Slashdot Mirror

Matt writes "Google is threatening to shut down the German version of its Gmail service if the German Bundestag passes it's new Internet surveillance law. Peter Fleischer, Google's German privacy representative says the new law would be a severe blow against privacy and would go against Google's practice of also offering anonymous e-mail accounts. If the law is passed then starting 2008, any connection data concerning the internet, phone calls (With position data when cell phones are used), SMS etc. of any German citizen will be saved for 6 months, anonymizing services like Tor will be made illegal."

aqsalter writes "Benjamin Reed of Fink fame is calling for help porting KDE to Mac using Qt/Mac. Interested parties should swarm the KDE-Darwin mailing list. KWrite for Mac here we come!"

DM420 writes "On June 9th, Los Angeles officially becomes the world's first city to have its own Internet domain.Great to hear since one day I hope to be an owner of my own TLD and this is a step in the right direction. ;) The registry is located at www.la and further details at DMnews.com" Looks like an Irish firm made a deal with Laos to use the .la TLD. Looks to be on the pricier side of domains, though.

0verkill asks: "I have been charged with the task of finding time tracking software to replace our current manual punch card method of tracking our employees time spent on the job. I would appreciate any feeedback/suggestions from anyone who has experience implementing and/or maintaing this software. Here are the criteria that I'm working with currently: I have a spending range of up to $400-$500; the software should support clocking in/out from more than one network attached workstation; basic report generation -- nothing too fancy but something that covers all the basics; and finally something that is resistant to time tampering (maybe software that could obtain an official time from our servers)."

A quick Slashback for you this evening with more on the clones who won't get to be killed onscreen, the Yopy (alas!), hacking your PVR, and a skeptical reaction to recent claims of dramatically increased compression. Read on for the goods.

Waitaminute, what happens there between the "lead" stage and the "gold" stage again? HomerSimpson writes: "Recently on /. I read of a compression scheme reported to provide huge gains for the compression of random data. New Scientist reports, however, that the claims are unlikely at best."

Perhaps we can watch some other bands be slaughtered instead? eruditorium writes: "Apparently, the negative public reaction to n'sync's appearence in episode 2 has caused lucas to drop their cameo. See it here on Scifi Wire." san1701 links to another similar posting about this important issue at TheForce.Net.

On-again, off-again is not good for electronic projects. cd_Csc writes: "CNET is reporting on Samsung's newest Windows CE based PDA and mentioned (as a side note) that, 'A Samsung representative also confirmed the cancellation of Yopy, the company's planned Linux-based PDA.'"

Update: 01/11 02:41 GMT by T : Looks like it's not quite that simple: Bill Kendrick writes "LinuxDevices.com caught wind of today's Slashback regarding the Yopy PDA's demise.

Well, fortunately for Yopy fans, they got the real scoop directly from G.Mate..." Thanks for the quick response, Bill, and sorry for spreading false information.

Imagine explaining to your kids what VCRs were. jimmcq writes: "Slashdot previously ran a story asking about Hacking the New Replay TV Units. There have been several recent breakthroughs to allow a PC to emulate a Replay 4000 so that video can be shared in both directions. The source code has been released under the GPL. There are also several variations including a java version and an Apache/PHP Server."

The ever curious AtariDatacenter asks: "I'm finally going to get my wish, and upgrade my two car garage to an 80's style arcade room. I've found some good ideas in the RGVAC newsgroup. But for those who aren't hardcore into collecting, what are major aspects of an arcade gameroom that you'd put into your own home? Would this make a home more or less marketable?"

AtariDatacenter asks: "My employer is having trouble, outside of eBay, locating used Sun Enterprise 10000 servers for sale. (In fact, they approved asking Slashdot for ideas.) Anyone have any good ideas on sourcing used E10ks?"

Potato Demon X wrote to us with the story of getting MAME ^? running on the X-Box. Heh. The levels of irony in this amuse me greatly.

