesting from time to time to look at what others are searching for using Google Zeitgeist The number 2 gaining request was for Moorhuhn3, which seems to be a freeware game that is popular in Germany. Searching for 'moorhuhn linux' brings up this page which when translated on google are directions and links to play it on Linux using WINE. Now two questions come to mind: Has anyone found a 'real-time' method to find out what is actively being searched for on google (I think alta-vista used to do this); Has anyone tried this freeware game, and was it interesting? For the curious, here's another web page describing this game and Linux." Back in a time before Google, I used Metacrawler for searches and that had Metaspy which I think is a good example of what the submittor is describing. I haven't tried this Moorhuhn Chicken game, but after visiting the sites, I must say it looks intriguing.

dcd asks: "It is interesting from time to time to look at what others are searching for using Google Zeitgeist The number 2 gaining request was for Moorhuhn3, which seems to be a freeware game that is popular in Germany. Searching for 'moorhuhn linux' brings up this page which when translated on google are directions and links to play it on Linux using WINE. Now two questions come to mind: Has anyone found a 'real-time' method to find out what is actively being searched for on google (I think alta-vista used to do this); Has anyone tried this freeware game, and was it interesting? For the curious, here's another web page describing this game and Linux." Back in a time before Google, I used Metacrawler for searches and that had Metaspy which I think is a good example of what the submittor is describing. I haven't tried this Moorhuhn Chicken game, but after visiting the sites, I must say it looks intriguing.

dcd asks: "It is interesting from time to time to look at what others are searching for using Google Zeitgeist The number 2 gaining request was for Moorhuhn3, which seems to be a freeware game that is popular in Germany. Searching for 'moorhuhn linux' brings up this page which when translated on google are directions and links to play it on Linux using WINE. Now two questions come to mind: Has anyone found a 'real-time' method to find out what is actively being searched for on google (I think alta-vista used to do this); Has anyone tried this freeware game, and was it interesting? For the curious, here's another web page describing this game and Linux." Back in a time before Google, I used Metacrawler for searches and that had Metaspy which I think is a good example of what the submittor is describing. I haven't tried this Moorhuhn Chicken game, but after visiting the sites, I must say it looks intriguing.

dcd asks: "It is interesting from time to time to look at what others are searching for using Google Zeitgeist The number 2 gaining request was for Moorhuhn3, which seems to be a freeware game that is popular in Germany. Searching for 'moorhuhn linux' brings up this page which when translated on google are directions and links to play it on Linux using WINE. Now two questions come to mind: Has anyone found a 'real-time' method to find out what is actively being searched for on google (I think alta-vista used to do this); Has anyone tried this freeware game, and was it interesting? For the curious, here's another web page describing this game and Linux." Back in a time before Google, I used Metacrawler for searches and that had Metaspy which I think is a good example of what the submittor is describing. I haven't tried this Moorhuhn Chicken game, but after visiting the sites, I must say it looks intriguing.

jedrek writes "MSNBC is reporting that Altavista, the great search engine, isn't able to keep it's listings current. Altavista hasn't renewed it's index since July which, seeing how it's almost November, is a tad too long." AltaVista was my weapon of choice until Google came along and was so much better that most net users jumped ship.

Screenshots of the recently released OpenOffice, another appeal for old Usenet archives, a possibly true account of the One True Conspiracy, and Yes, a way for you to send messages of (sympathy? rage? hope?) to sojourners at MIT while they study for exams. All below in tonight's episode of Slashback.

Screenshots to show the boss. Jim Hall writes: "The other day, I downloaded OpenOffice build 628C for Linux and for Windows. I use Red Hat Linux (7.1) at home, and I already use StarOffice (5.2) for my regular office needs. It works great. I think my main complaint with OpenOffice is the silly desktop. Other than that, I consider it a fully functional office suite that can replace my MS Office needs anytime.

I didn't see any cool OpenOffice screenshots, so I made my own of the text document program. I didn't do any (yet?) of the spreadsheet program, or presentation software. These were really captured for the benefit of my brother, but I'm posting them here so that others can see them."

When I was a boy, we didn't have "archives" ... jbrw writes "Occasionally complaints will pop up that the archives at groups.google.com aren't complete enough. Well, here's your chance to help. Google is conducting an archive hunt to find some CDs from the "NetNews CD Series" pre-dating 1995, to help fill out their archive. I'm sure there's a whole heap of useful information hidden away in there, so it would be nice if it was available for all. Google says they will pay a spotter's fee for any of the CDs they don't have yet. I imagine the /. crowd would be more impressed with some sort of custom t-shirt, but there you go..."

We've mentioned this before, but it looks like they're still looking, or at least haven't updated the page.

Pinch your salt well, folks. Sir_Real writes "The RIAA wants to re-establish the CPRM standard. It is also lobbying lawmakers to make the ISP responsible for content shared by the people they provide for. Sound Cards are being targetted also. If Ms. Rosen has her way, "Watermarked" content will not be rippable because of hardware protection implemented in the new cards. The Register has the full story."

My advice would be to take this one more as a thought experiment than anything else, though it would be interesting if some sort of substantiation emerges.

The site named after a game show noise hits a milestone. Zanthrax writes: "ZZZ Online just got their 100th edition out ! You should go see this site if you allready haven't. Lots of cool stuff on the site gets submitted to /. , Like their ornithopter story which was on a lot sooner than here on /."

Just good, clean, vicarious bathroom fun. random-nerds writes: "Following a suggestion from a Slashdot reader, we built and installed a display in our bathroom so all you crazy Int0rnet junkies can send us messages while we're in our bathroom. Now the MIT Bathroom Server is fun for the whole family. Check it out at http://neurosis.mit.edu/foo/"

There's something wrong there.

Screenshots of the recently released OpenOffice, another appeal for old Usenet archives, a possibly true account of the One True Conspiracy, and Yes, a way for you to send messages of (sympathy? rage? hope?) to sojourners at MIT while they study for exams. All below in tonight's episode of Slashback.

Screenshots to show the boss. Jim Hall writes: "The other day, I downloaded OpenOffice build 628C for Linux and for Windows. I use Red Hat Linux (7.1) at home, and I already use StarOffice (5.2) for my regular office needs. It works great. I think my main complaint with OpenOffice is the silly desktop. Other than that, I consider it a fully functional office suite that can replace my MS Office needs anytime.

I didn't see any cool OpenOffice screenshots, so I made my own of the text document program. I didn't do any (yet?) of the spreadsheet program, or presentation software. These were really captured for the benefit of my brother, but I'm posting them here so that others can see them."

When I was a boy, we didn't have "archives" ... jbrw writes "Occasionally complaints will pop up that the archives at groups.google.com aren't complete enough. Well, here's your chance to help. Google is conducting an archive hunt to find some CDs from the "NetNews CD Series" pre-dating 1995, to help fill out their archive. I'm sure there's a whole heap of useful information hidden away in there, so it would be nice if it was available for all. Google says they will pay a spotter's fee for any of the CDs they don't have yet. I imagine the /. crowd would be more impressed with some sort of custom t-shirt, but there you go..."

We've mentioned this before, but it looks like they're still looking, or at least haven't updated the page.

Pinch your salt well, folks. Sir_Real writes "The RIAA wants to re-establish the CPRM standard. It is also lobbying lawmakers to make the ISP responsible for content shared by the people they provide for. Sound Cards are being targetted also. If Ms. Rosen has her way, "Watermarked" content will not be rippable because of hardware protection implemented in the new cards. The Register has the full story."

My advice would be to take this one more as a thought experiment than anything else, though it would be interesting if some sort of substantiation emerges.

The site named after a game show noise hits a milestone. Zanthrax writes: "ZZZ Online just got their 100th edition out ! You should go see this site if you allready haven't. Lots of cool stuff on the site gets submitted to /. , Like their ornithopter story which was on a lot sooner than here on /."

Just good, clean, vicarious bathroom fun. random-nerds writes: "Following a suggestion from a Slashdot reader, we built and installed a display in our bathroom so all you crazy Int0rnet junkies can send us messages while we're in our bathroom. Now the MIT Bathroom Server is fun for the whole family. Check it out at http://neurosis.mit.edu/foo/"

There's something wrong there.

BarefootClown asks: "We've all seen the stories about Microsoft forcing eBay to remove auctions hawking their software. Microsoft is certainly the most visible target, but there are others. Most every EULA includes a clause forbidding the transfer of ownership of software (there are exceptions, of course, and kudos to them). My question is, have these clauses been upheld in court?" What is so special about software (and their licenses), that allows it to avoid the protections consumers enjoy from more tangible products?

"I seem to recall hearing stories of courts overturning these schemes; does anybody have any specifics? Cases/judicial opinions, perhaps? I've checked FindLaw, Google, and others, but haven't found anything (haven't found anything upholding them, either...). Have these clauses ever even been to court, or do the companies just depend on FUD to bludgeon the end user into compliance? Anybody with experience, I'd love to hear it. Lawyers, your opinions? (Lawyers, would you be willing to fight one out in court, if given the chance?)"

