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Capt. Canuck writes "According to this Toronto Star story, the Canadian Copyright Board may approve a 20% levy on electronic media tomorrow, including MP3 players and hard drives. With the Canadian Dollar rising and this on the horizon, maybe now is the right time to get that iPod." Update: 12/12 16:33 GMT by M : rcpitt writes "The Canadian Copyright Board has (finally - a year late) issued its ruling on the latest round of blank media levy - the controversial (in the rest of the world as well as Canada) private "tax" on recordable media used to copy music which proceeds go to the music artists in Canada. The ruling by the board and a press release were posted to the Board's web site at 10AM Ottawa (CST) today. The ruling continues the levy amounts from the previous 2 year period (2001-2002) to the end of this period (2003-2004) at the same amounts as previously set but adds new levies on portable (MP3) digital audio recorders of from CDN$2/unit to CDN$25/unit depending on internal storage capacity."

will writes "The Washington Post has a good review of patents in the information age. The insanity of the US patent system has been chronicled on this site numerous times in the past (for example, an FTC report on patent policy, some patents for obvious applications such as Microsoft patenting local weather, and Amazon patenting inside book searching). The Washington Post article does a good job of overviewing IP issues today, why the current US patent systems fails in the information age, and gives an example of patent extortion. Excuse me while I patent my DNA."

Dan Clough writes "I found Linux Power Tools to be a useful book, although it does have some shortcomings. It's a 644-page, well-written book that covers almost all aspects of managing, administering, and optimizing a working Linux system. The book's cover claims the target audience as intermediate to advanced users, but I think that beginner to intermediate would be more accurate. More advanced users may find Linux Power Tools a little beneath their level." Read on for the rest of Dan's review. Linux Power Tools author Roderick W. Smith pages 644 publisher Sybex rating 8 of 10 reviewer Dan Clough ISBN 0782142265 summary Well-written introductory and intermediate material; a useful jumping off point for many tasks though not the definitive source for specialized ones.

The text doesn't cover installing a Linux system, but does point out some of the differences among the major distributions in common use today, specifically Debian, Mandrake, RedHat, Slackware, and SUSE. Much of the distro-specific information is contained in a chapter on package management (RPM, deb, tar.gz, and the GUI tools for the aforementioned distros). I found this book a good reference for a new user (and especially someone self-administering their Linux box for the first time), but most "expert" users will not find much here that they don't already know.

The author covers a wide range of software that is frequently used. This includes the major desktop environments KDE and Gnome (with a brief discussion of alternate window and file managers which can be used to create your own custom environment), and office application suites (fairly simple overviews of OpenOffice.org, KOffice, and Gnome Office). Also covered are the two most common bootloaders (LILO and GRUB), printer configuration options (LPRng and CUPS), and a pretty basic section on command-line shells and scripting. There are a couple of chapters that touch on the basics of doing backups (using tar), and some general methods of improving the security of a Linux system (such as using proper passwords and stopping unnecessary services). These topics are followed up by several sections on basic networking configuration (TCP/IP, DHCP, and DNS), and controlling network access with firewalls, TCP wrappers, and xinetd service restrictions.

The last few chapters cover setup and operation of various common server applications, including Apache, FTP, Sendmail, Postfix, SSH, and VNC. All of these server descriptions are of the "general overview" variety, and additional resources will be required by someone trying to configure them for the first time. The book includes a basic glossary aimed at beginners, and an excellent index. The inside front and back covers contain a nice list of essential Linux configuration files, with their default locations, although distro-specific variations are not included.

The two sections that I found the most useful are the kernel customization chapter, and the one on optimizing the X Window System configuration.

Although the kernel chapter contains information that can be found elsewhere, it offers a very understandable explanation, and should make the process of compiling a custom kernel (for performance optimization) achievable for someone who hasn't done it before. In short, everything I needed to know about was right there in one place, and eliminated the need to bounce back and forth between the numerous how-to documents available online. By following this book's guidelines, I was able to successfully compile a kernel optimized for my AthlonXP CPU, containing only the drivers I need, which resulted in noticeable improvements in bootup time, application loading times, and desktop responsiveness.

In the X Window System chapter, the use of options in the XF86Config(-4) config file was well explained, including how to set custom modelines useful for a non-standard screen resolution and/or refresh rate. Font configuration was very clearly discussed, and included directions for adding additional fonts, and enabling smoothing (anti-aliasing) in applications.