Slashback with more on cheap satellites, the relative speeds of threads under Linux and two strains of Windows, a skeptical response to the idea that crowds of people are retreating to dial-up access, and some tantalizing hints at products killed along with the HP calculator division. Lies, Damn Lies, Statistics, Benchmarks, Etc. Writing with a followup to the Slashdot post titled, "Who Has Faster Pipes? Linux, Win2000, WinXP Compared" Splinton had this to say: "In this article, Ed Bradford compares semaphores, mutexes and window's critical sections. Pthreads look good, but Win2Ks critical sections are twice as fast again!"

The computing equivalent of Area 51? A short while back HP closed its calculator division. Many have thought HP's calculator department was unprofitable. This was not the case. Many have thought they had no innovation. This was not the case. Turns out that management had 4% workforce to kill and they were part of the cut.

This article explains more. It turns out they had designed several Linux based PDA's ready to produce that were killed by management. Sounds interesting? Go check it out.

The biggest expense was the 12 gross of Estes D engines ... Satellite Designer writes: "The topic of low cost satellites having been mooted here recently, I though I'd alert readers to another such project. The HETE-2 satellite recently located a cosmic gamma-ray burst precisely enough that (with a lot of help from friends) an afterglow was detected, identifying its source. HETE-2 cost $26 million, only 1/3 of what a 'small' scientific satellite normally costs.

A lot of commercial 'off the shelf' technology went into HETE. Nothing from Radio Shack, but there are quite a few parts from Digi-Key onboard. You can't save money by using cheap parts (but you *can* save money by using easily obtainable parts), and you can't achieve reliability by using expensive parts (but you *can* help reliability by using the parts best suited for your application). The radical thing about HETE's parts selection was that it considered parts in the application context (as one would do in a normal engineering process), rather than restricting selection to a QPL assembled to meet irrelevant requirements.

The real trick to keeping costs down is to do the job with as small a team as possible in the minimum time possible. Rather than employing a large team of specialists, HETE's scientific investigators did much of the engineering and technical work. A small, carefully selected engineering team filled in the knowledge gaps."

Quitting isn't easy, and why bother? dmarsh writes: "This new article from C|Net seems to be a total contradiction to last week's "Dump Broadband, Dig Out Your Modem!" thread's article. I guess the important difference being that this one is backed up by an actual survey by the National Cable and Telecommunications Association."

Goes to show, in a large group of people you can probably find at least some who fit nearly any premise. As always, question the source ;)

tuxtattoo writes: "I was talking to a buddy of mine tonight, and he told me about a paintball ATV made by Tippmann. it's called the Hellhound, and it's got everything you need for a nice day at the paintball field. Some of its features include a variable speed trigger which is attached to a high speed, 10 barrel, 50 rounds/second cannon. it also comes equipped with 2 side mounted tippmann model 98's (that would be 2 more paintball guns one on each side :), a 6,000 round hopper, heavy duty winch, and not to forget the what looks to be a self fed grenade launcher. there are many other features that come standard with this model, but NO floor mats or cup holders." I think this has been around for a while, but I played paintball yesterday (and I'm feeling it today) so this submission just seems apropos.

fifths writes: "I'm not sure how many of you saw this story from the Scripps Howard Washington bureau -- as reported in the 'Washington Calling' column in the 10-07-2001 edition of the Knoxville(TN) News-Sentinel: 'Federal agents are tracking suspects tied to the Sept. 11 strikes through supermarket club cards that may give a hint of ethnic tastes. "Time was, this data was so disorganized nobody could make sense of it, but not anymore. They're looking for people based on their supermarket tastes," says consultant Larry Ponemon, head of the Privacy Council business consortium.' Anyone else bothered by this? Burn your supermarket cards." Better yet, trade your supermarket cards, frequently. (Perhaps with friends or relatives in the furthest city with the same chain?) Maybe Larry Ellison would like to have a few.

rotifer writes: "Compaq is recalling 1.4 million power adapters as fire hazards. I have one of these sitting on my living room floor right now. Compaq says in their FAQ on the subject "Compaq urges customers to discontinue use of the recalled AC adapter and to order a replacement adapter immediately." and that "We expect customers to receive their adapters within 5-10 days". Which means, of course, 5-10 days of not being able to use the computer. Has anyone had one of these things blow up on them? How dangerous is it to keep using it while waiting for the replacement part?" Only you can prevent notebook fires.