As many of you may know, the concept of "owning" software is fallacy. You own nothing. What you do posess when you purchase your new piece of commercial software, is a corporate-skewed set of limited-use rights, which are getting more and more limited each day. For those interested, the latest print issue of Wired (October, 2001) has a big "article" on this (see p.170). It attempts to illustrate thru humorous example, what software has been seriously doing for decades.

No one would own (or lease) a car if the contract said, "You must not sell this car, in the event this car is no longer used, send it to the nearest junkyard.", so why is this true for software?

Philip R. Zimmermann, creator of PGP, was quoted in a recent Washington Post article as saying he has been "overwhelmed with feelings of guilt" about the use of PGP by suspected terrorists. Zimmermann says the story was not entirely accurate, and has written a response to it (below) that he hopes will clear things up. He has also consented to a Slashdot interview, so please post any questions you have for him. As usual, we'll send 10 of the highest-moderated ones to Zimmermann by email, and post his replies verbatim as soon as we get them back.

No Regrets About Developing PGP

The Friday September 21st Washington Post carried an article by Ariana Cha that I feel misrepresents my views on the role of PGP encryption software in the September 11th terrorist attacks. She interviewed me on Monday September 17th, and we talked about how I felt about the possibility that the terrorists might have used PGP in planning their attack. The article states that as the inventor of PGP, I was "overwhelmed with feelings of guilt". I never implied that in the interview, and specifically went out of my way to emphasize to her that that was not the case, and made her repeat back to me this point so that she would not get it wrong in the article. This misrepresentation is serious, because it implies that under the duress of terrorism I have changed my principles on the importance of cryptography for protecting privacy and civil liberties in the information age.

Because of the political sensitivity of how my views were to be expressed, Ms. Cha read to me most of the article by phone before she submitted it to her editors, and the article had no such statement or implication when she read it to me. The article that appeared in the Post was significantly shorter than the original, and had the abovementioned crucial change in wording. I can only speculate that her editors must have taken some inappropriate liberties in abbreviating my feelings to such an inaccurate soundbite.

In the interview six days after the attack, we talked about the fact that I had cried over the heartbreaking tragedy, as everyone else did. But the tears were not because of guilt over the fact that I developed PGP, they were over the human tragedy of it all. I also told her about some hate mail I received that blamed me for developing a technology that could be used by terrorists. I told her that I felt bad about the possibility of terrorists using PGP, but that I also felt that this was outweighed by the fact that PGP was a tool for human rights around the world, which was my original intent in developing it ten years ago. It appears that this nuance of reasoning was lost on someone at the Washington Post. I imagine this may be caused by this newspaper's staff being stretched to their limits last week.

In these emotional times, we in the crypto community find ourselves having to defend our technology from well-intentioned but misguided efforts by politicians to impose new regulations on the use of strong cryptography. I do not want to give ammunition to these efforts by appearing to cave in on my principles. I think the article correctly showed that I'm not an ideologue when faced with a tragedy of this magnitude. Did I re-examine my principles in the wake of this tragedy? Of course I did. But the outcome of this re-examination was the same as it was during the years of public debate, that strong cryptography does more good for a democratic society than harm, even if it can be used by terrorists. Read my lips: I have no regrets about developing PGP.

The question of whether strong cryptography should be restricted by the government was debated all through the 1990's. This debate had the participation of the White House, the NSA, the FBI, the courts, the Congress, the computer industry, civilian academia, and the press. This debate fully took into account the question of terrorists using strong crypto, and in fact, that was one of the core issues of the debate. Nonetheless, society's collective decision (over the FBI's objections) was that on the whole, we would be better off with strong crypto, unencumbered with government back doors. The export controls were lifted and no domestic controls were imposed. I feel this was a good decision, because we took the time and had such broad expert participation. Under the present emotional pressure, if we make a rash decision to reverse such a careful decision, it will only lead to terrible mistakes that will not only hurt our democracy, but will also increase the vulnerability of our national information infrastructure.

PGP users should rest assured that I would still not acquiesce to any back doors in PGP.

It is noteworthy that I had only received a single piece of hate mail on this subject. Because of all the press interviews I was dealing with, I did not have time to quietly compose a carefully worded reply to the hate mail, so I did not send a reply at all. After the article appeared, I received hundreds of supportive emails, flooding in at two or three per minute on the day of the article.

I have always enjoyed good relations with the press over the past decade, especially with the Washington Post. I'm sure they will get it right next time.

The article in question appears at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A1234-2001Sep20.html

-Philip Zimmermann
24 September 2001

(This letter may be widely circulated)

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: PGP 7.0.3

iQA/AwUBO69F2sdGNjmy13leEQIn+QCg2DjDeyibtRe61tUSplSAobdzAqEAoOMF ir3lRc4c1D/0Mmmv/JtP/E73 =HmRO
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

asa writes: "Lots of bug fixes (1,467 at last count) since 0.9.3 including the ability to disable the JavaScript window.open() method during page load and unload events. You can find more information on what's new at the release notes and mozillaZine."

Everyone out there who set up content mirrors helped the spread of information survive as well as it did. After the tremendous crush yesterday, conventional news sources seem to have largely recovered. However, people are still cushioning the network burden with their own mirrors and original reporting. We'll be putting up occasional updates as necessary, but for now hit that link below and you can read a ton of stories on all aspects of the story.

Ian Peon writes: "SF Gate has a short article on how the Internet "proved its mettle as a communications facilitator in a time of crisis." Kudos to all those who kept things running!"

An anonymous reader writes: "The who, what, and how are detailed in this Boston Herald story. The weapons were smuggled in the razor cases. And in order to get to the cockpit, they terrorized the stewardesses, killing a few in order to lure the pilot out. Once the pilot was out, they took control of the plane. They have identified a car driven by 5 arabs had flying instruction in arabic. The men have been traced back to different arab countries."

This WorldTribune.com story claims that Israeli intelligence reports favor the idea that the attacks may have had the backing of Saddam Hussein's Bagdhad government. According to a submission from UberOogie ,Osama bin Ladin denies involvement in the attacks. The claims, speculation and disclaimers will no doubt continue.

Connord D writes: "View the Survivor's Register Please, PLEASE go to the survivor registers, register that your looking for your family, tell your friends, pass the word around and identify those that have survived and those that are missing. Help worried families either confirm the fates of their loved ones so that they can mourn, or help them find those people that are missing." And Brian Mears, LAN Systems Operations Manager for Computer Sciences Corporation, writes: "I have created a forum on my website to allow families and friends of survivors to post messages and communicate with each other concerning this most tragic period." Here's the link: http://www.ntadmin.net/forum/.

It would be a godsend if the various survivor registries would pool their data, or if someone sets up a google-like search engine to reach all of them at once.

oo7 writes: "CNN has a stream of the first plane crash. If you'd like to download it you can from the videos section of this site; it has news updated as fast as I can and streams as fast as I can capture. Please forward any unknown news and links that you may have."

pKa writes: "The last image from WTCs 77th floor webcam is available on a few sites around the net. The original WCTA.org cam-site is dead, but available in Googles cache, where you can see the dark screen (camera already dead, most likely) at 09:52:52, 09/11/01 - just before the buildings crashed. Article (in norwegian) with screenshots available here" The stream of concern that yesterday's events will lead to an illiberal attitude toward privacy is growing into a torrent: vena writes: "CNN reported on television broadcast earlier today that the NSA was now going through volumes of recorded cellular calls for calls made by passengers on the planes. Clear admission."

GothChip writes: "Ananova are reporting that just hours after the terrorist attack on New York, the FBI started approaching ISPs asking for help in installing Carnivore."

mkelley writes: "This is only the beginning folks...looks like the internet is going to be blamed for this...Wired has a story that is sure to cause panic. This is going to be the goverment's way to push wiretapping into your email and web surfing. In this time of crisis, people in high places are going to use this to get their agenda through. "Blame the Internet" is going to be the rallying cry for everything ..." If you're interested in the details of the planes the terrorists chose, a Semi-Anonymous Coward writes: "American Airlines flight 77 confirmed down, crashed into the Pentagon, Washington DC. Flight 77 (Dulles to Los Angeles) is scheduled as a Boeing 757-200:

Boeing 757-200 data and history:

American Airlines Boeing 757-200 photos:

• American Airlines flight 11 confirmed down, crashed into World Trade Center New York. Flight 11 (Boston to Los Angeles) is scheduled as a Boeing 767-200:
• Boeing 767-200 data and history
• American Airlines Boeing 767-200 photos

United Airlines flight 175 confirmed down, crashed into World Trade Center New York. Flight 175 (Boston to Los Angeles) is scheduled as a Boeing 767-200:

• United Airlines Boeing 767-200 photos

United Airlines flight 93 confirmed down near Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania. Flight 93 (Newark to San Francisco) is scheduled as a Boeing 757-200:

• United Airlines Boeing 757-200 photos: United Airlines Boeing 757-200 photos"

Long-suffering Slashdot reader WrinkledShirt contributes this review of John Hall's Programming Linux Games, and lays out the good and the bad in a book that's one of the few of its kind. More games are always good -- hopefully books like this one will spark some inspiration.

