Slashdot Mirror

Oryx Gazella writes "Unable to access Hotmail this Christmas morning? This would be why! You may have received an error like "unable to locate host", or "no such domain" after your browser was directed from www.hotmail.com to lc2.law5.hotmail.passport.com. There are no NS records for the domain passport.com in any of the root name servers. Hotmail (www.hotmail.com) uses the Passport Service (www.passport.com) which allows users of the Microsoft Messenger Service to login using their "Passport" and to add other Passport members to their contact list. The new MSN Messenger Service 2.0 is integrated with MSN Hotmail and Microsoft Outlook Express for real-time email notification, and retrieval. " Not being a Hotmail or regular Windows user for that matter, I cannot verify this - but I've gotten several e-mails from people this morning wondering about it.Update: 12/26 01:39 by H :Click below to read the quite humourous conclusion to this story.

Effugas writes "Oh, this is just beautiful. Linux user Michael D. Chaney of Doublewide.Net, upon reading of Microsoft's Christmas loss of the passport.com domain, took it upon himself to donate $35.00 for the world's largest software company to restore service for its customers. I've heard about Linux empowering its users to truly prevent downtime, but this is ridiculous ;-) I'm still laughing--Merry Christmas, Microsoft, from the Linux community to you! "

WhiskeyJack writes "At the cutting edge of body art, student Erik Sprague of Albany New York has turned himself into a human lizard. His parents must be awfully proud. :) " Surgically split tongue. Ridge implants in his forehead. Green scales. And then there's me: scared to put on a rub-on tatoo ;)Update: 12/21 08:26 by H : For the not-so-squeamish, Zorro sent us some shots and pictures of the lizardman. Forked tongue, indeed.

adenied wrote to let us know that on Dec 16, NASA successfully launched the Terra Earth Observing System (EOS). This particular satellite is the going to be the flagship of the new EOS system. With this, and other satellites doing similar work, NASA will continue to study the Earth, which has been some of their best work recently.Update: 12/20 08:18 by H :Thanks to Dennis Gerasimov of NASA for clearing up some of the details - click below to learn more.

I would like to point out a mistake in article http://slashdot.org/articles/99/12/18/2340212.shtml about Terra satellite. Terra is not a flagship of EOS program. Terra is the first mission that will be fully integrated into EOS program. The flagship satellite TRMM (Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission) was launched by NASA together with NASDA (Japan) on November 27, 1997. The satellite is still operational and collects data. More info can be found at http://trmm.gsfc.nasa.gov and the resulting data is located at TSDIS project (the ground data processing system for TRMM) at http://tsdis.gsfc.nasa.gov.

diathesis writes "The Candian Copyright Board has finally implemented the long-feared recordable media levy. Fortunately, the tariff is 5.2 cents per disc for CD-R and CD-RW media, which is far less than had been reported as likely. " A serious question: they distinguish between "Audio CDs" and "CDs". Is a blank CD somehow different? Because it's 60 cents for Audio CDs. Update: 12/17 02:08 by H :If you want to speak-out against this, check out this petition.

Sarge_97 wrote to us with the latest from Alan Cox ^[?] 's diary. With Red Hat's movement into Europe, and the creation of Red Hat UK, he'll be closing Building Number 3 and going to work for Red Hat UK. This is, of course, no change in what was actually going on anyway.

disclaimer:Hemos owns shares in red hat

JeffRC wrote to us with a new machine from Gateway that looks remarkably like the Cobalt Qube. The device apparently runs Linux, with Apache and SMB. Update: 12/08 02:15 by H :Well, I am an idiot. If you remember, I had posted a story that GW and Cobalt would be teeming up - I guess this is the fruit of their alliance.

Well VA Linux Systems has been popping up all over the news, from a story in MSNBC to a commentary from news.com. The latest word is that they have repriced their offering, putting the shares' range at $21-23 per share. As soon as the SEC approves this, the people on the friends and family list should expect to be contacted to confirm their position. Update: 12/07 05:40 by H :Thanks to readers for the latest update on pricing - it is $21-23.

chocko sent us an article about Stevie Wonder's Eye Chip. Now normally a Stevie Wonder story probably wouldn't make it on Slashdot, but this is actually about him implanting a chip into his eye in order to try to gain some of his sight back. I just thought that was kinda cool. Update: 12/04 12:02 by H :Thanks to Chris Griffin for updating the story.

mackga wrote to us about the new LinuxToday Counter-FUD site. Good site to get information and destroy detractors -maybe we should link to it The Linux Myths and see who comes out next.Update: 12/04 11:52 by H :Also, thanks to Rik van Riel who pointed the The FUD Counter site.

tjansen writes "The German Site Heise reports in this article that Windows 2000 may be banned in Germany. The reason is the included deframentation software Diskeeper that is written by the Scientology-owned company Executive Software. Many state agencies and companies have policies that they are not allowed to use services from a company that is related to Scientology. " A good number of you will probably need to use The Babelfish.Update: 12/03 11:28 by H :Check out the English translation.

Grey writes "The Age has a report that a Houston entrepreneur sold the name "business.com" for US$7.5 million. " Sheesh - I thought the Altavista domain name sale was really high. I think it's time for to start auctioning off such great names as Cowboyneal.net, CmdrTaco, and, of course, hemos.net. Do I hear 1 billion? *grin*

This week Bruce Perens ^[?] learned the hard way that Open Source development has become a popular spectator sport. Or, as I described it a few days earlier, a performing art. Like it or not, things are changing with Open Source development, with the Internet, with the way online news is gathered and spread, and with Slashdot. More ->

If you didn't read (or don't feel like going to) the story linked to above about Bruce's little foot-in-mouth moment, I'll summarize it for you: After getting (IMO justifiably) frustrated over some terms in the license for Corel's new Debian-based Linux distribution and Corel's refusal to change them, Bruce posted a little note on the debian-legal discussion list that said, in part, "It's time for us to bring suit against Corel for this 'can't download unless you're 18' stuff. That's not in our license and they know it."

Almost immediately, a Slashdot reader submitted Bruce's comment to us, and Hemos ran it as a story as soon as he checked to make sure that yes, Bruce had really written that comment. The Slashdot story got over 300 remarks added to it within two hours of its initial appearance, many of which said that Bruce had over-reacted to Corel's licensing intransigence, and many more which lambasted Slashdot generally, and Hemos personally, for having posted a "private" message on Slashdot without getting Bruce's permission in advance.

Bruce was an active participant in the Slashdot discussion that followed Hemos's post and, in the end, backed down his original "we oughta sue" statement. Hemos apologized for the post. And the comments kept on coming, because that's the nature of Slashdot.