Schnake writes: "An article on USAToday talks about how the FTC is investigating Sun Microsystems, Unocal, and Rambus to determine whether they illegally kept patents secret while helping set industry standards! And a quote from the ZDNet article: "It noted that all three companies had filed patent infringement lawsuits against firms they say owed them royalties. But the litigation backfired when those firms countersued, charging them with concealing their patents, and complained to the FTC.""

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bard, Andrew wrote with some updates as well:

"Just to let you know:

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

halo8 writes: "There is a story on the Ottawa Citizen about Rebel.Com - how they were private, went public during the tech boom, made millons, spent millons (buying james dean logo and rebel.com address). See part I and part II.

||Plazm|| writes: "I read an update over at Diabloii.net that talks about how some items in the game are producing sizeable income for some people. It points to an article at the San Francisco Chronicle describing some of these money makers. One banker claims he's made $25000 since he started with Diablo 2 and Ultima Online! Who are the people paying real money for this stuff? A few bucks is one thing, but a few hundred? I believe this has been talked about on /. before, but is the 'problem' getting worse? Is it a 'problem' at all?"

Belzebutt writes: "This is a great article that talks about something we already knew, but haven't paid that much attention to: most tech journalists are a bunch of corporate whores. It even mentions Slashdot, although not very favorably." Eh, we'll get over it. It's a good rant, something to consider as news sites fold left and right.

Plazm writes: "C|net has a story (printer friendly version, of course) that just cropped up this morning about Excite@Home being in financial trouble. Will they befall the same fate as Covad and Loki? Good thing I just purchased my cable modem and broadband service through @Home last week so they could go out of business the next."

If you have a popular file-sharing program called KaZaA on your computer and suddenly start seeing yellow links to obvious ads on some of your favorite Web sites, this is because a cunning piece of software called TopText was automatically installed on your computer along with KaZaA. Many Web site owners are upset with this alteration of their content. But there is an opt-out procedure (albeit a somewhat cumbersome one) you can use to keep TopText links from being added to your site, according to the company that markets TopText.

We learned about TopText (which was called HOTText until the end of last week) because a number of Slashdot readers submitted a San Francisco Chronicle story about it.

Cyklopz wrote, "...this is quite insidious. I found a link from BankOne's site to Wells Fargo! It crops up all over search engine results as well. Sheesh!"

Microsoft has removed (at least temporarily) a similar, but less blatantly commercial feature called Smart Tags from their upcoming release of MSIE 6.0 because it upset so many people.

KaZaA has an opt-out dialog for TopText when it is installed, but Benny Evangelista, who wrote the Chronicle story, says that neither he nor other people he spoke to who had downloaded KaZaA spotted it until they knew it was there and went looking for it.

KaZaA claims over 5.4 million Web users have downloaded their software so far, and boasts on their Web site that "...KaZaA is one of the most active media communities on the net, usually there are over 600 000 users online simultaneously. 90% of users are recommending KaZaA, which is the 4th most downloaded program on C|Net Download.com."

I both emailed and called TopText's vendor, San Francisco-based eZula, to ask if there was any way we could keep their TopText links from showing up on OSDN Web sites, including Slashdot. Since we often use links as integral parts of our stories, we would just as soon select our own, right? Plus there is a little matter of keeping ads apart from editorial material, which is one of those silly ethics things only journalists who care about their personal integrity may notice, but that upset us to the point of irrationality when we spot them.

Assaf Henkin of eZula told me the only way to keep TopText links from marring our sites was to email all domain names we wanted blocked to:

support@ezula.com

Henkin said it would take "a couple of days" for removal requests to be honored. But at least now you know what to do.

For more information about about how TopText works, go to eZula's contact page and (you must have Flash installed for this to work) click on the "Media Kit" link. Or, for an unanimated but more complete description of eZula's services, check this .pdf file. Note that, although KaZaA is the only eZula "partner" we know about at this time, their media kit boasts of "partnerships with tier one ISPs" and claims their software "...currently delivers your Keyword message to nearly 4 million Internet users, wherever they are on the Web, and this number is growing rapidly as eZula expands its partner base."