Programming Linux Games author John Hall pages 415 publisher No Starch Press rating 7.5 reviewer WrinkledShirt ISBN 1-886411-49-2 summary Well-written guide to a wide range of game-writing tools for Linux, but not a definitive reference work for any single task.

Introduction

The potential for linux gaming has really exploded in the last couple of years. In many cases, the potential has been realized -- Unreal Tournament, SimCity 3000, Tribes 2, Quake 3, Alpha Centauri, and many other successful Windows titles, have all been brought to Linux, with Loki leading the charge. Judging by the bottom line, there's a definite shortage of true cash-cow success stories in this enigmatic part of the industry, and hence, a shortage of good reference material for naive people hoping to produce that next cash cow.

However, we've reached such a point of critical mass of knowledge and technology that books had to start appearing sometime. So, despite the fact that there's no overwhelming market demand for Linux games and a high ratio of hobbyists to dedicated game developers for the OS, here we have a book aiming at taking amateur Linux game development to the next level.

However, much of the technology out there for game programming in Linux is still heavily in development, with many of the APIs and libraries still a long way away from a 1.0 release. Allegro and Clanlib are a couple of exceptions to this trend -- both are popular APIs that sadly don't get much more than a passing mention in the book. Their sexier counterpart, Sam Lantinga's SDL, gets a fair amount of treatment (no surprise there, considering John Hall was the lead author for a team based within Loki) -- but even this fairly feature-complete library, which Loki uses to port its games over from Windows, isn't explored in its entirety.

Instead, there are also crash courses in BSD sockets, package management, TCL, the framebuffer and various sound APIs, and what we end up with here is the consummate cookbook, a jack-of-all-trades-and-master-of-none tome that introduces us to a wide variety of Linux gaming topics while stopping short of being a definitive reference for any of them. Such is John Hall's work, an interesting, wide-ranging introduction to game programming for an operating system that few believed was capable of it not too long ago.

John Hall, an experienced game developer, participated in Loki's Civilization, Call to Power game hack, and is currently working for Treyarch developing that company's Spider-Man title for the PS2.

The Good

As far as cookbooks go, this is a good one, and there isn't much concerning Linux game API programming that isn't touched on. There's an ongoing case study (Penguin Warrior) that is developed over the course of the book. Each chapter introduces a fairly deep concept, gives a decent function reference related to the concept, then incorporates the knowledge into proof-of-concept code, and then uses the new-found knowledge to enrich the case study. The tone is straightforward and the execution is solid. The final game works well enough to give confidence that the reader could take the knowledge in this book and apply it to his or her own project, either to add new features or re-think old ones.

The book is also well-written -- the sample code is extremely well-commented and good error-handling is in place. He makes no assumptions about the knowledge of the reader, dealing with such introductory topics in Linux programming as vi vs Emacs, the FSH and make, although he never gets annoying or patronizing. *cough cough* LaMothe *cough*

Individual chapters stand out as being great introductory resources for material that doesn't have much in the way of documentation. The important aspects of SDL get good treatment in one complete and comprehensive unit. There's also a thorough chapter on audio programming, comparing and contrasting OpenAL, OSS, ALSA, Ogg Vorbis, and ESD (among others), and all this after showing off SDL's sound capabilities one chapter earlier. Many of the pitfalls associated with each of the different technologies, as well as the pitfalls of sound programming in general, are covered here. It's a great jumping-off point for those who don't know much about the audio end of things.

There's even a really neat chapter on incorporating TCL script interpretation within a program written in C. For anyone who's had trouble throwing together their own text parser for initialization scripts, or who's fed up with the constant recompiles needed when tweaking for the most arbitrary of changes of the game's AI, the information in this chapter is a godsend. In the Penguin Warrior case study, it's almost spooky how effective TCL turns out to be in making the computer ship chase and evade the human player.

Finally, I want to reiterate the effective use of the case study, Penguin Warrior. Having seen the way other game programming texts handle using samples to illustrate game programming concepts -- which is often a mish-mash, to say the least -- the way this book approached the issue is refreshing: there's one major project, and each chapter brings us closer to that project's completion. The code works as intended and goes a long way to convince the reader that the libraries and techniques explored in this book are near-commercial-level quality. (Networked games turned out to be choppy on my machine, but that was the only real black mark I could find in the program's execution.) If nothing else, John Hall deserves a good deal of thanks for proving that game development on Linux is a realistic and rewarding endeavor.

The Not So Good

At times, the generalist nature of the book left me wondering if Hall couldn't have gone just a little bit further in some of the topics. There's a decent enough synopsis about deployment using Loki's install tool, as well as packaging in general, although nothing related to the Penguin Warrior game itself, so we don't get to see the theory in practice as much as it could have been. Also, he teases us by early on by starting with the compiler, moving to the make utility, talking a bit about package management, and then mentions automake, but he stops short of really explaining how to bring that into an existing project. Considering all the fun little dependencies needed for multimedia programming in Linux, this would have been a valuable bit of information for anyone not used to deploying on the platform.

Another instance of this so-close-yet-so-far approach occurs when he talks about incorporating Mesa into an SDL program. He tantalizes us with a code sample illustrating how to use the SDL as a replacement for glut, but that's all -- the material doesn't really get deep enough to convince readers that a 3D neophyte really can abandon glut for the SDL, particularly when many OpenGL reference materials out there rely heavily on glut as a teaching aid for windowing and other utility functions. Loki primarily used SDL to handle its 3D utility programming, so at least we know it's possible, but given the exploding popularity of 3D games it's too bad this wasn't covered more.

It's sometimes hard to tell exactly who the book is intended for. The introductory chapters include discussions on topics such as the different gaming genres out there, despite the fact that game programming hopefuls who don't know that Quake is a first-person shooter must make up a really narrow audience. Also, it's almost enough to give one whiplash to see how quickly he dives into using ioctl() when only a couple of chapters earlier he was explaining the basics of using gcc. Next up soon after that? Strap yourself in, we'll be writing straight to /dev/fb0! It's almost comical to think about how much dangerous knowledge a newbie's been given over the course of the book. Still, like I said earlier, he never talks down to the reader, who because of this might feel compelled against better judgement to be whisked along into subject matter that really needs other support material to be of any real use.

Hall's a humble enough guy, which is great insofar as writing style is concerned, but in one of the last chapters, he starts questioning some of the choices he made while coding Penguin Warrior throughout the book. Specifically, he says he probably should have used C++ instead of C, Scheme instead of TCL, and UDP instead of TCP for the networking, and this is cold comfort for people who would have hoped that the author would have picked the best plan of attack from the beginning. That said, C, TCL, and TCP are appropriate choices due to the simplicity of execution and the fact that they introduce useful techniques from a design point of view. Still, there's no point giving readers a sense of wistful "What if?" if you don't have to. It also highlights that this book is more a beginner's API reference than a game programming book per se.

To take that point further, there also really isn't much in the way of abstract game programming theory. This book could have really distinguished itself as special if some content related strictly to game development was here. There's a mention of Gamasutra here, a method of quick division there, the equation of a distance from a point to a line thrown into the mix, and that's pretty much all there is. Topics not really covered include optimization, pathfinding, and cracker-proofing your code, and what is talked about on the subjects of artificial intelligence design, collision detection, and physics is all rudimentary ... For coverage on these sorts of topics, you'll have to look elsewhere.

Finally, and this is really not the fault of the author or the book, but one wonders if the time was right for much of this material -- or, at the very least, its highly generalist approach. DRI is making its presence felt, the various audio APIs out there are improving all the time, and the LSB is coming along nicely, but until there's a proven and stable multimedia base to work from, no definitive guide can be written, and this sort of organized dogpile is really the best we can hope for with so much stuff to cover. The SDL is a top-notch library for graphics programming, and it's likely an entire book could have been spent strictly on graphics programming using it, and the depth that such a book could have attained far surpasses what we're given here. Plus, in a year from now, who knows where any of these sound APIs will be? Of course, these might prove to be just esoteric issues in the grand scheme of this book.

Conclusion

Despite the criticisms I have of this book, I really don't want the message that is conveyed here to be anything but positive. There's a lot working for this book -- the chapters on SDL, sound programming and incorporating TCL and C are excellent, and will be especially helpful for people who are novices in these areas. Considering the alternatives (hitting dryly-written online docs or constantly shaking your Google to see what falls out), this book is a very attractive option. Programming a fully-functional multiplayer game would probably require more effort than might be suggested by the brevity of the chapter on socket programming, but that chapter is a solid introduction as well. The book as a whole is well-written and succeeds for the most part in its endeavor to make the best of a chaotic situation. I'd recommend this book to anybody who appreciates the messy-kitchen style of learning, or to anyone with decent hacking skills who just needs to break the ice when it comes to the Linux game APIs. And even though it gets slightly schizophrenic in its attempt to be both an introductory text and a definitive reference, this is the sort of book that could kickstart a new movement in Linux game development.