Linux Power Tools is an excellent reference book, well suited to assisting in specific tasks related to Linux system administration. There is no real new information here, but this book does better than most at having many things you want to know very accessible in one reference volume. I would compare it favorably with another of my favorite books -- O'Reilly's Running Linux. In fact I've found it to be even more valuable for some specific tasks. It is very complete and recent (copyright 2003), and I highly recommend it to other intermediate level system administrators.

You can purchase Linux Power Tools from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to submit a review for consideration, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

plasmastate writes "Via Fox News: Bradley A. Buckles, the director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, is moving over to the RIAA to hunt down music pirates. And visions of David Koresh danced in their heads..."

hlarwood74 writes "While it is common to program in a few different languages, somebody has written "towers of hanoi" in 108 different ways, most of them in different programming languages. It's not just the number of languages though ... there are many neat implementations and in some cases he's come up with some strange ways of solving hanoi such as this: "you ping the hanoi machine with the number of disks encoded in the type of service field, and you get response packets whose sequence numbers represent the disk moves need to solve the puzzle". I wanted to ask "why" but the title of the page (hanoimania) explains a few things :)"

will writes "The North American Electric Reliability Council has released four documents concerning the August 14th power outage power outage in the North East. The blackout investigation homepage lists all NERC's documents relating to this event. Press coverage is at The Washington Post, CNN, and CBS News. The take home message: FirstEnergy did it. The are, of course, denying it." The report is also available at reports.energy.gov. Reader stinkydog writes "According to Yahoo News part of the blame for the big fizzle of 2003 lies with a failing SCADA system, GE's XA/21 power management system. 'Not only did the software that controls audible and visual alarms stop working at 2:14 p.m. EDT, but about a half hour later, two servers supporting the emergency system failed, too.' According to the product specs, it is a Unix system with X Windows."

shystershep writes "Apparently attacking one Unix-like OS isn't enough. According to Darl McBride, SCO has plans to target BSD. "The more yarn you pull out the more you see," according to McBride. They're a little preoccupied with the IBM litigation right now, though, so "we probably won't file any suits against BSD until sometime in the first half of next year." Hmmm. I can't imagine why SCO executives feel that they need to hire bodyguards." How to get at the *BSDs? vireo writes "In this Newsforge story, we learn that Boies, Schiller & Flexner will directly attack the 1994 AT&T/BSD settlement." Read on below for another handful of updates on the giant SCO lawsuit frenzy.

osullish writes "The Financial Times reports that SCO is indicating it will sue an as-yet un-named Linux-using corporation within the next 90 days. Also mentioned in the article is possible action against Novell, which recently purchased Ximian and SUSE Linux."

Iaitos points to this rather stiffly-worded notice from Novell (on their site) regarding the non-compete agreement SCO claims would taint Novell's acquisition of SUSE:

PROVO, Utah Nov. 18, 2003: Novell has seen the November 18 InfoWorld article in which SCO CEO Darl McBride refers to a supposed non-compete agreement between Novell and SCO. Mr. McBride's characterization of the agreements between Novell and SCO is inaccurate. There is no non-compete provision in those contracts, and the pending acquisition of SUSE LINUX does not violate any agreement between Novell and SCO.

Novell has received no formal communication from SCO on this particular issue. Novell understands its rights under the contracts very well, and will respond in due course should SCO choose to formally pursue this issue."

slavitos points to a ZDNet article covering the same ground, writing: "A characteristic SCO twist in the story: "McBride added that lawsuits likely will be preceded and possibly prevented by communications offering businesses an opportunity to get right with SCO. "We'll be communicating with users what our expectations are," he said.". Oh, that's helpful, Darl - and no, we didn't really expect you to be any more specific."

If your lips aren't yet too tired, ansak writes "PJ has done it again -- okay, "co-ordinated it" would be the better phrase. The transcript of SCOG's conference call is now available (and in danger of being slashdotted without slashdot's help, even!).
#include <std.thanks.to.volunteers.h>"

Another legal theory being thrown about is that SCO's lawsuit (the one against IBM, that is) all leads back to Sequent. Petrol writes "The Inquirer has a story about SCO's action against IBM. 'Sources close to the action describe a trail of code that might well be the target of SCO's ire against IBM and the Linux community.'"

stm42 asks: "I drive 45 miles to and from work each day and I have found that a great way to spend the time productively is to use it to make the phone calls I have to make to employees, co-workers, bosses, etc. I want to be safe, however, and would like to find a headset for cell phones (with a regular headphone jack) that works and is fairly comfortable. I currently use a Plantronics over the ear style and it will stay on my head but I usually have to push the earphone to my ear to hear the other person and that pretty much eliminates the usefulness of the headset. Any suggestions?"