Will Web users notice the proliferation of these little yellow advertising links? Will they be able to tell them from the "real" links story authors or Web site owners put in? Will anyone care? Should anyone care? Or have we all gotten so used to ads sneaking into everything from movies (via product placement) to upcoming show "announcements" during the happy talk segments of local TV news that such things don't matter any more?

TwP writes "There is a rather long but very interesting paper posted on First Monday that describes a software completion bond market. The bond market would be used by programmers to generate revenue for software projects, open source or otherwise. It would also help to identify potential users of the software package - those who invest in the bonds would most likely be those to use the developed software."

nilstar writes: "Rogers Cable wants to dump (slow) WebTV and move to linux based boxes to connect all the major appliances in your home: stereo, tv, computer, etc. via broadband using rogers@home in a service called "triple play". Will this really happen after MS invested C$600 in Rogers? Here is the press release. As the article here on the star says: 'Rogers Cable Inc. will begin testing a new service next month that turns all the communications, computing and entertainment devices in a home into a high-speed smorgasbord of interactive experiences."' Why do I bet these would only be useful with one company's cable service?

destinyX writes: "Lineo an embedded linux company and inventors of uClinux (microcontroller linux) produced an intresting 'batteryless' webserver." A very cool creative re-use! You never know when you'll be out in the desert with nothing but a convenient ethernet cable leading toward an oasis I guess.

More below on improving OS X security, AOL GPL SNAFUs, Mandrake's reputed layoffs (short answer: No.), Big Daddy's control over gaming in Connecticut, and more. All below in tonight's episode of Slashback.

We are from France! And we're doing fine ... PovRayMan writes "Mandrakesoft has denied rumors of it's recent layoffs and management change due to "financial liquidity." The article mentions how the former CEO, Henri Poole, agreed on the management change. The article even goes out to say that their "prospects never looked so good" with the recent release of Mandrake 8. Either way, I'm downloading Mandrake 8 iso's right now and look forward to playing with it."

Like Alar for the other kind of apple. Lots of people were interested in the possible security flaws in OS X; thanks to Alex Salkever of BusinessWeek, we have word from Apple SE Manager Jeff Gagne, who writes: "We have just posted a Mac OS security web page for people looking for information concerning security updates, security notifications, etc. involving Mac OS X. Please visit the following url for more information: http://www.apple.com/support/security/security.html."

Follow the bouncing lawyers, with a mallet and a browser. Mike Haisley of AOL watchdog Observers.net writes with an update to yesterday's AOL And The GPL story: "It seems that America Online has their legal team working overtime on this one, site was pulled, and back up, and we were just given notice that it's going down again." Here is the Emergency Mirror.

Go forth and legislate no more. mikey573, pointing to a Hartford Courant Article, writes: "It's nice to see that Connecticut governor John Rowland is protecting gamers' rights by vetoing a bill that would have limited access to arcade point-and-shoot games: "Asserting that government should not act as 'Big Daddy,' Gov. John G. Rowland said Thursday that he will veto a bill barring children under 18 from playing 'point-and-shoot' video games in public places." I'm going to play Duck Hunt now in celebration! My only concern is the Connecticut legislature got as far as passing the bill in the first place." Well said.

Erratus, errata, erratum. Jamie would like to make several corrections to Monday's story about Macromedia being blackholed:

(1) I really shouldn't have singled out Above.net in the headline. They're just one backbone that uses the MAPS RBL to block non-mail traffic from their subscribers. In fact, Teleglobe.net was the backbone that blocked web access from one of our submittors.

And (B), Paul Vixie, the co-founder of MAPS, is no longer the CTO of Above.net.