Table of Contents (exploded version here)

1. The Anatomy of a Game
2. Linux Development Tools
3. Linux Gaming APIs
4. Mastering SDL
5. Linux Audio Programming
6. Game Scripting Under Linux
7. Networked Gaming with Linux
8. Gaming with the Linux Console
9. Finishing Penguin Warrior
10. To Every Man a Linux Distribution

• Glossary of Terms
• Bibliography

Related Links

Sample Code
No Starch Press
Loki
SDL (List of SDL games)
OpenAL
DRI
Mesa
libsndfile
Gamasutra

You can purchase this book from Fatbrain.

Timothy has compiled a good list of links related to this morning's terrorist attacks around America. Many photos and video clips. There's a lot of good links there and I highly recommend that you read them. And thanks to the Slashteam for keeping the servers up through this. Its not easy dealing with 3x the traffic. I apologize to readers that have been inconvenienced.

Two major news updates: the plane downed near Pittsburgh is reported not to have been shot down. A fifth plane which had been feared hijacked, this one a Korean Air jetliner, was forced down by Canadian Air Force planes over the Yukon. However, this plane is reported not to have been hijacked -- instead, its emergency beacon was triggered by a low-fuel indicator.

Importantly -- remember, blood is in demand. The Red Cross' site is mobbed, but here's the blood donation information on a the cached page at google.

More details of the attack and its aftermath: a report at at gnome.org, and a photo at indymedia.org. pajama links to NYC Police scanner traffic (winamp) streamed online, and an anonymous reader also points to another scanner feed.

Shadowwalker Delaforge writes "Hey guys: I'm submitting my web site to yours to get the word out. I've been compiling web sites, and info on the U.S. Attack. These sites are ones that work, and arent' swamped out of existence. I'm also adding new data about where people can donate money, blood, and other things dealing with this.

soccerdad writes "Due to the activities of today, the internet/networking experts at my firm have been asked by some of our clients to be on standby in case anything untoward occurs. They've been monitoring backbone activity, etc., in a "just in case" mode. They've described the activity they're seeing as somewhat strange. The backbone is, according to them, at about 80% utilization -- they've never seen it above 40% before. However, the main portal sites such as Yahoo aren't having substantively higher than normal traffic. They're working on doing some traffic analysis but haven't completed that effort yet."

A small piece of that bandwidth may be saved if you go to the link Kalak suggests: "William Shunn is collecting short notes from people in the terrorist affected areas so you can see who is OK." Look here (or post your name here if you're in an affected city) before tying up a phone connection. Alex Fabrikant submitted another personal information site at Berkeley

Thapthim writes "http://cbc.ca/ has all sorts of information, even in our own city buildings are being shutdown, all air traffic has been suspended. However Canadian Airports are taking in international flights heading into US so the air ports there are free for emergencies."

sn0wcrsh wrote to say that a "short blurb on Channel 7 Boston that the CTO of Akamai was on the fateful plane that hit the trade center" confirms the earlier reports that he was on board.

And ectrix writes: "The CFO of my company, Netegrity was on United Airlines Flight 175, which has been confirmed to us by United Airlines to have hit tower two of the WTC.

WAVY NBC - Norfolk, VA (among other local TV stations I'm sure) is reporting on the air the Threatcon levels at the area Naval, Air Force, and Army bases. They are all at Threatcon Delta. Their website currently only lists their status as of the beginning of the attacks, which was Threatcon Charlie. Norfolk, VA is the home port for the US Atlantic Fleet. Local TV stations also are showing armed (M16s, shotguns) guards patrolling the base grounds and perimeters."

There are updated photos and videos here, and CarbonFusion wrote with another good link to photos and videos.. eddiem writes: "http://www.flightexplorer.com/ will soon let you view the flight path of the planes." Explanations of airport security at How Stuff Works and Cryptome are an interesting read under the circumstances as well.

Bard, Andrew wrote with some updates as well:

"Just to let you know:

1. I heard a woman who was on the 92nd floor of the first WTC building when the plane hit it. She was able to escape and so was everyone "in her company" so it is assumed that virtually everyone from the 92nd floor down was evacuated successfully - an estimated 20,000 people of the 25,000 in the building.
2. the plane that went down in PA had a woman onboard who locked herself in the bathroom with her cellular phone - she was telling authorities about the hijacking when the plane crashed and killed her - that is the only way the authorities knew for sure what plane went down in PA so quickly, she gave her flight number
3. the Mexican border is completely closed and the Canadian border is still open - all International flights have been redirected to Northern Canada
4. the planes from Boston were presumably chosen because they were going on long flights (to LA) which would make them larger than average airliners with full tanks of gas
5. when the first WTC building crashed (which was the 2nd one to be hit), 125 firemen were down below fighting the fire on the first building to be hit... none of them have been heard from yet - 10,000 emergency personnel in NYC responded to the first WTC getting hit... it is unknown how many of those were crushed in the two collapsed buildings."

Tonight's slashback with news of how you can help rebuild the foundations of the Internet (at least a small corner), more on slimming down the old Cathode Ray Tube, a new compiler which costs a bit more than GCC, and more.

Why not put 'em on Freenet while you're at it ... Imran Ghory writes: "Google has put out an appeal to get NetNews CDs (produced by Sterling Software and CD Publishing Corporation) which archived usenet between 1992 to 1995. Looks like Google is reviving Deja's idea of a total usenet archive."

This sounds like a worthy objective, worth rooting around for -- maybe they'll even give you a credit somewhere.

They know that of which they speak. Hot on the heels of the inexorable GCC project's 3.0.1 release, zealot (and a number of other people) wrote with the news that "Intel will release its latest compilers (the ones that optimize for P4 and can do some auto-vectorization of code) for Linux this Thursday. I'd love to see some performance numbers for compiled code on a P4 if anyone gets their hands on this ... maybe the autovectorization could help some gimp plugins speed up."

You cannot stop the chess updates Álvaro Begué writes: "Junior is the new World Micro Computer Chess Champion, Shredder won in the single processor category (five years in a row) and Goliath won the blitz tournament. Congratulations to all of them. Check out the official website."

Maybe the durned things will stick around forever. In addition to the IBM research on making ultra-slim CRT monitors, an Anonymous Coward points to another article on the future of CRTs: "This is a new technology that can integrate into existing production lines and can halve the depth of a CRT type tube. A TV normally 22 inches deep would be only 11 inches."

weink writes "A new generation of scrappy search engines is emerging to challenge the dominance of mighty Google . An article at Wired News lists up-and-coming search engines, WiseNut , Teoma , Lasoo , CURE , and Vivisimo . Take a look, and give them a try. But I still say that nothing is better then the almighty Google ."

weink writes "A new generation of scrappy search engines is emerging to challenge the dominance of mighty Google . An article at Wired News lists up-and-coming search engines, WiseNut , Teoma , Lasoo , CURE , and Vivisimo . Take a look, and give them a try. But I still say that nothing is better then the almighty Google ."

A number of readers have written in about the Salon story talking with Gary Groth's recation to Scott McCloud's pieces on the intersection of the comic and the Internet. Groth's feelings are much different then McCloud. I love the comic book format (am currently reading Cerebus, The Dreaming and Bone amongst others) and think is an interesting issue - 'specially considered within the greater question of "art" and digital media.

Spamlent Green asks: "The recent 'Cashing In On Antique Computers' thread, and the PBS Flea Market documentary made me all misty-eyed for the MIT Swap Fest. I moved from Cambridge to D.C. last year, and haven't been able to find anything like it down here, and I don't mean those bogus 'Comptuer Show and Sale and Monster Truck Rally' events advertised constantly on cheapo UHF stations. So I was curious -- do any DC-MD-No.VA-area Slashdot-ers know of events like this down here -- or anywhere else in the country for that matter? They must be out there ..."

There's something called First Saturday in Dallas, too, and a google search turned up a number of interesting possibilities. What recommendations can you make for the seeker of swap?

Fungii writes: "There is a fascinating article over on physicsweb.com about 'The physics of the Web.' It gets a little technical, but it is a really interesting subject, and is well worth a read." And if you missed it a few months ago, the IBM study describing "the bow tie theory" (and a surprisingly disconnected Web) makes a good companion piece. One odd note is the reseachers' claim that the Web contains "nearly a billion documents," when one search engine alone claims to index more than a third beyond that, but I guess new and duplicate documents will always make such figures suspect.

JibbaJabba writes "Securiteam is reporting that a "security vulnerability has been confirmed in Lycos's Search Engine" which "allows malicious web site owners to cause JavaScript code (or any other HTML code) to get included in the search results displayed to the end user by Lycos". They also state that "other engines are suspected to be vulnerable as well". Anyone tried google yet? The original bugtraq report by Sentry Labs is available here." Proof once again that the jerks have more spare time then the people who actually do something worthwhile.

After taking some heat a few months ago for not having many products listed, the Open Source Directory has been plugging away. Steve Mallett writes: "We made the product database of Open-Source Directory downloadable in XML today. Announcement here at newsforge. We're hoping that people begin to use the data like google uses dmoz. More people see the data, which increases awareness of open-source which increases the database which gets more people to display the data etc, etc ... You get the point."

