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Thanks to Lawrence Lessig for sending us a filing that he and Mark Lemley have put before the FCC. The filing, also in PDF, deals with open access as well as principles of network design. It's a long piece, but well worth reading.Thanks to Lawrence for another link.

Thanks to Lawrence Lessig for sending us a filing that he and Mark Lemley have put before the FCC. The filing, also in PDF, deals with open access as well as principles of network design. It's a long piece, but well worth reading.Thanks to Lawrence for another link.

PhilHibbs sent us an article from wired that talks about Neuroscientists creating videos from a cats eyes using electrodes implanted in a cats brain. Here are some Pictures.

The Dev writes "The Cook Report has published a very long and detailed article about ICANN. It gives a chilling view of what interests are controlling ICANN (legacy telco's, trademark, big business and gov't) and how they have ben menuvering to make themselves unaccountable to anyone. It goes on to describe some of the (dire) consequences of this new power structure."

Quite an interesting article and worth reading for anyone who has or plans to have a domain name. Yes, it's long. But it's important. While you're at it, you can check out archives of the Santiago meeting. The hearings on the domain name dispute resolution process are an especially good example of the total lack of accountability, as they rush through a pre-determined script, ignoring audience comments entirely. This is your Internet government. -- michael

In related news, ICANN announced yesterday that 12 more registrars have been approved. Their registry testbed period ends Sep.30. --jamie

Dan B. writes "The Chandra X-Ray telescope, launched 60 days ago, has had its first pictures released by Nasa. These are as stunning as the millions already produce by the Hubble space telescope. "

Robert Wilde writes "The Financial Times is reporting in two stories that a group of scientists have discovered that any scale-independent system does not follow the traditional Gaussian Bell Curve but a new curve. " Interesting implications-for above systems. For what I can gather from the article, for those systems in which this curve is more appropriate, rare events will occur more often then predicted by the Gaussian distribution. Anyone have more comments on this?

dlc asks: "The recent USPS question got me thinking. One of the major things traditional mail has going for it that email doesn't is the fact that, for the most part, signing a letter (marking it as authentic) is easier to do, or, at least, the technology to do so is much more common, and is much more widely understood. Similarly, one of the obstacles standing in the way of universal acceptance of email as a legitimate means of reliable transmission is the fact that it is difficult to verify the sender of a message. Digital certificates and a world wide (or at least wide-spread) public key infrastructure would go a long way towards removing this obstacle. My question for the slashdot population is this: Under what circumstances do you see digital cirtificates, PKI, and encryption in general becoming part of normal email usage, to the point where people have as much confidence in the authenticity of email as they do in regular mail? "

Kevin Remhof has submitted us a piece on an area of Linux that a lot of you might not be familiar with, but may wish to be: Linux and X-Ray Astronomy. Talks about some of the things you can do, as well as common applications to do them with. Check it out. The following was written by Slashdot Reader Kevin Linux and X-Ray Astronomy

by Kevin Remhof

On July 23, 1999, NASA deployed the Chandra X-Ray observatory from the Space Shuttle Columbia. This telescope is a major leap forward in X-Ray astronomy. It will enable scientists to study dark matter, black holes, and other objects with great detail. I was checking out the information on the Chandra website and started to wonder about the software behind this telescope. So, I did a little searching on NASA'as website and found some interesting information. What I found is that X-Ray Astronomy is depending more and more on Linux for analyzing the data.

Background

X-Ray astronomy has been around since the early days of the space program. X-Ray telescopes work much the same as a regular telescope, but rely on X-Rays to view objects. The earth?s atmosphere absorbs most radiation from space. So, in order to use these telescopes, they have to be lifted out of earth?s atmosphere. The first X-Ray telescope sent into space took pictures of the Sun. Since the Sun is so close to earth, it was not hard to focus this crude telescope. Modern X-Ray telescopes are much more refined. The Chandra telescope could read the letters on a stop sign from 12 miles away.

X-Ray telescope data needs to be decoded before it is useful. This is similar to the concepts behind the SETI@Home project. Astronomers are allocated time to use the telescope. Chandra has about a 55 minute viewing time during each or bit around the earth. The telescope first gathers data without interpreting it. That data is then transferred to earth. Scientists then pick up chunks of that data for analysis. It is then that the power of X-Ray telescopes can be seen. X-Ray pictures are a little strange. Although attractive pieces of art, they are not easily understood by the general public.