TwP writes: "That new computer will cost you $1,200 - wait no $1,300 - better make that $1,500 dollars! IBM, Compaq, and Dell are experimenting with "dynamic pricing" according to this article over at InfoWorld. Amazon tried a similar idea last summer and met with quite the negative response. Hope the computer makers can spin this idea in a better light." Amazon's experience didn't work out, and as far as I know, they've ceased doing it.

rotifer asks: "A while ago I saw Kent Beck talk at the Java user's group meeting here in Seattle. Someone asked him about UML. He made a derisive noise and sneered that he had come up with a better version called GML, Galactic Modeling Language. He said (and I am paraphrasing here) that GML had three components "Boxes, Arrows and Arrows Pointing to Boxes". I thought this was right on. That seemed to be all the object modeling a person would need, especially when compared to the 808 pages of obtuse documentation that make up UML. But am I missing something here. Do people find UML useful. Or is it just overblown hype? Do you need this fully featured language to design an O-O system? Or are you better off with just boxes and arrows? Also, if you were to teach programming to beginning Java and C++ developers, is it a good idea to start with a course in UML so that new programmers can become familiar with O-O methodology before they start to cut code?"

Steve Nakhla writes: "I came across this article detailing how the Walt Disney Company is using ONLY gigabit ethernet in its new Japanese park, Tokyo DisneySeas. Previously, a combination of ethernet, ATM, and others were utilizied to create the network backbone in Walt Disney World and Disneyland. It's an interesting look at how the "magic" is created. For example, using CobraNet's technology, they are able to stream audio out to speakers with no loss of sound quality, while keeping the control rooms in a centralized location remote to the area."

Death of Rats asks: "What are the actual advantages of high-end Relational Database Management Systems (such as Oracle) over the free or low-priced solutions? Is it worth paying the 10 to 30 thousand dollars (or more) for Oracle, when you can do (as far as I know) everything it can by using ASP with Access/MSSQL for Windows, PHP/MySQL for Linux, JSP with JDBC connections for most platforms, or any number of other free or cheap systems? Is there a considerable speed increase, or is there enough more functionality to warrant the outrageous costs? Are some of the technologies more suited to different tasks? Any time I have needed to use databases, the open-source solutions have done fine, so I am skeptical."

There is no one-solution-fits-all answer to this question, as it really depends on the requirements of the task at hand -- which will in turn determine what one needs from an RDBMS. I'm sure there are tasks out there which better suit the high-octane RDBMS systems, but what tasks do readers feel still need that kind of power? Has the distance between Enterprise RDBMS servers and the free alternatives shortened at all?

lupine asks: "There have been many dicussions about keyboards on Slashdot but I couldnt find any on keyboard trays. So if you have one you like please list the manufacturer, features and estimated price. Im looking for one that is large enough to accomidate a mouse, height and tilt adjustable, but does not need to be retractable (who turns their computer off anyway?!)"

Yhcrana asks: "I am preparing to start a project at the company I work and I have hit a small snag. Over the past 6 months I have been developing a product in my spare time for commercial use and it is nearing completion. The problem is that one of the clients they work for wants the EXACT product I am producing in my spare time. I have held this product from their knowledge on purpose since I was going to be first to market on it. I am about 50 hours away from completion of the project and they now want me to produce the EXACT same thing for them. My question is what should I do? If I complete this product on their time they will want to have some sort of part of the licensing and this is my idea." Similar to an older Ask Slashdot this question approaches the issue from the opposite direction, that of dealing with your job while still trying to complete something you've been working on that may mean a lot to you. What would be the best way for Yhcrana to not only finish his project and retain the rights, but to help his firm's clients as well?

"This product was going to support me in my down time between jobs as I have a couple of clients who are eagerly awaiting its completion and it would net me a good profit just from these clients. I am completely unwilling to just give this hard work to the company I work for.