Providing a list of applications stable enough to recommend to non-gurus is a worthy endeavor, so it's great to see this project slowly becoming more useful. There are gaps to plug going forward, though. The default text strings can be ambiguous, and the information provided on individual projects doesn't always give much to go on. For instance, look at the Mosix page, where you'll find that "This product has no Latest version yet," "This product doesn't fix anything," and "This product is not like any other," but no email contact information for Mosix authors. Similarly ambiguous pages are provided for Gnucleus and OpenOffice.

I exchanged some email with Steve on the state of the entries in the database, and asked about how the missing information could be filled in. He told me that while project maintairers (and site administrators) are the only ones who can update entries, users can contact the administrators of individual projects directly through the OSD site to suggest changes or clarification.

"We're trying to make things easier for the maintainers. ... I think there is a serious lack of product maintainers to help authors," he said. To that end, Mallet may soon provide example projects for software authors to emulate, and is in the early stages of a unified project-listing tool which would update listings on various web sites. Given the number of sites that offer downloads or simply track various software projects, that could be a boon to developers.

Hopefully, this will turn into the sort of tool that you can show a boss or teacher to answer the bugaboo of Free / Open Source being unready for prime time (or just overwhelming and undifferentiated).

Linux won't ever be accepted as a truly mainstream OS by most vendors. The reason for this is quite simply the users. And I'm not talking about everyone, I'm talking about the 31337 h4x0r kids with the bad attitude. They're posting right here on this system, intermixed with others who often share the attitude, but also have a bit more civility. I saw this once again while learning about the Hewlett Packard 3300C flatbad scanner ... which has zippo Linux support from HP. And I don't see that changing. Keep reading and maybe I can explain why.

So I collect anime cels. I have a fairly nice collection now. Cels from Tenchi, Trigun, Ranma 1/2 among others. It's a fun hobby that I find gets me a little more involved with some of my favorite shows to have a little piece of them. Sometimes it can be horribly expensive, but often really nice cels for just a few bucks can be found.

But what do you do with these cels? Well, I framed several. Museum-quality glass ensures that they'll stick around for awhile. But I have dozens of cels, and I travel a lot ... so scanning them in and making nice wallpaper images for my desktop sure will make KDE look nice. So with that in mind I began hopping around looking for an inexpensive flatbed scanner. And I thought I had found it in the HP 3300C. At only $80, it seemed like a great deal: I didn't need 2400x2400 scans or anything, I just wanted to get 1280x1024 images off 8.5x11 cels. A quick glance through /etc/usbmgr/usbmgr.conf revealed a line for it, so I figured I was all set. OK, that was a major mistake on my part -- I should have looked a little harder, I just made the ill-fated assumption that a line in this file meant someone had made the 3300C work under Linux.

I was wrong. I've set up USB devices before. I've set up scanners before. And this one bugger wasn't about to work. So I figured I'd hop over to google and search around and see if I was missing something. After browsing around a few sites that provided me with no information whatsoever, I stumbled upon Linux-USB. Duh, the source, right? Probably should have looked there in the first place, but hey, I never claimed to be a genius. My heart sunk when I found the supported scanners list and found my cheapy HP 3300C, conveniently listed with an icon so obvious that even a moron could clearly see that his quest to scan in cels was going to be fruitless: The Red X of failure.

The site helpfully provides a little more info link with a discussion board that I figured I would read to see if perhaps work was underway. And this is where I made a shocking discovery. And if I was HP, I sure wouldn't be taking the abuse that so many people are dishing out. The discussion starts off fine. An email address to someone at HP to ask for specs. A comment about how HP should make their specs available since they are supposedly an Open Source company (even having gone so far as hiring Bruce Perens to do ... something. Well nobody is really sure what, but he does something for Linux at HP ;). The next comment was a user who returned his scanner. Another user glad that he found this page before he bought the scanner. Lucky bastard. I wish I had.

But this is where things turned sour. The messages turn from disappointed to just plain mean. HP employees are called bastards and assholes. Threats are made. They are referred to as lots of words that I would happily use in friendly conversation with a friend, but never post in a public forum read by strangers.

And thats where all of this is leading. Intermixed with this embarassing dialogue is legitimite stuff. One guy wants to write a driver. Others provide links to various support channels at HP where perhaps a request for the scanner specs might not come up empty.

But somehow I can't get the bad taste out of my mouth. I see it on Slashdot all the time, and I find it really disheartening. Its an attitude that many people have: The "You Owe Me" attitude. Certainly I'm not exempt from this attitude. If I pay for a device, dammit I want specs. But that doesn't mean that I'm going to call a company with thousands of employees "cockmasters" just because they don't want to support my operating system.

I've met a lot of people who've written a lot of open source code. Window Managers. Ethernet Drivers. X extensions. GUI Toolkits. And these people are almost always totally cool. Sure they have attitudes. They are pompous. They are proud of their work. And in most cases they deserve many more accolades then they get. But I think most of them wouldn't say something like "HP seems to be still smeeling Gates' asshole rather than coming out of it. Beware Hp, Linux is going strong and unless you recognize that and properly support your hardware under Linux, you are going to Piss in your pants one day." I'm embarassed to run the same OS as 'Casablanca' who provided Linux-USB with that choice quote. No doubt that Linux is going strong. But what does that have to do with the offensive statement that leads off? How does saying that advance anything?

This is at its worst in public forums. Mailing lists are often much more civil. I'm not saying always because every mailing list with more then a few people explodes into flames every now and then. But at least then you're talking about a private forum. There's just something about a public web board that brings the worst out in some people. Its unfortunate that because you don't sign your name, some people interpret that as a license to be a jerk.

I'm not saying drop the attitude. Linux is a superior operating system to the one that HP usually supports. But that attitude is a double edged sword. If welded childishly, it will hurt us all. I don't care if 'Casablanca' chops off his own leg, but damn it sucks that his attitude might hurt the dozens of other posters on that forum who all paid cash money for their HP 3300C scanner and may never see it supported.

The reality is that HP sells scanners and printers almost entirely to users of that "Other" OS. Writing a driver probably won't make them much money: especially not for a scanner that is going for less then a hundred bucks. Of course, releasing their specs costs them next to nothing, and for a company that has been working hard to embrace Open Source and Linux, it certainly is something cool that they could do.

In conclusion, I had to boot up windows to use my scanner. The Diablo 2 Expansion is the only other software on the partition. I scanned in a half dozens cels, rebooted, and did the rest of my work in The GIMP. It took me much much longer to get things done then I would have liked and it definitely detracts from the usability of the scanner. The scans were fine, but the overhead it required forces me not to recommend the scanner to anyone. But if HP would release the specs to this thing, I know there would be a lot of happy people besides me. HP makes quality hardware and the price is definitely right on this one.

If they don't, I have a hard time blaming them. I know that the bitchers and moaners that are so loud in random forums throughout the net (and yes, even here on Slashdot. Maybe especially here) are actually a minority. The vast majority of Linux Developers and Users are sane and calm. Sure, we have that inner glow of satisfaction that comes from knowing we have uptimes of 200+ days and we only reboot to try out newer devel kernels. But we don't feel the need to call people names because we don't get our way. I admit that I've stepped over the line more times then I should, but I try to be cool about it. And I hope others do to.

Soapbox mode: off.

An anonymous submitter sent in links to a super-sophisticated hydrofoil/catamaran which intends to break various water speed records for wind-powered vessels. Max speed: 45 knots. A couple of fansites have more photos of the craft in action.

j7953 writes: "German news service heise online reports that Adobe wants to settle the KIllustrator case. According to the article (here's Google's translation), they demand that KIllustrator gets a new name, but don't want to stop its distribution or development. They also promise that the author won't have to pay anything."

Anonymous In Indy writes "How much of our learning comes from the toys we play with? Nobel prize winner Sir Harry Kroto (Chemistry, 1996) feels that the falling popularity of Meccano and the rise of Lego is inextricably linked to "the demise of British engineering." "Meccano teaches engineering and architectural skills in a way that Lego doesn't. If we had more Meccano, we would have railways that worked. There would be more engineers with better basic understanding." The Sunday Telegraph has the complete story. (USAians note: Meccano = Erector Set."

hwestiii writes: "Geek identification methods have waxed and waned over the years. Back in the years when it was still not cool to be a geek, they were identified by their pocket protectors and calculators hanging from their belts. And way back in the mists of time, before most of the Slashdot crowd were even an item on their parent's life-project-plan, they were identified by possession of ... slide rules. I'm clearly dating myself by submitting this, but I owned and used slide rules as a teen, just as microelectronics was making cheap calculators possible. Nando times has an interesting link to a community of people around the country trying to keep the memory and spirit of the slide rule alive. Some may be wistful, some may think 'What the hell...?' Take a look." A quick look at Google's image search yielded some cool photos of both slide rules and the classic HP-35 calculator -- I wonder where the HP-35 my dad used to use has gotten to. Does anyone still use slide rules on a regular basis?

danec writes "Google has finally put up a page showing off its popular searches. Called the Google Zeitgeist (meaning: the general intellectual, moral, and cultural climate of an era) it will be updated monthly, weekly or even daily as circumstances warrant." This is actually a lot more then just a "Top 10 List" and I hope they update it frequently. I especially like how they compare searches for related words (Aimster/Napster in this edition). It would be fun to do the same for politicians during elections, or movies competing for the same blockbuster release date. You can do fascinating stuff with the amount of data Google has.