There was also some e-mail exchanged between Bruce, CmdrTaco, Hemos, and myself. It was not vituperative. We all like and respect each other. Bruce has my home phone number, and I have his (somewhere). But that e-mail exchange led to this article, because this entire incident, and the way it got blown out of proportion, is a prime example of changes in the nature of online discussion, Open Source development, and Slashdot's role in it all.

Coincidentally - it had been scheduled to run for over a week - yesterday we had an Ask Slashdot piece about the demise of old-fashioned, local dialup Bulletin Boards. There was a lot of nostalgia expressed for the days when your "online community" was 20 or 30 people who all lived near you, and you could all get together now and then for a soda or a beer or whatever. There were no Anonymous Cowards in that kind of environment. Sure, people used screen names like "BBBopper," but if you were a member of the community, you knew that BBBopper's real name was "Bernard," where he lived, and where he worked.

I miss those days, and I'm sure Bruce does too. You could say damn near anything on your freewheeling local BBS, and if you *really* put your foot in your mouth you could either delete your comment or ask your friendly sysop to delete it for you. But it didn't really matter. The chances of a vituperative neighbor or a reporter for the local newspaper reading your post were virtually nil, and even if they were reading, so what? Back then, hardly anyone paid attention to the few weirdos who spent their nights dialing into each others computers.

Fast-forward to now: there are days when Slashdot does well over one million pageviews. Reporters from The Wall Street Journal (Hi Lee!), CNN (Hi, Ian!) and even Al Gore campaign staffers (Hi, Ben!), read Slashdot regularly. Stories that break here are often picked up by general-interest media or serve as inspiration (we say politely) for their own reporting. And Slashdot readers obviously subscribe to discussions like debian-legal, so the distance between a hasty mailing list post and the front page of a national newspaper can be as little as two clicks.

Calling your favorite mailing list "private" or "obscure" does not make it so. If any idiot who has a valid e-mail address can subscribe to it, it is not private. As for obscurity, that depends on the poster. An offhand comment made by Al Average is unlikely to make it into either Slashdot or the Wall Street Journal no matter where it originally appears. A comment by Bruce Perens or Richard M. Stallman or Steve Ballmer or Linus Torvalds or Larry Ellison or anyone else perceived to have "weight" in software development matters is another story. These people are celebrities, at least to Slashdot readers, so their words are going to be taken seriously, analyzed, and quoted, requoted, and even possibly misquoted as heavily as news of Cher's latest love affair will be discussed in the movie gossip tabloids.

In this "celebrity" context, there are two main differences between Bruce Perens and Cher:

• 1 - At least one billion people have heard of Cher, while only a few million (at most) have ever heard of Bruce Perens.
• 2 - Bruce Perens is more important than Cher, especially to Slashdot readers.

Despite her greater popularity, in the overall scheme of things Cher's "boy toy" adventures are inconsequential. But when Bruce advocates a lawsuit against Corel for violating the GPL, even if he rapidly recants, he's effectively putting any investment Corel has in Linux at risk. Just the thought of a threat of a suit can make investors leery of putting money into Linux-based ventures, because all this GPL and Open Source stuff is still alien territory to most "mainstream" stock market and other investment players. Whether or not a suit is justified or even possible, the idea that one could be brought is sure to be discussed by bigwigs at IBM, Red Hat, Oracle, Sun, and many other companies that have staked all or part of their future on Linux.

A better comparison than Bruce:Cher is Bruce:Alan Greenspan. If Alan Greenspan goes out to eat and tips a waiter 20% and makes a lame (but overheard) joke about waiters demanding higher tips because of the booming economy, two dozen financial pundits will immediately try to figure out if Greenspan is planning to raise interest rates, and the stock market is sure to blip one way or another in response to the "news" of Greenspan's "statement."

Like it or not, if Alan Greenspan makes his remark in a public place it is fair media game. As long as he is quoted accurately, there is nothing he can do about the appearance of his offhand sentence in newspapers and as discussion fodder on talking-head TV shows. Bruce Perens is nowhere near as influential as Alan Greenspan, but within the confines of the Open Source/free software community, his words may have more impact on investment behavior and are, therefore, more important to Slashdot readers who hold shares in Red Hat and other companies that live and die by Open Source software.

I growled a little at Hemos for later adding a "Maybe I shouldn't have posted it" apology to his piece about Bruce's comment. It was an amicable growl; we work together as a tight team around here, and we all accept the fact that each Slashdot author and editor is an individual with his own point of view. But I don't (personally) believe we should ever apologize for running legitimate news, including speculations made in public forums by Open Source celebrities. And Bruce Perens is not only a legitimate public figure in the Open Source context, but is one largely because of his own actions. Bruce is not a reticent person. He has requested Slashdot coverage of his pet projects many times, and often as not he's gotten it. This time, he got coverage when he neither requested nor desired it, and was unhappy at the kind of attention focused on him.

I called this little essay "The Spotlight is a Harsh Mistress" because (RAH reference aside) this statement sums up my main point here: that once you open a press floodgate everything passes through it, not just what you want. And the piece I wrote earlier this week about Open Source and free software developers becoming more like stage performers than reclusive poets was as much of a cautionary tale as anything else. Yes, there are adoring Open Source fans out there, but those fans are as fickle -- and demanding -- as any other kind of fans, and when you have the combination of celebrities and devout fans, paparazzi lurking in the bushes are almost inevitable.

Slashdot is not exactly in the paparazzi category (I like to think) but we are certainly a prime source not only of Open Source and free software development news, but also of community gossip. What "we" post officially is far less than 10% of the site's total content. The rest is uncensored remarks by readers. While you can choose to only read posts other readers (moderators) decide are worthwhile, you always have the option of reading Slashdot in all of its fierce, chaotic glory simply by setting your threshold to -1. (Our boss, CmdrTaco, absolutely insists on this "no censorship ever" policy and we all back him up fiercely on this one!)

Even if you are not logged in as a registered member, you can set the moderation threshold on each individual article as you read it. My personal Slashdot reading preference is a setting of -1, with comments nested instead of threaded. And, believe it or not, I read almost every comment attached to almost every Slashdot article almost every day. There are suprising gems (and some great humor) buried in the mass if you take the trouble to look for them.

Is Slashdot going downhill? Probably, in some ways. It's not the cozy little Web site I discovered several years ago, when it was new and crude and 30 comments on an article was big-time. But by that same standard both the Internet and Usenet have been going downhill almost since day one. First the original Unix heavies grumbled about letting the non-CS (but still research) people in. Then all the researchers grumbled about letting the students in, and how they polluted discussion groups with trivial conversation and dirty jokes and filled up mail servers with stupid chain letters. Then the unwashed mass of Prodigy people hit, over one million strong, and irritated everyone who was already on the Internet, and then they complained about all the "clueless AOLers" who followed them.