I want to complete this project, but my working on this product while on company time would probably cause some sort of problem within the company. I have had the idea of perhaps signing some contract with them which lets them know that even though I am completing the product for their client I own all rights to the product. Perhaps offering them a small discount on licensing on the product equal to the amount they paid me for working on it on their time."

floam (who got the info from MacUser UK )writes: "Samsung, in whom Apple invested $100 million to further expand Samsung?s TFT-LCD flat-panel display production capacity, is now offering a 24" digital LCD monitor. The Syncmaster 204T offers support for resolutions of up to 1920x1200 pixels, a dual monitor support to toggle between input from two different monitors, support for both DVI Compliant and Analog input, and a 16:10 aspect ratio. The $8,000 monitor also supports picture-in-picture, or multi-screen functionality, which can display multiple windows on the screen and offers 'True Color,' 16.7 million color support. Supporting two full-size A4 pages, it delivers more than 170 degrees of conic view and the company says that 'all images regardless of input resolution can be scaled to 1920x1200, 16:10 WUXGA mode with unsurpassed sharpness and vividness.'" Yes, please. Imagine when we'll be able to scoff at the "only" 24" LCD screen being bundled with the cheap system at CompUSA ... reason to dream, anyhow.

rderek asks: "I am an instructor at an educational, and my focus is on computer technicians (not sys-admins). The course that we run is very demanding, and produces (we think) very good techs. We are allways in the process of adjusting our cirriculum to remain current, but it may be time to adjust our teaching process. What we want is not simply to create people who know how a computer works, but who also have the attitude and mindset of good technicians. I would like to know what each of you consider to be the qualities necessary for a person to be a good tech."

An Anonymous Coward seeks historical information on the following: "Maybe it's just time for me to brush up on my geek history, but I find myself wondering more and more each day, how it was possible for the Internet to escape government AND corporate rule. These days, record companies are trying to tell me that I own the plastic CD, but not the material on it. I can purchase DVDs, but am only able to watch them in certain countries (read: Regions). Consumer software seems to be switching from flat-rate fees to subscription based services. Media providers are merging with mediums (MSNBC and AOL-Time Warner come to mind..) Therefore, it amazes me that the fundamentals of the Internet were able to avoid all of this. How did that happen? Was there just a different mindset back then? Did anyone predict the dotcom explosion (and ultimately, denouement?) How did this medium come to run itself? And how can we create another medium like it when every last bit of control is eventually squeezed out from this one?"

IronChef writes "Ran across a web site where someone is attempting to combine online games and cash. The difference here is it looks like it's not some big tournament where everyone gathers and the top 3 out of a field of hundreds get paid, but a small group jumps into a server for a buck or two per head, and the winner cashes out on the spot." And you thought you swear a lot when you lag now!

Digitalia writes: "Using a biological soup that mimics our stomachs, the gastrobot is the first commercial robot that "feeds" on organic matter to get its energy. Chew Chew, as it is called, takes a cube of sugar and turns it into enough energy to roll around for 15 minutes. I particularly enjoyed the creator's explanation as to why his bots aren't carnivores. Check the article out here." 15 minutes seems a pretty good run for a sugar-cube, but hasn't anyone explained the carbohydrates theory to this robot?

Julius X writes: "This just came out, from Yahoo, 3dfx has announced that they will be sold to NVidia as soon as the deal is approved by its shareholders. From the release, "After aggressively pursuing a wide range of options that take into consideration the interests of our creditors, our shareholders, our employees and our customers," said Alex Leupp, president and CEO, 3dfx Interactive Inc., "we strongly believe that to reduce expenses, sell our assets and dissolve the company provides the highest return to our creditors, shareholders, and employees." I think we all saw this one coming. For more details, go to the press release." Actually, tossing in some details early is [hk]doogie, who writes: "Nvidia bought the patents, pending patent applications, trademarks, brand names, and chip inventory related to the graphics business of 3dfx. Get the full scoop [here]."

A not-so Anonymous Coward asks: "I've got a spiffy Canon Digital Elph camera, and have been wondering if I can control it from my PC - that, is can I trigger it to take a picture remotely via the USB interface? If so, it seems a logical next step to turn it into a very (very) nice Web cam for stills at a fairly low frame rate. 1600x1200x24 bit. Also, I'd love to try my hand at digital astro-photography (put it on a telescope that is). Seems to me there ought to be some way for me to control it thru the USB again. Anyone with good leads/info on how to hack a Canon digital camera? Seems a worthy hack to me." Some cameras have command line utilities that can be used in scripts to do this. I know Kodak-compatible cameras can do this via ks or the DIGITA ^[?] scripting language, however I'm not so sure about Canon's Elph series. This also might not be too hard a capability to hack into gPhoto.

