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Sit back, read Slashback. Tonight, (another) revision to the "Hidden Agenda" collegiate games contest, torrent files for the new Mandrake release, and the by turns heated-and-cool responses to Forbes' unfriendly description of the FSF -- for attempting to protect their copyrights -- as Linux's "hit men." Read on below for the details.

Hey, this approach works for the New York Post ... digidave writes "The fallout from Dan's Linux's Hit Men article on Forbes.com has pushed Forbes.com into putting up a discussion board, where Dan [Lyons] has posted his response"

And unmadindu writes "FSF's Bradley Kuhn has responded to the Forbes article ( reported earlier at Slashdot). Read the short, but to-the-point response at Linux Today." Kuhn's response is remarkable in its restraint.

Reader Waldo Jaquith sent the text of Lyon's first posting; an excerpt serves to illustrate its tone:

"Of course the Free Software Foundation is entitled to enforce its GNU General Public License (GPL), just as other organizations are entitled to enforce their copyrights and licenses. My article simply points out that the paradoxical effect of these "enforcement actions" (FSF's term) may be to impede the adoption of Linux. By demanding that licensees publish source code for their own "derivative work" code (in addition to the Linux they're using) the FSF is, in effect, charging a royalty that approaches 100% of the value of the licensee's product."

Some of the postings in response are very impressive; I especially like this one.

Dragonfly Forum Logs are scintillating reading. drdink writes "SlashNET would like to thank Matthew Dillon and everyone who attended the Dragonfly BSD Q&A forum session. Logs are available both in text and HTML formats."

You get to keep your base. Stealthgirl writes "The Hidden Agenda Game Development Contest, which received quite a bit of interest but also a lot of flak for its IP rules, has adapted the rules to appease those who were griping on sites like Slashdot. Check out this post for more info." Up to the entrants to decide if they like the rules of any contest, of course.

Leech friendly, with public Mandrake 9.2 torrents. An anonymous reader writes "Public torrents for the first two of the Mandrake 9.2 ISOs are up (I and II). Anybody cares to share the third?"

Sir? It's reality calling, on line two, from Anywhere. Marcelo Rodriguez (gardel on Slashdot), editor of Voxilla.com, writes: "We've posted the complete text of Federal Judge Mike Davis' ruling in Vonage v. Minnesota Public Utilities Commission on Voxilla.com. ... It's pretty much a slam dunk for Vonage and VoIP. Judge Davis wrote that Congress mandates that 'that information services such as those provided by Vonage must not be regulated by state law.' He also wrote that 'State regulation would effectively decimate Congress's mandate that the Internet remain unfettered by regulation.'"

Sit back, read Slashback. Tonight, (another) revision to the "Hidden Agenda" collegiate games contest, torrent files for the new Mandrake release, and the by turns heated-and-cool responses to Forbes' unfriendly description of the FSF -- for attempting to protect their copyrights -- as Linux's "hit men." Read on below for the details.

Hey, this approach works for the New York Post ... digidave writes "The fallout from Dan's Linux's Hit Men article on Forbes.com has pushed Forbes.com into putting up a discussion board, where Dan [Lyons] has posted his response"

And unmadindu writes "FSF's Bradley Kuhn has responded to the Forbes article ( reported earlier at Slashdot). Read the short, but to-the-point response at Linux Today." Kuhn's response is remarkable in its restraint.

Reader Waldo Jaquith sent the text of Lyon's first posting; an excerpt serves to illustrate its tone:

"Of course the Free Software Foundation is entitled to enforce its GNU General Public License (GPL), just as other organizations are entitled to enforce their copyrights and licenses. My article simply points out that the paradoxical effect of these "enforcement actions" (FSF's term) may be to impede the adoption of Linux. By demanding that licensees publish source code for their own "derivative work" code (in addition to the Linux they're using) the FSF is, in effect, charging a royalty that approaches 100% of the value of the licensee's product."

Some of the postings in response are very impressive; I especially like this one.

Dragonfly Forum Logs are scintillating reading. drdink writes "SlashNET would like to thank Matthew Dillon and everyone who attended the Dragonfly BSD Q&A forum session. Logs are available both in text and HTML formats."

You get to keep your base. Stealthgirl writes "The Hidden Agenda Game Development Contest, which received quite a bit of interest but also a lot of flak for its IP rules, has adapted the rules to appease those who were griping on sites like Slashdot. Check out this post for more info." Up to the entrants to decide if they like the rules of any contest, of course.

Leech friendly, with public Mandrake 9.2 torrents. An anonymous reader writes "Public torrents for the first two of the Mandrake 9.2 ISOs are up (I and II). Anybody cares to share the third?"