But newbies don't stay newbies forever, either on the Internet in general or here on Slashdot. Two or three years from now, I assure you, some of the same AC kiddies who are now going "Whoo! First Post!" will become settled members of "the community" and will grumble about the next Slashdot newbie generation's silly games, whatever they turn out to be.

And two or three years from now Bruce Perens will be a dignified Elder Statesman of the burgeoning, ever-growing Open Source and free software community, and he will be aghast at some of the things that less media-worn people say in forums they considered private but really weren't, and the whole circle will continue to grow, with new, fresh faces always coming on board -- and some of the old ones departing for one reason or another.

Perhaps, too, we'll see the advent of more "members only" forums with strict privacy restrictions, somewhat like the old private BBS operations, and those will be where "online celebrities" hang out and let down their hair with one another, just as some film celebs only feel comfortable at private parties guarded by thuglike doormen who keep out anyone who isn't on a tightly-controlled guest list.

But I would personally rather see total openness, here on Slashdot and in as many other places as possible. Sure, mistakes will be made. You'll make some, Bruce Perens will make some, and I'm sure I'll make (more than) my fair share as well. To me, this is the point of Slashdot; to level the playing field and treat all comers exactly the same, on both their good days and their bad days; to provide a well-lit, well-known "space" where both silly and serious debates can take place, opinions can be aired and debunked, and even (once in a while) a mind or two can be changed.

ac writes "It seems that Corel has made one mistake too many. Bruce Perens ^[?] is calling for a lawsuit against Corel on the behalf of Debian. The text of his message follows and should appear here soon. " Wow - check out the recent story regarding the 18 and older EULA. Update by RM: Bruce later backed off on the lawsuit threat. He reads Slashdot comments and takes them seriously, and he's a good dude at heart, okay?Update: 11/26 08:53 by H :And for all the people e-mailing me, mea culpa. Shoulda checked.

To: debian-legal@lists.debian.org
Subject: Corel Lawsuit
Date: Fri, 26 Nov 1999 10:09:00 -0800 (PST)
From: bruce@perens.com (Bruce Perens)
Message-Id:

It's time for us to bring suit against Corel for this "can't download unless you're 18" stuff. That's not in our license and they know it. I've tried to help them several times, and they continue to be 100% clueless. I think at this point they are not representing Debian well, and should not distribute it. I'm not going to help them any longer.

Bruce Perens

Element5 writes "Netcenter's Tech News reports that Pioneer will be selling the first DVD players (not DVD-ROM drives) to be able to record up to six hours of programming to rewritable discs. Check out the story. Pricing is high, as expected: $2399 US for the unit, $28.79 per disc. " And watch closely, as the film industry gets a panicked look in their eyes. Update: 11/27 08:47 by H : Thanks to Jim Choate for the story that Panasonic has introduced DVD-RAM for only 700$US.

When Hemos mentioned this book, at first I didn't realize that it had actually been published in dead-tree form - or more precisely, I didn't realize it hadn't been published in dead-tree form long ago, and I was wondering why he was talking about reviewing it now. Obviously I spend too much time on the net when I can no longer distinguish between webpages and books. The Cathedral and the Bazaar author Eric S. Raymond pages 268 publisher O'Reilly and Associates rating 9/10 reviewer Michael Sims ISBN 1565927249 summary Several of ESR's essays on open source and Linux; dressed, stuffed, and garnished Probably most slashdot readers have at least heard of Eric Raymond. This book collects several of his more famous essays into a single volume.

Raymond is intelligent and literate, and makes his arguments about the benefits of open source in ways that are calculated to convince corporations that there's more money to be made with open code than closed in many situations. He's one of the relatively few people who can write first-hand accounts of long-running, successful open source projects, and can write authoritatively about the hacker community in the early days of the internet.

The essays make good reading, if you're into computers and software at all. Sometimes there are people who are good at something who nevertheless can't write about it. Bill Gates is probably a good example - he's good at what he does, but he sure as hell can't convey his knowledge. I've read Andy Grove's book about his management experiences, and I wasn't impressed by it either - again, it seemed like there was someone who knew how to do something but couldn't explain it (and haven't we all had teachers like that?).

Raymond is not only a gifted hacker, but an excellent writer as well. He manages to convey information about the culture one has to manage, which turns out to be very good way to teach someone how to manage it; or at least it was for me, anyway.

These essays are pretty much required reading, I would say, for anyone running a software company today. If you want to set up an open source project, there's no better information available. The early history of hacking is interesting and of course he's got a good handle on how and why Linux has been so successful.

The only difficulty I have in recommending the book, in fact, is that it's available at no cost on ESR's website. Yes, the essays are all material that's previously been available - indeed, I'd read several of them before. Supposedly they've been revised and expanded for the book - I'm not going to scan them line-by-line to check - but certainly the ideas expressed in the essays haven't changed from the web versions. Frugal readers might easily decide that free documents off a website make better reading than a purchased book.

On the other hand, a book is easier to read than a web page in most cases. And you can't give webpages as holiday presents to your pointy-haired boss who wants to keep your company's code totally closed. So perhaps there's a market for it after all...

The book contains the essays "A Brief History of Hackerdom", "The Cathedral and the Bazaar", "Homesteading the Noosphere", "The Magic Cauldron", "The Revenge of the Hackers", and "How to Become a Hacker".

Pick this book up at fatbrain.

A number of readers have written to us with a report from Reuters regarding the US Military and cyber-warfare. The context is that the reason the US military did not crack into any of the Serbian boxes because the rules of war are still so murky in that area. What do you folks think? Anything goes? Or should we have a special section added to the Geneva Conventions?Update: 11/08 09:33 by H :Thanks to spartan for a better story on the subject.

Teancum writes "Legal actions have already started to happen against the programmers who wrote the DVD-CSS decription routines. This page contains the official response by the programmer, who has had his web site shut down by his ISP. I guess that the DVD Forum doesn't want to see an open source project that can read DVD-Video. More info about the Livid project can be found here. " Update: 11/05 04:33 by H :Check out the latest announcement from his site - eMedia has done a great report on the whole thing - read this.