The Linux Connection

Astronomers have used UNIX as their standard platform for years. Sun, HP, DE C/OSF were all commonplace. That is until Linux came along. Linux is becoming more and more popular and is threatening to take over as the platform of choice. Linux is now the darling of NASA. It is easy to powerful, easy to use, and porting applications from UNIX is not too difficult. NASA even uses Beowulf clusters for various projects which need large amounts of computing power.

Linux is a great choice for X-Ray astronomy because of the wide available of the OS and the software for it. Two popular programs are XANADU and FTOOLS. Both of them began as UNIX programs and have now been ported to Linux.

One astronomer, Ken Ebisawa has even written a HOWTO on "Linux for X-Ray Astronomers ". He details how to get Linux up and running and some of the various tools useful in X-Ray astronomy. According to the Goddard Space Center?s website, & quot;Ebisawa hopes to resolve the mystery of the Milky Way's so-called diffuse X-ray emission, a ubiquitous cloud of X-rays that blankets our galactic plane and whose origin is unknown. To do so, Dr. Ebisawa will look at a region of space where this cloud varies in X-ray brightness but where there seems to be no distinct energy sources to produce it." Ebisawa will use his Dell Inspiron laptop to analyze his data.

Open Source Software

The latest development in X-Ray astronomy is Open Source. Another program for analyzing X-Ray data is called SAOimage. Currently, it is being redesigned and updated using Open Source practices. Open Source is a natural for this because users often want to extend the software by combining it with other systems to come up with a research environment. It also helps to reduce some of the costs associated with development of such complex systems. Using the bazaar model of software development allows multiple developers to maintain and upgrade this complex code. It also allows the shared development of key pieces of code and functionality while satisfying individual needs of users.

Conclusion

Linux is rapidly becoming the OS of choice for X-Ray astronomers. This is yet another credit to the flexibility and power of Linux. More information on the Chandra scientists can be found here.

Robert Wilde writes "A small dose of sanity in the world of trademarks, according to a ZDNN story; the courts have ruled AOL doesn't own "You've got mail," "IM," or "buddy list." " So, I suppose that means my copyright for "E-Commerce Solution" and "E-mail" is probably out as well.

Harvard University News Office wrote in with their response to the whole Packet Storm ordeal. Hit the link below to read more, but it looks as if Harvard is returning the backups, but no longer hosting the site.

As a service to the Internet community, Harvard agreed to host a Packet Storm Security Website for security-related materials only. Without Harvard's knowledge, unrelated content was put on the Harvard server, including sexually-related material and personal attacks on an individual not affiliated with the University. A Harvard administrative site focused on security issues is not the forum for this type of material. We are returning the content on the site and hope that Packet Storm will make its security tools available through its own Website.

Joe Wrinn
Director, Harvard News Office
1350 Massachusetts Ave., Rm. 1060
Cambridge, MA 02138
Phone: 617-495-1585
Fax: 617-495-0754
joe_wrinn@harvard.edu

Harvard University News Office wrote in with their response to the whole Packet Storm ordeal. Hit the link below to read more, but it looks as if Harvard is returning the backups, but no longer hosting the site.

As a service to the Internet community, Harvard agreed to host a Packet Storm Security Website for security-related materials only. Without Harvard's knowledge, unrelated content was put on the Harvard server, including sexually-related material and personal attacks on an individual not affiliated with the University. A Harvard administrative site focused on security issues is not the forum for this type of material. We are returning the content on the site and hope that Packet Storm will make its security tools available through its own Website.

Joe Wrinn
Director, Harvard News Office
1350 Massachusetts Ave., Rm. 1060
Cambridge, MA 02138
Phone: 617-495-1585
Fax: 617-495-0754
joe_wrinn@harvard.edu

krp writes "The well known and regarded security softare and information site Packet Storm Security has been closed down by Harvard, who hosted the site, becuase of claims from John Vranesevich, of www.AntiOnline.com, about libellous material. The site will not re-open and backups will be destoryed. Ken Williams explains here and here - this guy put a lot of work into that site. "