Sir? It's reality calling, on line two, from Anywhere. Marcelo Rodriguez (gardel on Slashdot), editor of Voxilla.com, writes: "We've posted the complete text of Federal Judge Mike Davis' ruling in Vonage v. Minnesota Public Utilities Commission on Voxilla.com. ... It's pretty much a slam dunk for Vonage and VoIP. Judge Davis wrote that Congress mandates that 'that information services such as those provided by Vonage must not be regulated by state law.' He also wrote that 'State regulation would effectively decimate Congress's mandate that the Internet remain unfettered by regulation.'"

Sit back, read Slashback. Tonight, (another) revision to the "Hidden Agenda" collegiate games contest, torrent files for the new Mandrake release, and the by turns heated-and-cool responses to Forbes' unfriendly description of the FSF -- for attempting to protect their copyrights -- as Linux's "hit men." Read on below for the details.

Hey, this approach works for the New York Post ... digidave writes "The fallout from Dan's Linux's Hit Men article on Forbes.com has pushed Forbes.com into putting up a discussion board, where Dan [Lyons] has posted his response"

And unmadindu writes "FSF's Bradley Kuhn has responded to the Forbes article ( reported earlier at Slashdot). Read the short, but to-the-point response at Linux Today." Kuhn's response is remarkable in its restraint.

Reader Waldo Jaquith sent the text of Lyon's first posting; an excerpt serves to illustrate its tone:

"Of course the Free Software Foundation is entitled to enforce its GNU General Public License (GPL), just as other organizations are entitled to enforce their copyrights and licenses. My article simply points out that the paradoxical effect of these "enforcement actions" (FSF's term) may be to impede the adoption of Linux. By demanding that licensees publish source code for their own "derivative work" code (in addition to the Linux they're using) the FSF is, in effect, charging a royalty that approaches 100% of the value of the licensee's product."

Some of the postings in response are very impressive; I especially like this one.

Dragonfly Forum Logs are scintillating reading. drdink writes "SlashNET would like to thank Matthew Dillon and everyone who attended the Dragonfly BSD Q&A forum session. Logs are available both in text and HTML formats."

You get to keep your base. Stealthgirl writes "The Hidden Agenda Game Development Contest, which received quite a bit of interest but also a lot of flak for its IP rules, has adapted the rules to appease those who were griping on sites like Slashdot. Check out this post for more info." Up to the entrants to decide if they like the rules of any contest, of course.

Leech friendly, with public Mandrake 9.2 torrents. An anonymous reader writes "Public torrents for the first two of the Mandrake 9.2 ISOs are up (I and II). Anybody cares to share the third?"

Sir? It's reality calling, on line two, from Anywhere. Marcelo Rodriguez (gardel on Slashdot), editor of Voxilla.com, writes: "We've posted the complete text of Federal Judge Mike Davis' ruling in Vonage v. Minnesota Public Utilities Commission on Voxilla.com. ... It's pretty much a slam dunk for Vonage and VoIP. Judge Davis wrote that Congress mandates that 'that information services such as those provided by Vonage must not be regulated by state law.' He also wrote that 'State regulation would effectively decimate Congress's mandate that the Internet remain unfettered by regulation.'"

Sit back, read Slashback. Tonight, (another) revision to the "Hidden Agenda" collegiate games contest, torrent files for the new Mandrake release, and the by turns heated-and-cool responses to Forbes' unfriendly description of the FSF -- for attempting to protect their copyrights -- as Linux's "hit men." Read on below for the details.

Hey, this approach works for the New York Post ... digidave writes "The fallout from Dan's Linux's Hit Men article on Forbes.com has pushed Forbes.com into putting up a discussion board, where Dan [Lyons] has posted his response"

And unmadindu writes "FSF's Bradley Kuhn has responded to the Forbes article ( reported earlier at Slashdot). Read the short, but to-the-point response at Linux Today." Kuhn's response is remarkable in its restraint.

Reader Waldo Jaquith sent the text of Lyon's first posting; an excerpt serves to illustrate its tone:

"Of course the Free Software Foundation is entitled to enforce its GNU General Public License (GPL), just as other organizations are entitled to enforce their copyrights and licenses. My article simply points out that the paradoxical effect of these "enforcement actions" (FSF's term) may be to impede the adoption of Linux. By demanding that licensees publish source code for their own "derivative work" code (in addition to the Linux they're using) the FSF is, in effect, charging a royalty that approaches 100% of the value of the licensee's product."

Some of the postings in response are very impressive; I especially like this one.

Dragonfly Forum Logs are scintillating reading. drdink writes "SlashNET would like to thank Matthew Dillon and everyone who attended the Dragonfly BSD Q&A forum session. Logs are available both in text and HTML formats."

You get to keep your base. Stealthgirl writes "The Hidden Agenda Game Development Contest, which received quite a bit of interest but also a lot of flak for its IP rules, has adapted the rules to appease those who were griping on sites like Slashdot. Check out this post for more info." Up to the entrants to decide if they like the rules of any contest, of course.