Several people wrote in to point out that Corel appears to be uploading Corel Linux to their FTP servers. I see no official announcement from Corel yet on their site as of yet, but we'll update the story when it comes out. Check out their current sneak preview online.Update: 11/04 04:14 by H :Thanks to MarkLCorel for sending us update - Corel will be kicking off their distro on Nov. 15 @ Comdex, complete with party and Webevent. Neat - however, the current material online is just testing stuff - so stop downloading already.*grin*

We've had a lot of submissions lately about a proposal within the French Government to require use of Open Source software wherever possible, as well making the government more electronically accessible. Thus far however, either we've had material in French, or unsubstantiated - but thanks to one of our French-speaking readers who has translated the Senator's comments (above link) into English, you can click below to read the Senator's comments. This has to be one of the best ideas a national government has had in a long time - my hat (beret?) is off to the French.Update: 10/28 11:10 by H :Thanks to Julien Roussea who's sent over a translation of the legal proposal to require Open Source. As well, read his open letter regarding the issue.

Translation of comments by French Senator Pierre Laffitte to postings on the French Senat e-forum to his proposed law for making government services electronically accessible and mandating the use of open source software (I hope I did better than BabelFish).

Message from Senator Pierre Laffitte - email: p.laffitte@senat.fr Sent : 28 Oct 1999 09:37:59

Subject: Comments on the state of the forum on 27 Oct 1999

The success of the forum opened by the Senat shows the interest in the proposed law. More than 400 messages are awaiting me when I get back from Stockholm & Tunis in six days.

Some of them are very potent and enthusiastic; in particular, I'm thinking of those from Jeff Thompson and Xavier Giannapoulos on the 26th October. Of course we wish that the European Countries and others will follow. I add that the approach matches the strategies of a number of global information technology Companies. It's by way of services adapted to the customers rather than by selling proprietary software that money should be made. IBM and SUN are of this opinion and MICROSOFT seems to me ready to follow this path.

I thank you in the name of my colleagues and myself for the many positive responses.

I note that few of the comments touch on the use of electronic messaging in government departments. At the moment the legal control services of regional government oppose their use between local groups, which explains Article 1.

Few comments concerning the billions of savings that would result from public services and companies using email for calls for offers (Article 2). Nobody has brought up the very strong incentive for modernisation that this example by public services would provoke.

Most of the messages focus on open source, hence these remarks above. (Articles (4 & 5)

The objective of this forum is to collect suggestions, these will all be analyzed and weighed, in particular by the sponsor in charge of proposing the law. It will be no doubt examined as extension of the the proposed law presented by Ms. E GUIGOU giving legal status to digital signatures.

As is customary in the Senat, this will be completed by auditions and everything will be examined with a sense of responsibility, rigorousness and analysis of the various consequences. This conforms the tradition of the role to the Senat at the heart of the French Parliament.

Sénateur Pierre LAFFITTE

Anonymous Coward writes "A British trust has warned Celera Genomics that data from Human DNA should remain in the public domain to maximize benefits for medical research. Celera is about to patent DNA structures after decoding about one third of the human genome. The Wellcome Trust is leading moves to stop the information becoming the private property of corporations. " Celera has been brute-forcing structures, enabling them to beat The Human Genome Project to the punch - and are filing for 6000 patents. Please contact the Wellcome Trust to indicate your support of them. Patent attempts like Celera's stifle scientific progress.Update: 10/26 10:00 by H :Thanks to net_shaman for the pointer to a similar article in The Washington Post.

XenonOfArcticus writes "In the spirit if the Blair Witch Project: In 1993, Chris (Hanson), Dave (Kessner), Bob (Maple), Eric Schultz, Chris Hurtt, Earl Miles, and a few other malcontents found themselves in the possession of a microwave oven, a video camera, some worthless CD-ROMs, and a (then state-of-the-art) Video Toaster editing system. This recently-discovered footage is the actual result. " The mind boggles - the video is in QuickTime 4 format. Update: chrisd writes "I have mirrored the Home Cooking movie here." Update: 10/22 11:02 by H :Us e the mirror above, as, the Slashdot effect totally slaughtered the poor guy's ISP in the original story.

Back on the scene with a new installment, we talk about the Atlanta Linux Showcase, the horrific loss of Hemos' and Nate's house, and the various addictions that plague our productivity. This agonizingly special episode can be downloaded from TheSync.

So just as proof that life doens't stop when you go to a conference, Hemos got email this morning from nate informing him that his house burned down ^[?] last night. Now some rooms are missing and there is extensive smoke and water damage. Now the geek compound is 25% smaller. On the plus side, both Nate and hemos are safe and insured. Update: 10/16 11:05 by H : And to make matters worse, Chris DiBona threw my cell phone in a bucket of water. On accident. But it's pretty ironic.

M|U writes "Michael Cowpland, CEO of Corel, has been charged with three counts of violating securities law. CBC Newsworld has the story online, along with more details. Apparently trading of Corel stock was halted prior to the announcement. " The Corel booth at ALS has no comment at this time. The alleged current violations are insider trading, according to CBC. Update: 10/14 05:18 by H : Corel has responded in a press release. Dr. Cowpland is "looking forward to finally have the chance to clear his name..."

Christopher Sypal writes "I just found out that MTV is going to have a special this Wednesday (10pm eastern) called 'True Life: I'm a Hacker'. Looks exactly like what you would expect from an MTV show with 'hacker' in the title." If MTV wants to put *real* (and funny) hackers on the air, they ought to send a camera crew to the (highly photogenic) Geek Compound and do a show on Cmdr Taco and Hemos. Perhaps we should all write to mtvdart@aol.com and tell them so, eh?

Alex Prestin writes "Donnie Barnes will be doing a Q&A chat session on CNN.com tonight at 8 PM EDT. " To read more from Donnie, check out the post-quiet period chat that CT and I had with him.

disclaimer:Hemos owns shares in red hat

xTg writes "News.com is reporting that Excite@HOME is restructuring its divisions to facilitate a merger with AOL. The most important question in my mind: Does this mean I have to pay more for my cable modem now in exchange for AOL "premium" content? Does AOL like linux? blah." I don't care whether it's AOL or @home, as long as I can keep using Linux with my cable modem and they don't jack the price too hard. Whatever. We customers are nothing but pawns in all of this until the cable monopolies either get some solid competition or are forced to open their lines to outside ISPs. I second xTg's "blah."Update: 10/01 10:48 by H : Apparently, the deal is being denied by AT&T.

Zach Frey writes "Nicholas Petreley ^[?] 's latest column has an interesting side-by-side comparison of Linux installs vs. Windows installs. It's a data point in the "Linux is too hard to install!" war. The upshot? Current Linux distros installed in around 15 minutes and had no trouble autodetecting his hardware, Win98 took 40 minutes and failed to recognize his network cards. W2K took ... much longer. " The more interesting comments, IMHO, were the comments on Softway Systems, but the Linux install article is timely, in light of the CNN install nightmare story.Update: 09/30 10:27 by H :Check out an update from Nick posted in the comments regarding the version of Win2k.