Ristoril writes "Scientists in the Kinki (I'm not making this up) University Hospital in Osaka, Japan, have created artificial fingers in cooperation with Harvard Med School in Boston, Mass. Read the whole story about artificial cow fingers from Yahoo! News. "

ccshan writes "Adi Shamir, the "S" in "RSA", discovers a factorization method that renders 512-bit keys vulnerable to cryptoanalysis today. " (its at the NYT:you know what that means)

Dmitri Evseev writes "Wired has an article called Open Source in Open Court, describing an effort by Lawrence Lessig, former Special Master in the DOJ suit against Microsoft, to apply an Open Source-type model to crafting legal arguments. The idea is to open a side's legal strategy for public input and participation in order to present a better argument in court. More information on this project is available on here "

Dmitri Evseev writes "Wired has an article called Open Source in Open Court, describing an effort by Lawrence Lessig, former Special Master in the DOJ suit against Microsoft, to apply an Open Source-type model to crafting legal arguments. The idea is to open a side's legal strategy for public input and participation in order to present a better argument in court. More information on this project is available on here "

As many of you know, today is the day that ICANN is supposed to announce the 5 companies that will be competing with NSI for registering domain names. You can see the announcements here... except that the server is bogged. Update: 04/21 04:16 by CT : Here is the List:America Online , CORE (Internet Council of Registrars), France Telecom/Oléane, Melbourne IT, and register.com. You can see more on ICANN if it wasn't so slow.

Scott Manley writes "Astronomers have found a mile wide asteroid which has a non-zero possibility of hitting the earth i n the next century. Asteroid 1999 AN10 was found on 13th January '99 by the LINEAR system and scientists working in Italy have predicted a close approach in August 2027 and a potential collision in August 2039. This has been kept quiet after the panic last year over 1997 XF11 whic had a similar 'remote' possibility, if 1999 AN10 were to hit it would be a real civilisation killer. " I can't believe scientists are bothing with this stuff when we all know Y2k will kill us all in less than a year anyway.

SysAdmin writes "I read an AP report in my hometown paper that says the gov't just accused Microsoft of faking a video which shows how performace suffers in Windows98 after the government's IE-scrubber is run. " I try to avoid posting articles like this, but this is pretty significant-some of other sites are talking about perjury charges and such being brought against the lawyers. Additionally, another bit was sent to us by El pointed an article in which MS lawyers were contradicting themselves, as a MS patent claimed that Web browser are seperate from the OS. Lastly, the Canadian province of Alberta has decided to sue Microsoft, amongst others, for Y2k conversion costs-thanks to colonel for that one.

rpete writes "LinuxGames is reporting that BFRIS, the new game from Aegis Simulation Technologies, has gone gold. Is this the first shrink-wrapped game for Linux? "

Allison Huynh writes "In the HBR (sept/oct. 98) issue, there's this positive article call "Dawn of the E-lance Economy" that mentioned Linux and Linus Torvalds prominently! It's mainly a speculative piece on the future of economic organization rather than a rigorous analysis of our favourite Penguin. Nevertheless, it makes great use of Linux as a discontinuous and innovative example in economic trend calling." The full article costs money ($100 for an annual subscription fee), but there is an executive summary available (Ed: I expect that e-lancing will become standard next century. I would expect to see the development of syndicates that protect their members from unscrupulous companies and that build a reputation for themselves. Do you agree? Would you want to work for such a syndicate?) Allison also asked us to plug an Open Source Forum at Stanford University this November. Please e-mail him if you have suggestions on topics and speakers you would like to see there.

keith writes "Some enterprising people at Harvard have been engaging in some unique Rodent Performance Evaluation (AKA Squirrel Fishing). Caution: if you're an animal rights activist then don't even bother going here or you're gonna work yourself up into a fit. "

Andrew Leonard wrote in to tell us that Lycos has Patented the Web Spider. I'm wondering if they actually were the first to do this? For that matter, if only Lycos can have a spider, then I guess only Lycos can have a search engine. /me smells trouble. The article says Lycos plans a "vigorous defense of its rights" that is most definately going to shake things up. In any case, it seems to me that this isn't the "Save As" dialog box, but its pretty close. Update Here is the actual Patent. Apparently it isn't as broad as the article above describes.

Tuomas Lukka has written a feature for us on a real problem- you've heard MSs Analogy arguements in their defense (Forcing Coke to ship a can of Pepsi with each 6 pack for example). Tuomas explains how this finely crafted piece of PR is flawed, and attempts to propose an alternative Analogy that better explains the situation. This is a good one folks.