Leech friendly, with public Mandrake 9.2 torrents. An anonymous reader writes "Public torrents for the first two of the Mandrake 9.2 ISOs are up (I and II). Anybody cares to share the third?"

Sir? It's reality calling, on line two, from Anywhere. Marcelo Rodriguez (gardel on Slashdot), editor of Voxilla.com, writes: "We've posted the complete text of Federal Judge Mike Davis' ruling in Vonage v. Minnesota Public Utilities Commission on Voxilla.com. ... It's pretty much a slam dunk for Vonage and VoIP. Judge Davis wrote that Congress mandates that 'that information services such as those provided by Vonage must not be regulated by state law.' He also wrote that 'State regulation would effectively decimate Congress's mandate that the Internet remain unfettered by regulation.'"

Slashback tonight brings you more on recent RIAA madness, the readability of scrambled words, word of the return of Nullsoft's WASTE, another decision against the FTC's do-not-call list, and more -- read on for the details. The issue is greyer than you might think. SirFozzie writes "A Denver, Colorado judge has blocked the implementation of the Do-Not-Call List for a 2nd time, hours after the House and Senate passed the bill overwhelmingly, claiming that telemarketer's free speech rights would be infringed if this was to take affect. In the MSNBC story, judge Edward Nottingham ruled that "The Federal Trade Commission has chosen to entangle itself too much in the consumers' decision by manipulating consumer choice and favoring speech by charitable (organizations) over commercial speech." What's next? Constitutional Amendment?"

Follow-up: Can You Raed Tihs? meal worms writes "A Slashdot article appearing last Monday, which reported on the claim that scrambled words are legible as long as first and last letters are in place, was circulated to the University of British Columbia's Linguistics department. An interesting counter-example resulted:

"Anidroccg to crad cniyrrag lcitsiugnis planoissefors at an uemannd, utisreviny in Bsitirh Cibmuloa, and crartnoy to the duoibus cmials of the ueticnd rcraeseh, a slpmie, macinahcel ioisrevnn of ianretnl cretcarahs araepps sneiciffut to csufnoe the eadyrevy oekoolnr."

As demonstrated, a simple inversion of the internal characters results in a text which is relatively hard to decipher."

Addendum to Tough California Anti-Spam Law Signed On September 23, we mentioned California's new spam-ban law; srmalloy writes "The text of the new law, added by S.B. 186, is here."

Now you can WASTE away again in Margaritaville. adamsmith_uk writes "WASTE is open source small P2P network software supporting IM, group chat, file browsing/searching, and file transfer. It was released by Nullsoft and then removed by AOL, its parent company, in matter of hours. WASTE is now up to version 1.1 and back on Sourceforge. Get it while you can!"

Next time, Gadget Grandmother ... next time! FrankBama writes "The RIAA sued a grandmother for sharing over 2,000 songs (including 'I'm A Thug' by Trick Daddy). The EFF got involved and RIAA dropped the suit. This was done as a 'gesture of good faith' but the record industry spokesperson says they still think it's the right account.

260 other defendants still outstanding."

More of Orson Scott Card on Net music sharing. happy_place writes "FYI, you reported the first part earlier, here's the PART 2 of Orson Scott Card's political discussion on the stupidity of the record industry subpeona frenzy."

This part of the agenda is not supposed to be hidden. Stealthgirl writes "Note to everyone on the Hidden Agenda Contest that was mentioned over the weekend: There was a lot of feedback about only undergrads being eligible for the $25,000 prize. The rules have been clarified and full time grad students are welcome as well."

Update: Ah, yes: The Fortran bit. Thomas Beuthe writes "With regards to your slashdot Fortran article of the 16 Sept 2003 entitled 'Is GNU g77 Killing Fortran?,' I just wanted to make you aware of a fully featured alternative to g77 that perhaps everyone should consider using. Please go to Walt Brainerd's site: www.fortran.com (yes, he was the one who got *that* site!) and have a look at the "F" compiler.

I discussed the problem of the lack of a good freeware compiler and its influence on the lack of Fortran education and propagation of the language with him personally when he was here giving a Fortran course. He pointed out the "F" compiler to me. This is a fully compliant compiler which he put together himself.

The source code is actually the NAG compiler, I believe, except that he's hobbled it a bit to allow it to go out for free. This means that he has restricted the syntax a little, but not the functionality. So what you get is a fully funtional compiler which is restricted to what Walt considers to be the 'best' syntax for Fortran! This makes perfect sense for education, but also allows full useage for big projects as well!

Neat eh?"