Rudolf writes "Newsweek has an article this week, available here, about NASA calculating that space probes, such as Pioneer 10, 11, and Ulysses, are slowing down more than they should. A team of astronomers and physicists couldn't figure it out, so they published their findings in Physical Review Letters to generate discussion. Several possible causes of the slowing have been discussed, but nothing that completely solves the puzzle. Anyone care to rethink gravity and time?" Update: 09/29 09:00 by H :Thanks to Mark for his link to the original citation.

Moose2000 writes " The BBC reports that NASA has lost contact with the Mars Climate Orbiter. If it doesn't get back in touch, it's not just the immediate science stuff lost - it was supposed to stay in orbit as a communications relay for future missions too. " Communication has been lost for almost 3 hours now, it appears - so there's still hope. Update: 09/23 01:36 by H :It now appears that a steering problem may have caused it to crash into the planet.

johnrpenner writes " SGI has released "Jessie" - an open source development environment for Linux. It provides an advanced IDE (integrated application environment) with comprehensive debugging tools and a highly graphical interface that eliminates the need for employing older command-line tools." However there doesn't seem to be linkage to anything more than a press release.Update: 09/21 11:41 by H : Check SGI's Jessie site for more information.

Cyberllama writes "John C. Dvorak's latest commentary is up at ZDnet. " I've been seeing this story came across quite a bit today. Dvorak offers an insightful commentary on Linux and "The Big Time" (He uses IRC servers as an example), although one that I don't necessarily agree with. In a switch from the normal take, he sees strong growth on the desktop, while predicting Linux won't grow in the workhorse server area much. Can anyone confirm or deny the allegation the IRC servers and Linux mentioned in the piece? Update: 09/21 06:29 by H :Click below - proof is below that Linux does at least some of the machines.

[root@brain:~]# queso -p 4400 dallas-r.tx.us.undernet.org
204.178.73.175:4400 * Linux 2.1.xx
[root@brain:~]# queso -p 6667 Haarlem.NL.EU.UnderNet.Org
194.178.232.52:6667 * Linux 2.1.xx

BootHead sent us the article at ZD-Net that appears most designed to draw a link from Slashdot in quite some time. Its about Women and Linux. Course they call them "LinuxChix" (cough) but its just sorta the standard tirade on "Girls can be Geeks Too" (which no geek argues with in theory, we just never be able to find girl geeks of our own ;)Update: 09/16 09:29 by H :Check out the additional linkage about the debate of whether "Women need an OS of their own."

pinkunicorn writes "The teen sued for linking to MP3 files has been freed by the local court (the article is in Swedish which Babelfish doesn't grok). The court says that he's still guilty of assisting copyright crimes, but since that wasn't what he was accused of he will be let off. " Update: 09/15 10:29 by H :Thanks to Martin Wickman for a quick translation/summary-click below to read it in English.

7 year old free from charges in swedish mp3-case

The district court of Skövde announces today that the 17-year old who had using links to mp3-files on his homepage, is now acquited. Justification being that the 17-year old had only been directing to, not distributing the actual files. The classification was "crime against the copyright law through digital mp3-technics".

Even though he is now acquited, the court thinks he is guilty of complicity to crime against the copyright law. But since he was never prosecuted for that crime, he is released.

This is the first time in Europe a mp3-case has been brought to court. Its the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) who prosecuted the 17-year ord. The organisation has charged him with fines, but crimes against the copyright law can result in up to two years in prison. IFPI has not yet responded if it will appeal against the judgement.

A reader wrote with the news of GPL'd drivers for Linux. Looks like right now, they only have Red Hat in the list-but it's a great step, and I'm sure more support is on the way. That comes on the heels of their April announcement of supporting Linux. Due credit, of course, is given to Donald Becker, our demigod of networking. disclaimer:Hemos owns shares in Red Hat

dkm wrote to say that IBM has declared their intention of making the Thinkpad 600E named as Red Hat Linux "compatible". Sounds great, right? Well, the fun part is that while IBM wants to get named compatible, the bloody modem still won't work with Linux. Marvelous-compatible, but not really. Apparently they'll be "taking steps" as time goes on to get the modem working. disclaimer:Hemos owns shares in red hat

I've been corresponding with a gentleman recently about the various US-Linux conferences -(thebazaar, LinuxWorld, Atlanta Linux Showcase, and LinuxExpo)-what goes on? What do people want to do there? I'd like to open the discussion floor up to this-click below for more details. So, we've been talking about what types of booths there are, what sessions there are, and what Birds-of-a-Feather sessions there are, and how often the show doesn't do what you want. That begs the question of what people are looking for? What do you want from a show?

And in the way of plugs, ALS is currently seeking sponsers for a huge LUG party down there, as well as for the speakers. So, if you are willing to contribute, or your company is, please step forward and help out. LinuxWorld has also exhibit-only badges can be registered for from their web site, for the Feb. NYC show. Update: 09/14 12:01 by H : Natalie Vercauteren from LinuxWorld asks to e-mail her with BOF proposals, if you want anything in particular at LinuxWorld NYC.

Gregory F. Maxwell gave us the link-up to a South Florida Geekcam. The house has been evacuated, apparently, but the Cam must go on. I'm looking forward to watching Floyd make landfall.Update: 09/14 11:31 by H :There's a back-up site up. And for record, I regret damage done to property and life-but the power of Nature is still amazing.

swestbrook writes "It appears that Mandrake 6.1 final is out. It's starting to appear on the mirrors everywhere-grab it from here or the usual places. No news of the release on their website but details should show up today. Update: 09/14 10:44 by H : I've been informed by Mandrake that it is not out yet-they are still going through the beta process, so don't be surprised by bugs in the current beta. You've been warned.

Thanks to Ian Hopper> for the current story on CNN about the Visor. Pictures-and in a very cool turn of events-two very cool peripheral ports in the back of the machine. It runs about 20% faster then the Palm III or V, 8 MB of RAM in the high-end version of the machine. Oh-and about 2/3 the cost of a Palm V. Check out the Palminfocenter for more details, as well.Update: 09/14 03:33 by H :The corp. website appears to be up and running as well.

Jeos wrote to us with a fun Saturday afternoon project: "OK so today I was bored, and I did what anyone with a Dreamcast and a portscanner would do, I did a port scan on my Dreamcast. The results are interesting"-click below to read more.Update: 09/12 08:02 by H : Yes, this is a hoax - or sources from inside Sega say it is.