Ever since Scour faded from the surface of the net, finding a good source of images has been tought to do. Fortunately Google has stepped up to the plate by working on an Image Search Engine. A variety of people submitted it, and although it is in beta testing, it seems quite functional and very cool.

Rich Jones writes "According to this story over at the BBC every geek's favorite search engine is contemplating an IPO. " Hopefully this wouldn't effect the lean mean searching that I've come to love from the unquestioned king of search engines. Now that the hype surrounding IPOs has fizzled, its nice to see a company that looks as good as Google thinking about it.

nil0lab asks: "I want to use keystrokes to switch between various systems and go from workspace to workspace within each system with another set of keystrokes." By using a combination of VNC, SSH and the right window manager, nil0lab wants to be able to look at any desktop on his network. Sounds cool, and I bet there are a lot of us who could put a trick like this to use. nil0lab has a partial solution, however there are still issues that need to be solved, and this is where he needs your help.

"Here's my partial solution:

1. I run blackbox (google cache) with bbkeys (google cache) on my local box (debian+xfree86-4). This gives me workspaces. I programmed ctrl-alt-1 through ctrl-alt-9 to give me workspaces 1-9.
2. In each workspace I run Tridia's version of vncviewer to connect to a different remote box (debian, suse, aix). (Actually, one is to the local box for consistency and my mobility)
3. I run the same window manager on each of the remote systems. I tried using blackbox with bbkeys there too but with -config to define different keys but there seems to be some conflict. I settled on flwm for the remote boxes: its minimal decorations and low memory impact seems to give good response over 256Kbps - T1 grade lines + ssh. It also supports keyboard-oriented operation (ctrl-F1 thru ctrl-F12) to get to different workspaces. (Tho Ctrl-F8 pos up the vncviewer's pop-up menu.)

Downsides: (1) flwm seems to support switching windows within a workspace fairly well, but since focus follows mouse, any little bump of the mouse changes the focus back. (2) copy and paste don't work very well (first you gotta copy, then you gotta use the popup thingy to transfer remote to local, then you go to the other one and use its popup thingy to transfer local to remote, then you paste, and then it doesn't work half the time and you have no idea which step wasn't done just so or there's some limitation.) (3) each vncviewer is in a window so it is subject to being minimized or defocused or resized. tried the vncviewer's fullscreen mode but it seemed to block changing workspaces under the local bbkeys control.

Is there a better way?"

nil0lab asks: "I want to use keystrokes to switch between various systems and go from workspace to workspace within each system with another set of keystrokes." By using a combination of VNC, SSH and the right window manager, nil0lab wants to be able to look at any desktop on his network. Sounds cool, and I bet there are a lot of us who could put a trick like this to use. nil0lab has a partial solution, however there are still issues that need to be solved, and this is where he needs your help.

"Here's my partial solution:

1. I run blackbox (google cache) with bbkeys (google cache) on my local box (debian+xfree86-4). This gives me workspaces. I programmed ctrl-alt-1 through ctrl-alt-9 to give me workspaces 1-9.
2. In each workspace I run Tridia's version of vncviewer to connect to a different remote box (debian, suse, aix). (Actually, one is to the local box for consistency and my mobility)
3. I run the same window manager on each of the remote systems. I tried using blackbox with bbkeys there too but with -config to define different keys but there seems to be some conflict. I settled on flwm for the remote boxes: its minimal decorations and low memory impact seems to give good response over 256Kbps - T1 grade lines + ssh. It also supports keyboard-oriented operation (ctrl-F1 thru ctrl-F12) to get to different workspaces. (Tho Ctrl-F8 pos up the vncviewer's pop-up menu.)

Downsides: (1) flwm seems to support switching windows within a workspace fairly well, but since focus follows mouse, any little bump of the mouse changes the focus back. (2) copy and paste don't work very well (first you gotta copy, then you gotta use the popup thingy to transfer remote to local, then you go to the other one and use its popup thingy to transfer local to remote, then you paste, and then it doesn't work half the time and you have no idea which step wasn't done just so or there's some limitation.) (3) each vncviewer is in a window so it is subject to being minimized or defocused or resized. tried the vncviewer's fullscreen mode but it seemed to block changing workspaces under the local bbkeys control.

Is there a better way?"

How many people run Linux as a desktop OS? How many servers run Linux? Is the Linux server market share 8.6 percent or 24 percent or somewhere in between? Dan Kusnetzky is a heavily quoted analyst at IDC who wrestles with questions like these for a living. This is your chance to find out how analysts come up with all those numbers -- and why analysts seem to disagree with each other so often. One question per post, please. We'll send 10 of the highest-moderated ones to Dan, and post his answers as soon as we get them back.

skuzzlebutt asks: "If you are dragging your office (kicking and screaming, no less) into the dynamic and typically, more affordable world of Linux and Open Source to keep those licensing and external help desk call costs down, have you considered your Office Management Software needs yet? I'm talking about things like HR Management, Scheduling, and the like. Snooping around on Freshmeat and SourceForge, the pickin's were pretty slim (I found one package at SF, but it has been posted for a year with no file releases), and Google wasn't much help either. I work as a developer for B of A and am also an MBA candidate; between these two roles, I run into many small business owners who are complaining about licensing costs, limited support options, can't-upgrade-unless-we-get-that-$75M-grant, and so forth. Has anyone had any success/horror stories for particular pre-fab commercial packages (be they open, closed, gratis, paid, etc)?"

Top-down cool. A huge glob of capital hovers on the 43rd floor of a skyscraper somewhere in America, telling you and me what we should think is hip this week. Welcome to the whole damn world. Fortunately or otherwise, our cool-chasing is built into our genes, and it can exist with or without money driving it. Maybe the grassroots can't destroy our money-driven musical culture, but I bet there's a way a natural culture can thrive alongside the one we're force-fed. (This is the last of three features on pop music; you may want to read part one and part two for background.)

The capital doesn't have any opinions, of course. It just perpetuates itself. It's potential energy; when it's spent on the mass media, it drags youth culture in its wake, and through some miracle perpetual motion machine, that energy is recaptured in the sale of T-shirts, CDs, movie tickets, Gap vests, makeup, and shoes.

There's an indefinable quality about this kind of "cool" I'm talking about. I can't really put my finger on what I mean, but the closest I can get is: looking up to someone because you perceive their opinions regarding dynamic cultural subjects you care about to have value.

If your peer group looks anything like mine, recognizing the importance of, say, RSS a couple of years ago would have set you apart as someone whose vision could be trusted by your peers. And local peer group is all that matters for cool.

On the other hand, if your local environment buys into the top-down idea of what cool is, bands-and-brands, you're kind of screwed if you invest your mental effort in evaluating networking hardware. Ninety percent of high school is realizing that catching up with the global cool is something you don't have the resources for, and instead finding a local cool that works for you. You heard it here first.

So how does someone become, in this narrow definition, cool? The key is that it involves dynamic culture. Trends come and go, and come back again. Being with the trend, or (better) just slightly ahead of it, scores big. I'm guessing the cool people who first wore flared pants a few years ago, two weeks before we suddenly all decided it was mainstream, are now watched by their peers to see what other trends they're going to predict.

On the other hand, in 1992, wearing bell bottoms (I'm sorry, it's the same damn thing) would have had the opposite effect on your social status. Fads rise and fall, and we need to buy low and sell high. I plead guilty to still liking Fatboy Slim, which I'm sure would have been very chic three years ago -- now it means I have no taste, apparently.

Corporations spend millions on getting in and out at the right times. They speculate on the meme market, buying a trend small and selling it back to us for real dollars when it's big. MTV is day-trading our culture.

Did you think you were the one who discovered (fill in the name of something you thought was cool)? Chances are, some executive paid for research three months prior, and upped the hip of some TV show or commercial by letting you see it. Sorry, but your discoveries have all filtered through money.

I'd really like to denigrate the cool-chasing impulse, and that's easy to do when it's a driving force in someone else's peer group or the characters on Daria (episode 505, "The Story of D"). But it's part of being human. We all like to play this game a little, some of us a little too much maybe.

It does affect us all our lives, starting when we're little kids "acting out" to draw focus and attention (few things are less cool than being ignored). It ends shortly after we arrange to have our ashes shot onto Mars, thereby becoming more cool after we're dead.

And it runs parallel to economic considerations. Money is a good way to motivate someone, and it has the advantage of working on complete strangers. But the peer-group drive was motivating human beings to spot trends tens of thousands of years before money was invented.

("People are saying the tribe over the hill is doing throwing spears this year. We should make some throwing spears too." Our vacuous impulse toward fashion and fitting-in is probably a spinoff from a survival instinct. I want to align with the one who can find roots and berries; that's pretty damn cool if my tribe is on the brink of starvation, and we'll all trust the root-finder a lot more when we're eating better. Berries, Spice Girls, same thing.)

The trust system works for music. I don't browse record stores anymore; they're 99% junk (to my ear) and I don't have time or energy to sift through it all. Instead I ask friends what they're into. Which friends? Cool friends.