Slashback tonight brings you more on recent RIAA madness, the readability of scrambled words, word of the return of Nullsoft's WASTE, another decision against the FTC's do-not-call list, and more -- read on for the details. The issue is greyer than you might think. SirFozzie writes "A Denver, Colorado judge has blocked the implementation of the Do-Not-Call List for a 2nd time, hours after the House and Senate passed the bill overwhelmingly, claiming that telemarketer's free speech rights would be infringed if this was to take affect. In the MSNBC story, judge Edward Nottingham ruled that "The Federal Trade Commission has chosen to entangle itself too much in the consumers' decision by manipulating consumer choice and favoring speech by charitable (organizations) over commercial speech." What's next? Constitutional Amendment?"

Follow-up: Can You Raed Tihs? meal worms writes "A Slashdot article appearing last Monday, which reported on the claim that scrambled words are legible as long as first and last letters are in place, was circulated to the University of British Columbia's Linguistics department. An interesting counter-example resulted:

"Anidroccg to crad cniyrrag lcitsiugnis planoissefors at an uemannd, utisreviny in Bsitirh Cibmuloa, and crartnoy to the duoibus cmials of the ueticnd rcraeseh, a slpmie, macinahcel ioisrevnn of ianretnl cretcarahs araepps sneiciffut to csufnoe the eadyrevy oekoolnr."

As demonstrated, a simple inversion of the internal characters results in a text which is relatively hard to decipher."

Addendum to Tough California Anti-Spam Law Signed On September 23, we mentioned California's new spam-ban law; srmalloy writes "The text of the new law, added by S.B. 186, is here."

Now you can WASTE away again in Margaritaville. adamsmith_uk writes "WASTE is open source small P2P network software supporting IM, group chat, file browsing/searching, and file transfer. It was released by Nullsoft and then removed by AOL, its parent company, in matter of hours. WASTE is now up to version 1.1 and back on Sourceforge. Get it while you can!"

Next time, Gadget Grandmother ... next time! FrankBama writes "The RIAA sued a grandmother for sharing over 2,000 songs (including 'I'm A Thug' by Trick Daddy). The EFF got involved and RIAA dropped the suit. This was done as a 'gesture of good faith' but the record industry spokesperson says they still think it's the right account.

260 other defendants still outstanding."

More of Orson Scott Card on Net music sharing. happy_place writes "FYI, you reported the first part earlier, here's the PART 2 of Orson Scott Card's political discussion on the stupidity of the record industry subpeona frenzy."

This part of the agenda is not supposed to be hidden. Stealthgirl writes "Note to everyone on the Hidden Agenda Contest that was mentioned over the weekend: There was a lot of feedback about only undergrads being eligible for the $25,000 prize. The rules have been clarified and full time grad students are welcome as well."

Update: Ah, yes: The Fortran bit. Thomas Beuthe writes "With regards to your slashdot Fortran article of the 16 Sept 2003 entitled 'Is GNU g77 Killing Fortran?,' I just wanted to make you aware of a fully featured alternative to g77 that perhaps everyone should consider using. Please go to Walt Brainerd's site: www.fortran.com (yes, he was the one who got *that* site!) and have a look at the "F" compiler.

I discussed the problem of the lack of a good freeware compiler and its influence on the lack of Fortran education and propagation of the language with him personally when he was here giving a Fortran course. He pointed out the "F" compiler to me. This is a fully compliant compiler which he put together himself.

The source code is actually the NAG compiler, I believe, except that he's hobbled it a bit to allow it to go out for free. This means that he has restricted the syntax a little, but not the functionality. So what you get is a fully funtional compiler which is restricted to what Walt considers to be the 'best' syntax for Fortran! This makes perfect sense for education, but also allows full useage for big projects as well!

Neat eh?"

Stealthgirl writes "Check out Hidden Agenda, a game development contest with a twist. College students are challenged to build entertaining games that 'secretly' teach middle school subjects. The contest focuses on 'stealth education' in gaming, pushing students to create primarily entertaining games that also teach topics such as forces, statistics, or the solar system. Students have complete freedom in their game designs. They can work in teams of up to 8 people, build games on and for any platform, and use existing engines. Games will be judged in May, with 5 finalist teams flying to Austin to present in front of game legends such as Richard Garriott for their final shot at the $25,000 prize. While all submitted games must fulfill teaching requirements to be considered, final judging is based on 70% entertainment and 30% educational value."

Stealthgirl writes "Check out Hidden Agenda, a game development contest with a twist. College students are challenged to build entertaining games that 'secretly' teach middle school subjects. The contest focuses on 'stealth education' in gaming, pushing students to create primarily entertaining games that also teach topics such as forces, statistics, or the solar system. Students have complete freedom in their game designs. They can work in teams of up to 8 people, build games on and for any platform, and use existing engines. Games will be judged in May, with 5 finalist teams flying to Austin to present in front of game legends such as Richard Garriott for their final shot at the $25,000 prize. While all submitted games must fulfill teaching requirements to be considered, final judging is based on 70% entertainment and 30% educational value."