Capt. Mondo writes: "Just found this press release on NEC's Web site featuring a wine glass with a diameter of 2,750 nanometers. Normally this sort of thing would make me think it's some silly holiday-themed publicity stunt for nanotech -- like the world's smallest ad placed on a bee for guinnessworldrecords.com -- but the fact that NEC is claiming to have a new process for creating nano-sized objects in 3D (with the "glass" being the result) makes this a bit more interesting. Apparently the new process uses an ion beam with a diameter of 10nm, a gas containing the base material for construction and good ol' CAD. "

David Hansen asks: "I want to see what problems other Slashdot users have had with @Home restricting their service. We all know that they block the SMB ports, and probably for good reason. But did you know that they won't let you access certain other machines on the @Home network? And why don't they mention any of this in their acceptable use policy? My mother and father are both @Home subscribers in the same city (different subnets). I have Linux boxes acting as firewalls in both places which cannot ping or otherwise contact each other. I can ping them both from an outside location. I discovered this and the SMB thing the hard way. What else doesn't @Home want us to do? Do other ISPs do this also? BTW, I can reach @Home users who are in other cities." I've noticed that ISPs have been filtering lots of ports in the event that users will put up servers. Do you feel that ISPs should make a list of ports that they filter available to their customers?

Death of Rats writes "Today I found this tool. Its called The Apache Toolbox and is a REAL timesaver. No more struggling to get Apache working the way you want it with the features you want it. This program will install and configure not only Apache, but SSL, PHP, MySQL, ZendOptimizer, mod_auth_nds, mod_dynvhost, WebDAV, mod_fastcgi, mod_gzip, mod_layout, mod_throttle, mod_accessref, mod_auth_sys, mod_bandwidth, mod_auth_ldap, mod_roaming, mod_perl, OpenLDAP, and the latest gd libraries with PNG support. It is menu-driven, it also checks for any RPMs that would cause conflicts AND downloads any required software automatically using wget. It doesn't get any better than this :)"

This is a great project. DSO modules have made it a lot easier to install add ons to your Apache project, but many modules are still pretty painful to install (mod_ssl, mod_perl).
What would really be nice is for someone to do a CPAN style module system for Apache. Personally I think it would be nice if you just got the core system from the Apache group and then just fetched what modules you wanted/needed from that point. Something like this could even get more people contributing to the Apache project and remove some of the stigma they get for being an "old boys club".

Death of Rats writes: "The World Wide Web Consortium has just released Amaya 4.0. Its a browser/development tool that is designed to test the functionality of new specs in a practical environment. Essentially, it is the client-side counterpart to Jigsaw. The new version should be pretty good, and there are binaries for Unix and Win32." I've been trying Amaya once in a while for a long time. For all the hype about Mozilla, konqueror and many others, it's interesting that the W3C's effort should get so little attention. One notable feature is that it completely integrates the page creation and page viewing aspects, though you might not see a lot of the Flashy features you'd like in a browser -- Amaya is stubbornly (or appropriately) "correct" in its adherence to W3C standards.

MonopolyM asks: "My question to the /. community is something I have been pondering for awhile. Unless you've crawled under a large rock lately you know Tuesday is election day. With this said, some voting Americans will cast their vote using a computer system. News reporters report results all day from these votes, and real-time data is fed back after the polls close. My question is simple. What hardware, software, OS, etc -- runs the voting system - and how are the voting results "securely" sent to the media? Is this information restricted? If not, what system runs the most important day in our nation for the next four years?" I've tried to shy away from election questions but this one is definitely worthy for some attention. What technology do we use to handle election day results, and can such systems be improved upon?