L-Train8 writes "Belkin has an announcement at the bottom of their homepage about the spam router. They have decided to disable the 'feature' that hijacks a random http request every 8 hours and redirects to a webpage advertising their parental control system. This will require a firmware upgrade. The message says details will be forthcoming. Interestingly, while I was preparing this submission, the message changed. Originally, it included a snippy remark about how what they were doing was not spam, despite what everyone on the internet says. The new version is much less testy."

Dan Clough writes "Mastering Red Hat Linux 9 is a huge, very complete guide to Red Hat Linux 9. It's over 900 pages, and includes the "Publisher's Edition" of RH9 on 2 CDs. It is written in a style which should accommodate Linux newcomers and more experienced users alike. There are a lot of examples, code snippets, and screenshots throughout the book. In fact, sometimes the abundance of these tend to make the material a little long to wade through. Experts should have no trouble skipping over the sections they don't need, though." Read on for the rest of Dan's review. Mastering Red Hat Linux 9 author Michael Jang pages 942 publisher Sybex rating 8 of 10 reviewer Dan Clough ISBN 078214179X summary Good summary for operating a Linux system; though it uses Red Hat, it's not Red Hat-dependent.

The book starts out with an introduction to Linux, and has a good chapter on preparing to install, including hardware checklists. This is followed by a very detailed step-by-step explanation of installing Red Hat, both locally and via network. A nice part of this is a troubleshooting chapter for solving installation problems. Part Two explains the basics of using the command line, how filesystems work in Linux, and using the shell for various tasks.

Part Three includes chapters for administering users and groups on your new system, and how the RPM software package management process works. Other chapters in this part explain the bootup process and how to configure it, various ways to perform system backups, and other common administration tasks such as cron jobs and logs. Especially useful should be Chapter 12 which explains how to update/compile your own kernel. There are very good examples of the myriad kernel options, mostly by using the xconfig utility.

The next several chapters go over how to configure and use the X Window display system, including good examples from the XF86Config file. This is followed by detailed explanations of configuring and using the Gnome and KDE desktop environments. The KDE discussion is very good, considering Red Hat is more known for its use of Gnome as the default desktop. Chapter 18 introduces many of the more commonly used graphical applications in Linux, such as OpenOffice.org, Gnome Office, and the KOffice suite. Chapter 19 should be very handy for Linux/RH new users, as it outlines the Red Hat graphical configuration utilities which allow customization of the desktop look-and-feel and other system preferences.

Chapters 20-22 cover basic Linux networking. The first part of this section gives a very understandable primer on TCP/IP and network terminology. This is followed up by excellent discussions on how to setup and manage networking on your Linux computer, including security recommendations and firewall/masquerading methods. Once you've got your network running safely, there are additional chapters which cover topics such as remote access and xinetd services, and various server applications installation and operation. These include DNS, DHCP, CUPS printing operations, FTP servers (and clients), NFS and NIS, and mail servers (sendmail). Some of these services are probably more than most home users would need, and the sendmail operation in particular is a little difficult to understand.

Chapter 29 (Using Samba) will probably be a great help for people desiring to integrate a Linux system with existing Windows computers on a network. It offers an excellent tutorial on how to share files and resources across the LAN, and includes an explanation of the SWAT configuration utility which greatly simplifies initial setup for newcomers. The final chapter in the book explains how to install and setup a basic webserver using the Apache software. The appendix of the book is a relatively short section called the Linux Command Reference. There is some handy information in this, although it seems to be organized somewhat haphazardly. The book's index, on the other hand, seems to be very complete.

Overall, I found this book to be a very useful reference tool. It is basic enough for most beginners to get all the help they need, and has a good amount of usable knowledge for more advanced Linux users. One thing I realized is that much of the information here is not necessarily Red Hat-specific, so it can be helpful to users of other Linux distributions as well.

You can purchase Mastering Red Hat Linux 9 from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Wrathie writes ""The top 100 technological innovations of 2003, from aviation to defibrillation, GPS to Wi-Fi, rotary to rockets. The year and the gear that was." This article from Popular Science magazine is quite extensive."

Slappy White writes "For six months, Matrix message boards were aflame with speculation, theories, predictions and outright psychotic guessing about Revolutions. Now the film is here, and this article has a humorous roundup of some of the popular theories, both those that were close and others that were, shall we say, a little off the mark." I still haven't seen this film, so I'll refrain from passing judgment, but I'm ever so happy the matrix-within-a-matrix theories were unfounded. Update: 11/09 02:38 GMT by CN : Some folks who've never seen the Twilight Zone or even the Simpsons' Treehouse of Horrors thought that was a spoiler. If you're one of those people, I'm very sorry.