Starting nmap V. 2.12 by Fyodor (fyodor@dhp.com, www.insecure.org/nmap/)
Host (129.***.**.***) appears to be up ... good.
Initiating TCP connect() scan against (129.***.**.***)

Port State Protocol Service
23 open tcp telnet
80 filtered tcp http
113 open tcp auth
179 open tcp bgp
12345 filtered tcp NetBus
12346 filtered tcp NetBus
TCP Sequence Prediction: Class=random positive increments
Difficulty=561888 (Good luck!)
Sequence numbers: 2B26AFA0 2B49A760 2B5316DA 2B647480 2B7655AB 2B852F62
No OS matches for host (see for more info)
Nmap run completed -- 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 33 seconds

The OS fingerprinting didn't guess the OS, big surprise, but the interesting thing is all the ports that are open. The ones that interested me the most were 23 and 80, the normal telnet and web server ports. I tried to connect to my Dreamcast with a web browser, no luck there. Then I tired to telnet into it, jackpot! I was able to telnet in, and prompted to give a username/password. Of course I had no idea what the username or password would be, I wonder if it's some sort of backdoor for Sega?
Now i have to see if I can do anything interesting with the other ports.

C|Net talked with Marc, but we got hold of Red Hat's Donnie Barnes yesterday, and interrogated, er, asked him questions. Click below to learn more about what to do with IPO money (Hint: Think missle-toting Lear jets), software patents, open source licensing, and trademark issues.

One of our first and most pressing questions for Donnie was, "What the heck are they going to do with all of this fresh money?" The answer, as one would expect, was some mumbo-jumbo, with some hints of future plans. Barnes said, "We will certainly grow development, marketing, sales, etc." And to whet the appetite of users, "You can certainly expect the 'grow development' part to include some neat new toys for Linux, though we don't preannounce new features. ;-)."

So the company itself will be growing, as we would expect, and the staff will be growing as well. However, what's interesting is the comments on where it will grow.

According to Barnes, "International expansion is a key area for us," which is "very expensive." It is partly due to the sheer expense that they have not really pursued this area before. Some of the shifting in this direction can be seen already, in actions like the severing of the relationship with their former Japanese distributor. In that case Red Hat "basically chose to enter the Japanese market in a bigger way and bring our products and services into that area directly." At the current time, they plan to focus on a European expansion first, to be followed by an Asian expansion soon after.

Waidaminute! Europe? Isn't there already a certain Germanic company established over there? Well, yes. We pressed Barnes about moving into what's considered to be S.u.S.E. Territory, and, on a broader scale, what's going to happen with the expansion of Linux-based companies and competition that will happen between them.

Barnes's response is one that Bob Young has been giving for quite some time; that rather then trying to play a zero-sum game, taking users away from each other, the aim of the Linux companies is to make the entire pie bigger so that /every/ company can grow. Well, every company but Microsoft, I guess, but the point is still there. Both CT and I find this to be a bit idealistic, but given the current atmosphere of change, maybe it will be how things fall out - we'll see how things shape up over the next six months to a year.

So with all this money: International Expansion, more developers, marketing and saleses staff. And, for the record, "...no, there are no big ticket surprises like Lear Jets..."

However, Marc might be purchasing a Porsche dealership. (Note: Joke! Don't sue me, Marc. Please).

The question that everyone had, whether they got the letter, didn't get the letter or just watched the fireworks was the E*Trade/Red Hat stock situation. In summary, the numbers broke down as following:
5000 open source developers were invited to participate
1300 responded, indicating interest
1150 of those were ultimately able to participate

Looks pretty good, right? It'd be interesting to know how many of those 1150 had to go back and try again, but c'est la vie. When asked about RH's feelings on the stock offering, Barnes said, "We feel that an over 88% participation rate was very good for the community at large." We talked about the people angry about the situation, whether or not a lot of the people originally banned were able to get in. His response: "Most of the angry people were [able to get in], but the bumps we had in the way caused them to be confused as to where they were and what level of participation they could expect. But at the end, most of the angry people were able to participate and I think came away happy."

What I thought was interesting was what precipitated the whole meltdown: Bad Information? Clash of Cultures? Red Hat's answer: "Mostly lack of information, and some bad information from E*TRADE's 'systems.'"

Additionally, "Sure, the open source community meeting big business and high finance was part of it too. Both sides needed education about the other, and I think lots of education happened. :)" I'm sure many of the companes looking at similar situations watched the RH IPO closely, trying to figure out what they did right, and what they can do differently. Barnes recommends examining what happened with them, and also shopping around. The latter part to that comment is the interesting part: Not dissing E*Trade, and Barnes does say they would at least shop them against other brokerage houses, but I think that the lesson learned here is to make sure of the house you use, especially after watching the Red Hat fiasco.

And given the recent hoopla over Unisys's perceived attempt to charge for GIFs that use the LZW patent, and Red Hat's closeness with major patent holders like IBM and Hewlett-Packard it seemed appropriate to talk about software patents. Red Hat's take on software patents: "Well, I think it should be fairly obvious that software patents are a bad idea in general and we are not in favor of them." Additionally, when it comes to big-boys like IBM, HP and others they "...will be working to try to lobby in the proper areas to help this issue. Yes, we do care about that stuff and have already begun talking to folks." (Note: I envisioned Bob Young with a flamethrower in the IBM Corporate Lobby)

Despite this, Barnes allowed for the fact that "Given current regulations you may see RH own patents one day. That may be unavoidable until the current way they are handled is changed." RMS would be displeased, but Barnes said that "What folks do with these patents, otoh, can be vasty different." That's an odd world, but I think it's just a further sign of how messed up the US Patent Office is, regarding software patents.

The issue of software patents led to talk about the other software licenses that have come out, like the APSL and Sun Community Source License. As you would expect, Red Hat would like to see fewer open source licenses, but "...at the end of the day, as long as they are truly open source and companies are *using* them, I don't really care." Barnes is pleased to see that Sun is taking steps to making good software more widely availible. I asked if Sun was viewed as being a competitor. Barnes says that perhaps, but that RH is trying to make fundamental changes to the way software is built. "Perhaps Sun will join. They have taken steps in that direction so far, so they could be an ally."

Oh, and again for the record, Hurricane Dennis got Barnes "personally quite wet."

The last question sparked a lot of back-and-forth, regarding the whole Red Hat trademark issue.

(Note: To get background on this, read the original article, and the subsequent follow-up with a letter from Bob Young.)