How do I know they're cool? My brain keeps a ledger. One of the interesting ideas that sociobiology brings us, as it struggles to shed its ugly reputation from the 1970s, is that human beings are hardwired with the capability to keep track of about 150 other human beings. Perhaps that's the size of a typical village on the African savannah, 50,000 years ago.

The evidence is pretty anecdotal, but each person's internal map of pecking orders and trust networks seems to grow not much beyond that size. You and I can track coolness factors for about 150 of our closest friends, no more.

But a computer can track more.

What we need is a system that can store musical (and other cultural) recommendations for 150 million of our closest friends.

Napster doesn't address this at all; though some have found new music through it, I sure haven't. The few times I've tried to chat with people sending me something from an artist I already know I like, nothing's come of it. It's been great at finding junk I already knew about from hearing on the radio, though.

But: recommendation systems. Basically the idea is to accumulate preference vectors from a large number of contributors, and then provide a way to ask, "if I like A and B, and dislike C, what else might I like?"

There have been a handful of master's theses and dissertations written on the subject. There are academic projects like GroupLens, but, like GroupLens, they're all 3-4 years old and there's no source.

The best-known recommendation system was Firefly, which actually worked pretty well. My initial experience was telling it a few musical artists I liked, and seeing it start spitting back to me other artists I already knew I liked. "You enjoy Peter Gabriel and Tori Amos? Have you heard Kate Bush?" Firefly was swallowed by Microsoft and is now apparently part of Passport (which I don't use, so I don't know what it looks like now).

But what's needed to leverage cool-tracking into a free (speech and beer) culture is an open system that will integrate with existing communities on the internet.

I've gotten to recognize a number of Slashdot users' nicknames on sight, and it might be interesting to see what you-all are listening to. My latest example is an Apocalyptica CD I bought last week based on a reader's recommendation in a comment (it hasn't arrived yet, so I can't say if Barnes & Noble's 24kbps preview did it justice). I'd click through to user pages a lot more often if I knew you-all were sharing musical preferences.

Note that none of this is necessarily tied to music trading. It might be nice if my user page listing the fact that I like Sarge had the music itself, or a preview, a click away. But the important thing is the recommendation, not the trading, and to build a network uninfluenced by money, the distribution system has to be separable. If Barnes & Noble is the only supplier, and has any control over what recommendations I get, I won't be able to trust them.

So the software really should have a distributed database of people's recommendations, one that's not ownable by any one entity. Ideally, the users of Slashdot, Kuro5hin, and Ain't It Cool News should all be able to drop their cultural likes and dislikes into the same database (hierarchical namespace based on domain name?). Queries drawing on users with taste like yours should be able to come just from one community, or from the entire database, your choice.

And -- the important point, the key to it all -- the database needs to recognize who was on top of which cool when. If I drop in Jonatha Brooke in February, and then 10,000 other people discover her in June, I need credit for being on the rising curve of the trend.

I don't know if I need a little star by my name or anything (I'm far too modest for that, oh stop, no really) but my positive rating of that artist or album should count for more if I got in early. Time is crucial in measuring trends.

And following the directed graph in the other direction, if I tell the database that I like these six CDs, it needs to be able to tell me the top ten users who plugged in their recommendations for those same CDs first -- on the theory that, if they led the curve last year, their opinions for this year will be of interest to me (and 10,000 other people).

Corporate cool-chasers pay good money on research, every day, to find this stuff out. In a voluntary contributory system, everyone could have access to the same information, for free. It would undercut corporate cool the same way GPL'd software undercuts Microsoft: when it's free, nobody will pay for it.

Writing code that can be integrated into existing internet communities is key as well. Firefly failed because nobody went there. Everything from the database to the web interface was proprietary, and its information was only on one website. But allow Slashdot to tie into your system, and you instantly add hundreds of thousands of potential users.

There's no money to be made in this, or not much compared to the $150 billion that the big six make every year by selling us trends.

But if you're a programmer looking for a way to influence musical genre for years to come -- or rather, to remove the influence of the glob of capital and allow a natural culture to flourish on its own -- this is a great way to start.

Music distribution and economics have historically been the two major influences on the evolution of its style. The internet has reached a point where that doesn't need to be true. Culture can be abstracted from economics, style from money. There are 10,000 singers and musicians working day jobs right now who don't care if they ever make a million dollars. They just want to be heard, and while the internet lets them reach a billion people, there's no way for word to spread. They might as well not exist. They might as well go back to selling 3 CDs at a time at gigs.

If that can't change, it's a damn shame. The alternative is another century of small-time musicians giving up in disgust while a wad of cash stuffs our ears with the Abercrombie and Fitch song.

The entrenched money is here for good. We'll have the RIAA and its prepackaged bands until copyright law changes drastically. We'll have (quasi-)payola in major radio markets until the radio itself goes away. We'll never get rid of the top-down cool because there's just too much money in it.

But we can have a market of our own, not based on money. We can leverage the best part of the internet, its communities, to produce a grassroots cool.

flikx sent in an issue that may affect several of us in the future, especially if you happen to work in a similar environment. It's a free speech issue, and one that puts a huge question mark on just how far U.S. First Amendment rights really extend. The short version: filkx ran a weblog called "SOS," for the laudable goal of providing an open discussion forum for student government issues. He had a steadfast rule of non-censorship, which soon landed him in political hot waters with the University of Utah. A new administration steps in, the site is shut down, and filkx now faces criminal charges, expulsion and a cute twist: the university claims that the site's content is now their own property. flikx notes, "I'd like to say up front that this is a fairly large and multifaceted issue, and would also like to draw attention to a related article up on Slashcode". You can read the details by clicking on the link.

The following is written by former-Slashsite admin, flikx:

Early last fall, I personally created a Slash site called SOS under student government for my University. I did everything myself with no outside help of any sort, and entirely volunteer. I have never been paid for my efforts in any way, and never expected monetary compensation. I did not actually work for the University, but was a student in Mechanical Engineering. I created said site with the ultimate goal of providing an open discussion forum and weblog for all students of the University.

During the course of operation of the site, I fielded numerous complaints about abuse to the site, and took them in a professional manner, though steadfastly refused to censor any content on the site. Remember that many in Utah are very conservative and dislike free speech on some levels...being fairly conservative myself, I never thougtht I'd run afoul of people. The problem is that I continuously ran afoul of politics as people threatened me repeatedly due to my failure to censor the site. The abuse was minimal, especially by Slashdot standards.

Six weeks ago, the administration censored the entire site due to the threat of legal action due to inapropriate content. The site was down for just over a week, and I was forced to implement strict posting guidelines and adopt a censorship policy for the site.

A new administration recently took over, and first on the list was to get rid of me, and the site. There's much more involved here in politics, plus scr1pt k1dd13 threats spoofed from my email and everything, but the bottom line is that the site was censored for good. The server was physically removed by the police, and the disks wiped after 'evidence' was removed. All known backups were destroyed, and they even obtained a protective order from me and banned me from the University property. I'm also suspended indefinately, and face immediate expulsion from the University. (BTW - I'm almost done with my Mechanical Engineering degree .. so this is not light by any means. If expelled, I'm forced to start over as a freshmen if I ever get into another school.)

So here's some of the problems with which I turn to the Slashdot crowd for a solution:

The administration threatened me, and had the legal team tell me that everything on the site is intellectual property of the University of Utah. Everything. That includes all stories, all comments, user accounts, even the graphic design I did. I have off-site backups of the site, and could easily redeploy the site elsewhere provided the time and hosting. I've already put 2000+ unpaid volunteer hours into the University, and they take away my work. It should be my right to operate an open discussion forum, but it seems that it's not.

What does the Slashdot crowd think about this issue? Should [or does] everything belong to my University? The only involvement the university had was hosting the site and buying the server, that's it. Obviously, the site could be moved elsewhere, and I still have a team together that could operate the site independant to the University. But as I am already being expelled and even facing criminal charges for 'computer crimes', this is far beyond your average Ask Slashdot."

Cliff: If you are interested in obtaining some context for this story, you can dig around the cached pages from SOS on Google.

michaelmalak writes: "Google Groups, the deja.com replacement, now supports posting of articles. But be careful, because in posting you grant Google a "royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive license." I noticed that UseNet volumes went down significantly when Remarq and then Deja went down. Then volumes went down again in the traditional slowing accompanied by college summer recess. If volume is to pick up, it will likely come from those using Google's posting service, rather than an unreliable or unavailable (esp. in the case of AOL) ISP news server. So it would seem UseNet is not going to die, it just got bought out like everything else these days."

The paragraph reads in full:

"By posting communications on or through the Service, you automatically grant Google a royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive license to use, reproduce, modify, publish, edit, translate, distribute, perform, and display the communication alone or as part of other works in any form, media, or technology whether now known or hereafter developed, and to sublicense such rights through multiple tiers of sublicensees."