CrazyMFW writes "'The Helix Loaded', a feature length spoof of the Matrix, has been unveiled to coincide with the general release of The Matrix Revolutions. At LA screenings of the third matrix installment, customers are being handed CD-ROMS shaped like a Red Pill or a Blue Pill. The CD-ROM includes a teaser trailer as a quicktime movie, and directs users to the web site for The Helix. The teaser trailers can also be downloaded from the site. No release date is mentioned for the film, but it does promise several further teaser installments at 2 week intervals - so we should learn more in the next couple of months. From the brief clips it looks like they've done a good job imitating the Matrix CGI on a low-budget."

AllieA writes "The BBC has announced that they will be adapting the final three Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy books for radio, with this 'tertiary phase' including Life, the Universe, and Everything; So Long and Thanks for All the Fish; and Mostly Harmless. Members of the original radio series cast, including Simon Jones, Geoffrey McGivern, Mark Wing-Davey, Susan Sheridan, Stephen Moore and announcer John Marsh, will all take part in the new series, set to start next spring and be completed before the end of 2004."

BigCanOfTuna asks: "The company I work for is considering the possibility of turning over one of thier enterprise applications to the open source community. They are doing this for a number of reasons including raising thier profile in the OS community, developing relationships with other Energy companies that would be willing to hire us as consultants, and of course just for good will (if there is such a thing in business!). Since the application is very specific to a vertical market, can one expect to see the same results that other open source projects see? Are there any other successful OS projects out there that are geared to a specific niche?"

Selecter was one of many readers to point out a ZDNet story in which "the CEO of Red Hat now says that Linux is not ready for the desktop, but may be ready in a few more years. Curious - I'm wondering if this is the start of a corporate only retrenchment of Linux, or just a bump in the road to Linux having a wider desktop share?" Apropos that, Gwobl writes "Jim Lynch, over at ExtremeTech, weighs in on the fate of the Linux desktop, now that Red Hat has apparently turned its attention to the enterprise and Novell is buying SUSE (to go with Outlook clone Ximian, which it also owns). Lynch's take: Cheer them on! The Linux world needs these strong champions. And don't overlook Novell's networking roots. Time was, Big Red defined networking."

geekwench writes "SpamCop was apparently the victim of a recent DoS attack. A false complaint to their domain registrar led to all primary DNS information being pulled. The problem is now fixed, but there may still be access issues for the next couple of days as ISPs clear the old DNS information out of their caches. You can read about it here and here. (Sounds to me as if SpamCop is proving to be a good-sized thorn in the sides of a number of spammers.)"

The Raindog writes "I noticed over at Tech Report that Apple is apparently only offering its latest round of OS X security fixes to Panther users, leaving older versions of OS X out in the cold. " Update: 10/31 by J : But see the next day's story.

Joel Eidsath writes "Imagine that you found yourself in a position to write a resume for the whole human species. It is a metaphor that Charles Murray uses several times in his book, Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950." Murray not only collects such examples in this book, but attempts to explain why and how they emerge. Murray obviously courts controversy with this book; expect reactions similar to the ones drawn by The Bell Curve, which he co-authored. (Do 97% of the world's significant scientists come from the West? Can personal eminence be objectively measured? Is "accomplishment" really amenable to description by charts and graphs?) Read on for Eidsath's review. Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950 author Charles Murray pages 688 publisher HarperCollins rating Thought-provoking reviewer Joel Eidsath ISBN 006019247X summary A statistical history of human accomplishment.

For our species' resume, you probably would not list to put "Defeated Hitler" as one of humanity's accomplishments, because it sounds too much like 'Beat my Heroin Addiction.' You would want to include things like 'Painted the Roof of the Sistine Chapel' or 'Discovered General Relativity.' In other words, you would want to include examples of human excellence throughout the ages.

Not only has Murray set out to compile this resume, but he sought to do it for a reason that is at the same time both interesting and audacious: once you have compiled a list of the several thousand most important creators and discoverers of all time, you can stick it into a database. The idea is that with this database a person can spot trends in accomplishment; he can identify regions and cities where excellence has clustered; he can evaluate qualities of political systems that spur innovation and those that stifle it. Murray's book is a stunning profusion of graphs and plots that do much more to teach us about accomplishment that most narrative histories.

For this to work, however, Murray first had to tackle the problem of differing opinions on who exactly deserves a place in the database. Everybody's list would differ -- yours, mine, and Charles Murray's. There would be substantial similarities between our lists, to be sure; nobody is going to leave out Newton, Darwin, Goethe, Shakespeare, Confucius, or al-Mutanabbi. But when it comes to lesser achievements, the arguments would be endless. Does Hooke make it into the list of the top 20 physicists of all time, or does Pascal make it into the list of the top 10 mathematicians?