The following, according to Barnes, is what's going on: "We have to protect our trademark. People were selling hand-burned CDs and using our name, box image, and logo to do it. We had customers complain vehemently to us directly about that as they felt burned. We had to take action to keep that from happening." This was what sparked the original issue with Amazon, and how it appeared that Red Hat was banning anyone from using their name in any way unlicensed by them. The issue, then, is, how do people know what they're getting? For example, people want to know what they're getting when they buy Cheapbytes/LinuxMall/Bob's1$LinuxEmporium/LinuxCentral Linux. Are they getting Debian, Suse, Red Hat, Caldera etc.? Recognizing that Red Hat has a valid brand they must protect, where does that leave the manufacturers? RH's answer: "If they ship "Red Hat Linux" as their own "Cheapbytes Linux", then it must *be* Red Hat Linux. We can verify that with PGP signatures and the like. They can say it contains Red Hat Linux, but they can't explicitely *call* it that." For example, under this scheme, they could "call it `Foo Linux which contains Red Hat Linux 6.0' or something similar." What they can't do, however, would be to release a CD with a PGP signature that checks out, but call it Red Hat Linux. Only Red Hat can explicity title their distribution "Red Hat Linux". And if a company puts out a CD saying it "Contains Red Hat" and the PGP doesn't check out (e.g. modified from original or something, then "they can't say that and we'd have cause to have the product sales stopped."

Phew. So, how do you handle something like Mandrake-Linux? Can you call say "Derived from Red Hat Linux?" Barnes points out that he's not a trademark lawyer, so don't hold him to be a legal litmus test, but that, yes, that will be possible. (Note:More guidelines on this will be coming out soon. Keep an eye on Red Hat's site for details.)

But when it comes to recognition, of course Red Hat appreciates being recognized for having contributed, e.g. Mandrake putting "Derived from Red Hat" on the CD. As Barnes says, "Acknowledgment of one's hard work is always welcome. We just want it done properly... they can take Internet bits and build their own name. You don't see us claiming the name of every other distribution that contributed some code to RH, do you? But they can take our code and use it. That's what this is all about."

Wrap-up:: Interesting to talk with Donnie, and you can see that the quiet period has been hard on them - being unable to respond to comments would be, I suppose. It seems that the basic direction of Red Hat remains unchanged; that is, commitment to the GPL, working with the industry on software patent issues, and trying to get people to join the "movement." The greatest concern that CT and I is how all of this money will affect them as an organization, but I suppose that's an issue for the greater Linux universe as well. Only time will tell. And, on that platitudianal note..

disclaimer:Hemos owns shares in Red Hat

C|Net talked with Marc, but we got hold of Red Hat's Donnie Barnes yesterday, and interrogated, er, asked him questions. Click below to learn more about what to do with IPO money (Hint: Think missle-toting Lear jets), software patents, open source licensing, and trademark issues.

One of our first and most pressing questions for Donnie was, "What the heck are they going to do with all of this fresh money?" The answer, as one would expect, was some mumbo-jumbo, with some hints of future plans. Barnes said, "We will certainly grow development, marketing, sales, etc." And to whet the appetite of users, "You can certainly expect the 'grow development' part to include some neat new toys for Linux, though we don't preannounce new features. ;-)."

So the company itself will be growing, as we would expect, and the staff will be growing as well. However, what's interesting is the comments on where it will grow.

According to Barnes, "International expansion is a key area for us," which is "very expensive." It is partly due to the sheer expense that they have not really pursued this area before. Some of the shifting in this direction can be seen already, in actions like the severing of the relationship with their former Japanese distributor. In that case Red Hat "basically chose to enter the Japanese market in a bigger way and bring our products and services into that area directly." At the current time, they plan to focus on a European expansion first, to be followed by an Asian expansion soon after.

Waidaminute! Europe? Isn't there already a certain Germanic company established over there? Well, yes. We pressed Barnes about moving into what's considered to be S.u.S.E. Territory, and, on a broader scale, what's going to happen with the expansion of Linux-based companies and competition that will happen between them.

Barnes's response is one that Bob Young has been giving for quite some time; that rather then trying to play a zero-sum game, taking users away from each other, the aim of the Linux companies is to make the entire pie bigger so that /every/ company can grow. Well, every company but Microsoft, I guess, but the point is still there. Both CT and I find this to be a bit idealistic, but given the current atmosphere of change, maybe it will be how things fall out - we'll see how things shape up over the next six months to a year.

So with all this money: International Expansion, more developers, marketing and saleses staff. And, for the record, "...no, there are no big ticket surprises like Lear Jets..."

However, Marc might be purchasing a Porsche dealership. (Note: Joke! Don't sue me, Marc. Please).

The question that everyone had, whether they got the letter, didn't get the letter or just watched the fireworks was the E*Trade/Red Hat stock situation. In summary, the numbers broke down as following:
5000 open source developers were invited to participate
1300 responded, indicating interest
1150 of those were ultimately able to participate

Looks pretty good, right? It'd be interesting to know how many of those 1150 had to go back and try again, but c'est la vie. When asked about RH's feelings on the stock offering, Barnes said, "We feel that an over 88% participation rate was very good for the community at large." We talked about the people angry about the situation, whether or not a lot of the people originally banned were able to get in. His response: "Most of the angry people were [able to get in], but the bumps we had in the way caused them to be confused as to where they were and what level of participation they could expect. But at the end, most of the angry people were able to participate and I think came away happy."

What I thought was interesting was what precipitated the whole meltdown: Bad Information? Clash of Cultures? Red Hat's answer: "Mostly lack of information, and some bad information from E*TRADE's 'systems.'"

Additionally, "Sure, the open source community meeting big business and high finance was part of it too. Both sides needed education about the other, and I think lots of education happened. :)" I'm sure many of the companes looking at similar situations watched the RH IPO closely, trying to figure out what they did right, and what they can do differently. Barnes recommends examining what happened with them, and also shopping around. The latter part to that comment is the interesting part: Not dissing E*Trade, and Barnes does say they would at least shop them against other brokerage houses, but I think that the lesson learned here is to make sure of the house you use, especially after watching the Red Hat fiasco.

And given the recent hoopla over Unisys's perceived attempt to charge for GIFs that use the LZW patent, and Red Hat's closeness with major patent holders like IBM and Hewlett-Packard it seemed appropriate to talk about software patents. Red Hat's take on software patents: "Well, I think it should be fairly obvious that software patents are a bad idea in general and we are not in favor of them." Additionally, when it comes to big-boys like IBM, HP and others they "...will be working to try to lobby in the proper areas to help this issue. Yes, we do care about that stuff and have already begun talking to folks." (Note: I envisioned Bob Young with a flamethrower in the IBM Corporate Lobby)

Despite this, Barnes allowed for the fact that "Given current regulations you may see RH own patents one day. That may be unavoidable until the current way they are handled is changed." RMS would be displeased, but Barnes said that "What folks do with these patents, otoh, can be vasty different." That's an odd world, but I think it's just a further sign of how messed up the US Patent Office is, regarding software patents.