The following is an editorial by Slashdot Reader Tuomas Lukka

Ok, the chase is on! Microsoft has been sued by the Justice Department.

(in order for me not to be sued, I must request you, the reader, to mentally insert the word "allegedly" in large, friendly letters before each verb below)

What does this mean for us, ordinary [insert your favorite "alternative" OS here] fans? It's PR time, in a major way.

Microsoft is getting a lot of press for what they want to say. The basic rhetoric that they want people to absorb seems to be

Forcing MS to bundle Netscape is like forcing Coca-cola to ship Pepsi with each sixpack / force McDonalds customers to visit Burger King first.

This is a very dangerous meme for us, because it is

1. simple enough to propagate
2. easy enough for non-technical people to accept
3. catchy

and most of all

1. a completely false analogy that distorts the matter and makes it appear that they (and consumers with them) are the victims of arbitrary government interference.

This analogy is probably crafted by a high-profile PR firm who know very well how to make people believe in something: make that something catchy enough and then just keep repeating it over and over. In the end it becomes true in peoples' minds.

In order to retain a positive public opinion about the DOJ on this suit, we must start spreading information about our side of the case. Whenever you get a chance, talk with people you know about this matter. Especially, do it in a crowded place, because people *do* listen in on other peoples' conversations. Even if you are talking to another person who knows what is going on, still keep talking - just spreading the general attitude to people around you in the crowd (coffeeshop/whatever) who don't know *will help*. This works on not only the lawsuit but Linux/other matters in general. The reason this works to spread information is that people don't like having things pushed at them - they fight back (witness the .advocacy groups). But if they overhear something that they think they were not supposed to, they will go home thinking "Oh, I'm glad I heard that...").

Also, remember to use those linux stickers on your laptops. Gets a lot of attention ;)

As if you didn't know, the easiest way to show how false the analogy they are making is: Coca-cola sells coke and makes profit for every bottle. McDonalds sells burgers and makes profit for every burger. Browsers are currently free. Forcing Microsoft to distribute netscape browsers won't cost anything to them, rather it will actually increase the value of the OS they can provide for the same amount of money. So from a purely operating-system perspective, the analogy makes no sense whatsoever.

The reason Microsoft does not want to increase the value of their operating system product is that they want to give customers a strong incentive (laziness, "it came with the system") to use the Microsoft browser to access the internet as well as their list of favorite sites, their web streaming technologies and whatever. Why? Because they can make considerable revenue in these markets by selling places on the list of favorite sites, selling their technology for web servers etc, as well as maintain their windows monopoly by creating proprietary formats which only their browser under windows can display.

So, a better analogy to the MS situation would be:

Your electricity company telling you that they will provide you with a toaster that they manufacture.

In this way, they would be achieving market dominance with another product because of their monopoly in one product, driving out of market the other toaster companies and providing you with an inferior product.

Toasters would not compete on merit but rather, the electricity company would promote their product via leveraging their monopoly.

Good for consumer choice? Best innovation? (once the electricity company drove the other out of the market, it would never need to really improve its browser .. oops, toaster).

I think this already makes enough of a case against their rhetoric -- demonstrating for the public how the DOJ is working *for* consumers, but *against* Microsoft. What MS would like to have everyone believe is that what is good for Microsoft is good for the people -- that is why they keep talking about "the government theories" in a derogatory fashion.

It is actually hard to come by a *really* good and catchy real-world analogy -- simply because monopolies like Microsoft do not currently exist in most other fields. People need to be reminded of this.

So, again, to repeat my call for grassroots PR: the reason our opinions have not been heard so much before is that we don't talk enough. Let us talk more and get the public opinion on our side. The best weapon is information. Remember to keep explaining until you get your point through, no matter how tiresome it seems. However, don't attack people directly and make them feel that they have missed the boat -- this will just make them angry and stop listening to you. Rather, try hard to make them feel that they are catching in on something before others, e.g. by just letting them overhear your conversation with your friends. Also, make sure you are delivering this message with a good image: be polite, act intelligent and knowledgeable, and don't overdo things.

We have a better OS than Microsoft, now let's show that we can also do better PR!