Individuals also have the right to nuke their own posts, though, and to specify 'X-No-archive: yes.'

michaelmalak writes: "Google Groups, the deja.com replacement, now supports posting of articles. But be careful, because in posting you grant Google a "royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive license." I noticed that UseNet volumes went down significantly when Remarq and then Deja went down. Then volumes went down again in the traditional slowing accompanied by college summer recess. If volume is to pick up, it will likely come from those using Google's posting service, rather than an unreliable or unavailable (esp. in the case of AOL) ISP news server. So it would seem UseNet is not going to die, it just got bought out like everything else these days."

The paragraph reads in full:

"By posting communications on or through the Service, you automatically grant Google a royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive license to use, reproduce, modify, publish, edit, translate, distribute, perform, and display the communication alone or as part of other works in any form, media, or technology whether now known or hereafter developed, and to sublicense such rights through multiple tiers of sublicensees."

Individuals also have the right to nuke their own posts, though, and to specify 'X-No-archive: yes.'

Keith Henson was arraigned on charges of "misdemeanor terrorism" last September. Last month the jury deadlocked on those charges, but convicted him of making threats to interfere with the constitutional privilege of enjoying religious freedom. He was not present at his sentencing hearing yesterday and is a fugitive from justice, apparently planning to claim asylum in Canada. If you've ever flamed anyone in an online forum, and think you have a right to carry a picket sign, you need to study this miscarriage of justice. Details below. Update by J : freehenson.tripod.com has been taken down, so I'm linking to a mirror.

"Religious bigotry will not be tolerated in Riverside County," was a Scientology spokesperson's reaction to the verdict.

That's basically the problem right there. The First Amendment gives me the right to be a bigot as long as I don't hurt or threaten anyone. You don't have to like my opinions, but you do have to tolerate them.

If you've ever hung out in an online forum, you'll probably get deja vu reading this Usenet thread. The first message posted is a description of cruising past some Scientology related buildings, complete with GPS coordinates for whatever reason. It's written as a self-mocking, satirical sendup of spy movies. The remainder of the thread is jokes in the same vein.

The question is whether this running gag about "Tom Cruise Missile Coordinates" (get it?) could be taken seriously enough to qualify as a threat under Section 11415 of the California Penal Code.

As I read the recently-passed law, if you go along with the jokes about the "handheld laser guidance system," you might be a terrorist:

Any person who knowingly threatens to use a weapon of mass destruction [including] by means of an electronic communication device, is to be taken as a threat, even if there is no intent of actually carrying it out ...

The fact that the person who allegedly violated this section did not actually possess a biological agent, toxin, or chemical weapon does not constitute a defense to the crime specified in this section.

The victim of said terrorism must have been in "sustained fear" of the threat being carried out. And how does the law know your victim was in sustained fear? Because he or she evacuated the building -- or took "any other action."

Here's what Henson says. In this case, the Scientology organization's legal team managed to bar any evidence from being presented about why Henson was picketing the Scientology location (because of two unusual deaths within a month).

Nor was the context of the above thread, or context of Henson's other Usenet posts, allowed to be introduced. For example, the jury could not see the context of the above thread; they only saw Henson's contribution to the running gag:

Modern weapons are accurate to a matter of a few tens of yards. The terminal guidence ones are good to single digits.

Of the next quote, the jury was only allowed to see the first sentence, not the second:

The only way I can get clear of this scientology mess is to "destroy them utterly." So: This week I will be back picketing gold base.

And you can decide what you think his third quote means, but again you have the advantage of its context being just a click away:

PPS Killing the organization off entirely is the best way to change the future of Scientology.

Worse still, according to Henson's at-the-time lawyer, whether these statements caused fear in some Scientologists was decided not by the statements he actually made, but by hearsay versions they got from others. He points out that Scientology's censorware package ("Scienositter") would have blocked the original Usenet posts anyway:

...cult members, who are not allowed access to the Internet and are actively prevented (by the Church of Scientology "net nanny") from reading the newsgroups on which Henson posts, may have an unreasonable and irrational fear based on unreasonable and out of context statements of which they were informed selectively, but which they did not read.

So picture Keith Henson's situation. He feels strongly about his particular cause. He peacefully carries a picket sign. He exercises his First Amendment right to post on Usenet about what he's doing and why -- and in so doing he uses sentences and phrases which, in context, clearly are not threats, but out of context could be construed that way.

Dragged into court, all context is stripped away and -- while he narrowly escapes conviction as a domestic terrorist -- he is convicted of using the threat of force against people who may never have actually read what he wrote.

If you're smart, you'll take Henson's case as a warning. You'll think about what your own statements would look like, with their context totally removed, and in the harsh spotlight of a courtroom. Do you really need to post that joke, or wouldn't the judge find it funny?

You'll soften up your opinions just a little, trying not to change what you mean while trying to change what you could be twisted to mean.

Maybe it's not such a great loss for you or me; we're not great writers anyway, and if we censor ourselves before hitting Save, maybe that's not the end of the world. We weren't really going to use that First Amendment right anyway, you know?

But somewhere out there is a Mark Twain who's had it up to here and is poised to pen a caustic attack on a religion which will become an important classic. As of yesterday, Mark's a bit more likely to live in Canada.

Keith Henson was arraigned on charges of "misdemeanor terrorism" last September. Last month the jury deadlocked on those charges, but convicted him of making threats to interfere with the constitutional privilege of enjoying religious freedom. He was not present at his sentencing hearing yesterday and is a fugitive from justice, apparently planning to claim asylum in Canada. If you've ever flamed anyone in an online forum, and think you have a right to carry a picket sign, you need to study this miscarriage of justice. Details below. Update by J : freehenson.tripod.com has been taken down, so I'm linking to a mirror.

"Religious bigotry will not be tolerated in Riverside County," was a Scientology spokesperson's reaction to the verdict.

That's basically the problem right there. The First Amendment gives me the right to be a bigot as long as I don't hurt or threaten anyone. You don't have to like my opinions, but you do have to tolerate them.

If you've ever hung out in an online forum, you'll probably get deja vu reading this Usenet thread. The first message posted is a description of cruising past some Scientology related buildings, complete with GPS coordinates for whatever reason. It's written as a self-mocking, satirical sendup of spy movies. The remainder of the thread is jokes in the same vein.

The question is whether this running gag about "Tom Cruise Missile Coordinates" (get it?) could be taken seriously enough to qualify as a threat under Section 11415 of the California Penal Code.

As I read the recently-passed law, if you go along with the jokes about the "handheld laser guidance system," you might be a terrorist:

Any person who knowingly threatens to use a weapon of mass destruction [including] by means of an electronic communication device, is to be taken as a threat, even if there is no intent of actually carrying it out ...

The fact that the person who allegedly violated this section did not actually possess a biological agent, toxin, or chemical weapon does not constitute a defense to the crime specified in this section.

The victim of said terrorism must have been in "sustained fear" of the threat being carried out. And how does the law know your victim was in sustained fear? Because he or she evacuated the building -- or took "any other action."

Here's what Henson says. In this case, the Scientology organization's legal team managed to bar any evidence from being presented about why Henson was picketing the Scientology location (because of two unusual deaths within a month).

Nor was the context of the above thread, or context of Henson's other Usenet posts, allowed to be introduced. For example, the jury could not see the context of the above thread; they only saw Henson's contribution to the running gag:

Modern weapons are accurate to a matter of a few tens of yards. The terminal guidence ones are good to single digits.

Of the next quote, the jury was only allowed to see the first sentence, not the second:

The only way I can get clear of this scientology mess is to "destroy them utterly." So: This week I will be back picketing gold base.

And you can decide what you think his third quote means, but again you have the advantage of its context being just a click away:

PPS Killing the organization off entirely is the best way to change the future of Scientology.

Worse still, according to Henson's at-the-time lawyer, whether these statements caused fear in some Scientologists was decided not by the statements he actually made, but by hearsay versions they got from others. He points out that Scientology's censorware package ("Scienositter") would have blocked the original Usenet posts anyway:

...cult members, who are not allowed access to the Internet and are actively prevented (by the Church of Scientology "net nanny") from reading the newsgroups on which Henson posts, may have an unreasonable and irrational fear based on unreasonable and out of context statements of which they were informed selectively, but which they did not read.

So picture Keith Henson's situation. He feels strongly about his particular cause. He peacefully carries a picket sign. He exercises his First Amendment right to post on Usenet about what he's doing and why -- and in so doing he uses sentences and phrases which, in context, clearly are not threats, but out of context could be construed that way.

Dragged into court, all context is stripped away and -- while he narrowly escapes conviction as a domestic terrorist -- he is convicted of using the threat of force against people who may never have actually read what he wrote.

If you're smart, you'll take Henson's case as a warning. You'll think about what your own statements would look like, with their context totally removed, and in the harsh spotlight of a courtroom. Do you really need to post that joke, or wouldn't the judge find it funny?

You'll soften up your opinions just a little, trying not to change what you mean while trying to change what you could be twisted to mean.

Maybe it's not such a great loss for you or me; we're not great writers anyway, and if we censor ourselves before hitting Save, maybe that's not the end of the world. We weren't really going to use that First Amendment right anyway, you know?

But somewhere out there is a Mark Twain who's had it up to here and is poised to pen a caustic attack on a religion which will become an important classic. As of yesterday, Mark's a bit more likely to live in Canada.