The issue of software patents led to talk about the other software licenses that have come out, like the APSL and Sun Community Source License. As you would expect, Red Hat would like to see fewer open source licenses, but "...at the end of the day, as long as they are truly open source and companies are *using* them, I don't really care." Barnes is pleased to see that Sun is taking steps to making good software more widely availible. I asked if Sun was viewed as being a competitor. Barnes says that perhaps, but that RH is trying to make fundamental changes to the way software is built. "Perhaps Sun will join. They have taken steps in that direction so far, so they could be an ally."

Oh, and again for the record, Hurricane Dennis got Barnes "personally quite wet."

The last question sparked a lot of back-and-forth, regarding the whole Red Hat trademark issue.

(Note: To get background on this, read the original article, and the subsequent follow-up with a letter from Bob Young.)

The following, according to Barnes, is what's going on: "We have to protect our trademark. People were selling hand-burned CDs and using our name, box image, and logo to do it. We had customers complain vehemently to us directly about that as they felt burned. We had to take action to keep that from happening." This was what sparked the original issue with Amazon, and how it appeared that Red Hat was banning anyone from using their name in any way unlicensed by them. The issue, then, is, how do people know what they're getting? For example, people want to know what they're getting when they buy Cheapbytes/LinuxMall/Bob's1$LinuxEmporium/LinuxCentral Linux. Are they getting Debian, Suse, Red Hat, Caldera etc.? Recognizing that Red Hat has a valid brand they must protect, where does that leave the manufacturers? RH's answer: "If they ship "Red Hat Linux" as their own "Cheapbytes Linux", then it must *be* Red Hat Linux. We can verify that with PGP signatures and the like. They can say it contains Red Hat Linux, but they can't explicitely *call* it that." For example, under this scheme, they could "call it `Foo Linux which contains Red Hat Linux 6.0' or something similar." What they can't do, however, would be to release a CD with a PGP signature that checks out, but call it Red Hat Linux. Only Red Hat can explicity title their distribution "Red Hat Linux". And if a company puts out a CD saying it "Contains Red Hat" and the PGP doesn't check out (e.g. modified from original or something, then "they can't say that and we'd have cause to have the product sales stopped."

Phew. So, how do you handle something like Mandrake-Linux? Can you call say "Derived from Red Hat Linux?" Barnes points out that he's not a trademark lawyer, so don't hold him to be a legal litmus test, but that, yes, that will be possible. (Note:More guidelines on this will be coming out soon. Keep an eye on Red Hat's site for details.)

But when it comes to recognition, of course Red Hat appreciates being recognized for having contributed, e.g. Mandrake putting "Derived from Red Hat" on the CD. As Barnes says, "Acknowledgment of one's hard work is always welcome. We just want it done properly... they can take Internet bits and build their own name. You don't see us claiming the name of every other distribution that contributed some code to RH, do you? But they can take our code and use it. That's what this is all about."

Wrap-up:: Interesting to talk with Donnie, and you can see that the quiet period has been hard on them - being unable to respond to comments would be, I suppose. It seems that the basic direction of Red Hat remains unchanged; that is, commitment to the GPL, working with the industry on software patent issues, and trying to get people to join the "movement." The greatest concern that CT and I is how all of this money will affect them as an organization, but I suppose that's an issue for the greater Linux universe as well. Only time will tell. And, on that platitudianal note..

disclaimer:Hemos owns shares in Red Hat

kris writes "The german Telepolis magazine from Heise put up a small article about Kris Pister and Randy Katz creating small laser-driven wireless communicating swarm-computing nano-devices called MEMS. This is right out of a Neal Stevenson novel, The Diamond Age. The article is in english language. " I wish there's was more details to this article-if you find more, please post below. Update: 09/08 12:15 by H :Check out New Scientist for more information too.

Doofuswrote to us about Sun's release of their newest effort to knock the PC off the corporate desktop. The Sun Ray is essentially "a juiced-up monitor", and is a thin-client solution. Cost is 10$ per month for 5 years, or 30$ per month for a more powerful client. Not much technical details in the article, but we'll update with more links as these appear.Update: 09/08 01:15 by H :Thanks to Paul Tomblin for a huge PDF file with the tech specs.

mrwiz writes "According to this article at Appleinsider, it looks like Apple may be removing the upgradability of processors even further with their next generation logicboards, codenamed "Shark", by moving the boot ROM off of the logicboard and onto their processor daughter cards. " Update: 09/07 07:56 by CT : The Happy Blues Man writes "MacOS Rumors has an update on the "trojan" firmware upgrade for Blue & White G3s. It seems that even in Apple itself, the issue was hotly contested and the proponents' reason was to stop 3rd parties from shipping G4 upgrades before Apple's G4s were shipping. Apple sources have confirmed a fix will be available. " Update: 09/07 08:54 by H :I've been told by numerous people that this is NOT true-more to follow.

A number of people have written in with the news that Cryptonym has found an apparent backdoor for the NSA (called NSAKEY) in all current versions of Windows. However, you can open this backdoor yourself and install your own strong cryto module in place of the built-in one. More details are also online, but to be quite frank, we aren't quite sure on this one-so, if you're more qualified comment, please do so below.Update: 09/03 11:19 by H :Thanks to Jens Hillman for more information from the German Chaos Computer Club. Der Webpage ist auf Deutsch-Babelfish it.

Hah! Apple has announced a new flat screen. Colm@TCD sent us the linkage but check out the numbers: 1600x1024 (same as a widescreen TV, or the SGI flat panels) but its 22 inches! Holy yummyness batman! Bet ya gotta mortgage your home. (insert sounds of drooling here)Update: 09/03 08:50 by H :We originally touched on this while talking about the G4

A reader sent us a Datamation article talking about the use of Linux by Southwestern Bell. That's right-if you are in MO or KA, your phone call made it through thanks to Linux. Good press is always nice to see.Update: 09/02 12:06 by H : Yep, I'll admit it. I'm an idiot. Kansas is KS, not KA.

TuxDaddy writes "Jim Collas has resigned as president of Amiga-however no details are available yet. " Well, let the speculation machine run rampant-is Amiga serious? Is there anything happening with them?Update: 09/01 07:42 by H :Well, they've announced their new president as Tim Schmidt. Collas has left to "pursue personal interests".