A final pre-election assemblage of political news for voters, conscientious objectors, felons, minors, and non-U.S. citizens. Philom points to an interesting analysis of NaderTrading by UCB grad student Scott Aaronson. Cheshyre sent in an interesting tidbit that may affect the odds of George Bush sneaking north for some subsidized health care. Of course, if that's embarrassing, so is trading cigarettes for Gore Votes, as pointed out by photozz. flimpy points to another tech-centric voter's guide. Finally, Mike McCune allleges that "About 90% of the national elections use use a device called the 'Shouptronic' to count the votes. The Shouptronic is a closed system that isn't open for inspection. Several groups argue that it has been used to fix the vote in elections. This is a good argument to use an open system for election counting." He points to this wacky but intriguing book by the equally wacky but intriguing Collier family. I'm convinced.

dominic7 sent us a link on the National Post about a new record for "knowing" Pi. Using the ol' distributed approach, a math major in Canada has found the quadrillionth binary digit of pi. It's a zero.

Coupland writes: "A fascinating article from Electronic News Online discussing the fall-out within Intel caused by the Rambus nonsense. The troops seem to be breaking rank." This is definitely the most informative article I've seen on the Rambus / Intel relationship, and it includes a timeline that pretty much sums things up. (What it doesn't mention is the trouble that PC manufacturers like Dell, Gateway, etc., are caused by the constant cycle of delay and deny.)

GDaddy writes: "Space Daily has a report on a collaboration between University of Warwick's Warwick Manufacturing Group and VR Systems UK that spawned a VR system without dimensional boundaries. Called the Cybersphere, It combines the ease of use of the CAVE system (no head mounts, big projected walls), with the lack of distance limitations of, well, of no VR system developed so far. They say it allows a person to walk, run, and crawl smoothly and naturally around an arbitrarily large VR world by putting the user in a rolling sphere suspended on air bearings. But wouldn't the sphere's inertia cause a noticable lag when you start or stop walking, or when you change direction? They don't address it, and I'll remain dubious until I roll it on my own."

Catharsis writes: "Jorrit Tyberghein, leader of an excellent open-source, cross-platform 3d engine recently posted a dialog he engaged in with Richard Stallman, leader of the Free Software Movement over whether it was kosher to sign an NDA with Sony to write a PS2 API wrapper. Now, I'm no pro when it comes to Open Source vs. Free Software vs. open source, but this dialog left me feeling a bit unclean. I'd be interested to see how Slashdot users react to the conflicting views portrayed here. Jorrit's stance was that he wants his software to be available to the largest possible audience. Richard's response was that any (ANY) concessions to a non-Free mode of thought was a failure and a defeat." This gets down to the core differences between 'Open Source' and 'Free Software.' Worth the read.

jhughes asks: " I work for a public university and have just recently 'acquired' the project of switching a community Web page (for the city and surrounding counties/cities) to a new machine running Apache. I'm relatively new to Apache but thus far this has not been a problem. The real problem comes from the request of a search engine for the Web sites information. This site will contain a large amount of public information, such as rental property, council meeting minutes, and so on. They are requesting that the search engine be able to scan the entire site for all the data, or specific subtopics (such as 'City Government', 'City Council', or 'City Council Meeting Minutes', with searches limited to each of those areas if need be). To me this sounds similar to what Yahoo has done in some cases (You can search Yahoo, or Yahoo US States, or Yahoo US States California, or specific cities, etc). I honestly have no clue what search engine to use for this. Are there commercial search engines that one could purchase and adapt, or is there a free/open source one out there that would work just as well? There will eventually be a huge amount of information (as all government sites seem to accumulate) online, so it'd need to be able to handle large indexes. Any help, advice, or suggestions would be greatly appreciated."

Death of Rats writes: "The World Wide Web Consortium has finally released its working draft for Cascading Stylesheets 2 for Mobile Devices. Definitely check this out if you intend on getting in on WAP or any other form of wireless internet."

prplhaze writes "Casio has done it again. Not only do they have a wristwatch that plays MP3's, they also have a watch that has an intergrated camera. It retails for around $200USD. It features a 120x120 dot monochrome display, and can store about 100 black and white images. "

Robert Coulthard writes: "http://biology.queensu.ca/~dawsonj/LocustCar/index.html You've got to check this out!!! A friend of mine has designed a car that he hooks a locust up to. The little critter actually drives it! There's some pretty cool videos on the site that shows the thing in action." Somewhere, there's a member of People for the Ethical Treatment of Insects getting all riled up.