Tuomas Lukka has written a feature for us on a real problem- you've heard MSs Analogy arguements in their defense (Forcing Coke to ship a can of Pepsi with each 6 pack for example). Tuomas explains how this finely crafted piece of PR is flawed, and attempts to propose an alternative Analogy that better explains the situation. This is a good one folks.

The following is an editorial by Slashdot Reader Tuomas Lukka

Ok, the chase is on! Microsoft has been sued by the Justice Department.

(in order for me not to be sued, I must request you, the reader, to mentally insert the word "allegedly" in large, friendly letters before each verb below)

What does this mean for us, ordinary [insert your favorite "alternative" OS here] fans? It's PR time, in a major way.

Microsoft is getting a lot of press for what they want to say. The basic rhetoric that they want people to absorb seems to be

Forcing MS to bundle Netscape is like forcing Coca-cola to ship Pepsi with each sixpack / force McDonalds customers to visit Burger King first.

This is a very dangerous meme for us, because it is

1. simple enough to propagate
2. easy enough for non-technical people to accept
3. catchy

and most of all

1. a completely false analogy that distorts the matter and makes it appear that they (and consumers with them) are the victims of arbitrary government interference.

This analogy is probably crafted by a high-profile PR firm who know very well how to make people believe in something: make that something catchy enough and then just keep repeating it over and over. In the end it becomes true in peoples' minds.

In order to retain a positive public opinion about the DOJ on this suit, we must start spreading information about our side of the case. Whenever you get a chance, talk with people you know about this matter. Especially, do it in a crowded place, because people *do* listen in on other peoples' conversations. Even if you are talking to another person who knows what is going on, still keep talking - just spreading the general attitude to people around you in the crowd (coffeeshop/whatever) who don't know *will help*. This works on not only the lawsuit but Linux/other matters in general. The reason this works to spread information is that people don't like having things pushed at them - they fight back (witness the .advocacy groups). But if they overhear something that they think they were not supposed to, they will go home thinking "Oh, I'm glad I heard that...").

Also, remember to use those linux stickers on your laptops. Gets a lot of attention ;)

As if you didn't know, the easiest way to show how false the analogy they are making is: Coca-cola sells coke and makes profit for every bottle. McDonalds sells burgers and makes profit for every burger. Browsers are currently free. Forcing Microsoft to distribute netscape browsers won't cost anything to them, rather it will actually increase the value of the OS they can provide for the same amount of money. So from a purely operating-system perspective, the analogy makes no sense whatsoever.

The reason Microsoft does not want to increase the value of their operating system product is that they want to give customers a strong incentive (laziness, "it came with the system") to use the Microsoft browser to access the internet as well as their list of favorite sites, their web streaming technologies and whatever. Why? Because they can make considerable revenue in these markets by selling places on the list of favorite sites, selling their technology for web servers etc, as well as maintain their windows monopoly by creating proprietary formats which only their browser under windows can display.

So, a better analogy to the MS situation would be:

Your electricity company telling you that they will provide you with a toaster that they manufacture.

In this way, they would be achieving market dominance with another product because of their monopoly in one product, driving out of market the other toaster companies and providing you with an inferior product.

Toasters would not compete on merit but rather, the electricity company would promote their product via leveraging their monopoly.

Good for consumer choice? Best innovation? (once the electricity company drove the other out of the market, it would never need to really improve its browser .. oops, toaster).

I think this already makes enough of a case against their rhetoric -- demonstrating for the public how the DOJ is working *for* consumers, but *against* Microsoft. What MS would like to have everyone believe is that what is good for Microsoft is good for the people -- that is why they keep talking about "the government theories" in a derogatory fashion.

It is actually hard to come by a *really* good and catchy real-world analogy -- simply because monopolies like Microsoft do not currently exist in most other fields. People need to be reminded of this.

So, again, to repeat my call for grassroots PR: the reason our opinions have not been heard so much before is that we don't talk enough. Let us talk more and get the public opinion on our side. The best weapon is information. Remember to keep explaining until you get your point through, no matter how tiresome it seems. However, don't attack people directly and make them feel that they have missed the boat -- this will just make them angry and stop listening to you. Rather, try hard to make them feel that they are catching in on something before others, e.g. by just letting them overhear your conversation with your friends. Also, make sure you are delivering this message with a good image: be polite, act intelligent and knowledgeable, and don't overdo things.

We have a better OS than Microsoft, now let's show that we can also do better PR!