So what Murray has done is to split up accomplishment into a number of fields and tried to take a neutral measure of each person's respective 'eminence' in the field. He measures 'eminence' by taking a number of comprehensive sources on each field and counting the references to each person and how many paragraphs they get. The sources are from as many different languages as possible and Murray does a good job of avoiding the distorting effects of ethnocentrism. He uses sharp cutoff dates at 800 B.C. and 1950 A.D. to limit the data.

What Murray winds up with is a procedurally neutral measure of human accomplishment that is stable when new sources are added or taken away, and also has good face validity. In Medicine, for example, Pasteur is first with an index score of 100, Koch is third with 90 and Freud (for clinical descriptions of mental illnesses) is 18th with a score of 34.

The Lotka Curve Murray's other major work made a certain kind of statistical curve a household word, and Human Accomplishment prepares a second candidate for improving public statistical awareness: the Lotka Curve. In the mid-1920s, Alfred Lotka noticed an interesting pattern in scientific journals. About 60% of people publish only one article for a journal. The number of people publishing more that this falls off very fast with the number of articles. This makes up a Lotka curve and is almost L shaped.

It turns out that in just about every field of human accomplishment significant figures fall along a Lotka curve. In Western literature, Shakespeare is far out along the horizontal part of the curve, Goethe a bit less so, and a whole host of lesser figures make up the nearly vertical part of the data set.

Dead White Males

Despite using several data collection techniques that wind up exaggerating the influence of non-Western cultures, Murray's data shows a strong majority of Westerners among the significant figures of world history.

Fully 97% of significant figures in the sciences come from the West. The same figure is arrived at from looking only at significant events. Even America is dwarfed by European accomplishment in the sciences, hosting less than 20% of significant figures before 1950 compared to Europe's nearly 80%. Europe's dominance over America is even greater in the arts. And though Murray makes sure to calculate what is an upper limit for artistic accomplishment in non-Western parts of the world, the graph is substantially the same as that for the sciences.

One of the astonishing parts of Murray's data is how it demonstrates the significant effects of legal equality. Jewish achievement after 1850 skyrocketed due to their newfound position before the law. Between 1910 and 1950, Jewish achievement tripled despite even the Third Reich and the Holocaust.

The graph of the achievement of woman displays a different pattern, despite their having gained substantial legal equality in the past century. Though there are slight increases in the numbers, women only represent a few percent of Murray's significant figures after 1900. Nor does the data available for the years beyond 1950 bear out any substantial increase in women's achievement during the second half of the twentieth century. Murray provides several possible explanations. Despite legal equality, women did not gain the same degree of immediate social equality that other groups did. Moreover, the substantially greater demands of parenthood upon women make achievement harder.

Decline

The last section of Human Accomplishment is somewhat surprising. When adjusted for population, Murray's numbers show a decline in accomplishment after 1800. When numbers are used that take not only total population in account, but also urban population and educated population, the decline has brought us down to nearly pre-Renaissance levels. For example, we have 65 playwrights alive today for every one in Elizabethan England. Yet do we have dozens of Shakespeares? The picture is even more stark when the 12,000 members of the screen Writers Guild are taken into account.

As a percentage, the number of significant figures in the sciences compared to the total population has dropped a great deal; this is despite a far greater percentage of working scientists and far more science and technical journals being published.

Murray goes through the data and shows why he believes that the decline is real and is not explicable by any procedural artifacts brought about by his methods. It is a somewhat disturbing conclusion to a great work.

You can purchase Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950 from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

stevesliva writes "CNEWS Canada reported on Sept. 30th that, 'If men dropped their risky ways and bad habits they would live just as long as women.' The story was an interesting spin on a study by the Canadian Institute for Health Information, which spun the study very differently. (Thanks to ThisIsTrue for bringing the respun spin to my attention.)"

alucard writes "The JourneyOS people have published this overview of their upcoming window system. It looks like it is OpenGL based and uses XML as the communications protocol. The biggest news is that it is supposed to have Xlib compatibility, but uses HyperQueues instead of Unix domain sockets. Could this get rid of the speed problems of XFree86 while still retaining Xlib compatibility? I think this is something everyone wants, but projects to create alternative GUIs such as Fresco and PicoGUI have given up any hope of compatibility with X11 or Xlib. Can we expect another alternative out there soon?"

SnowWolf2003 writes "It looks like a couple of people are trying to find a way to distribute music legally over P2P networks. The latest is Mercora (with more information here). Also Napster 2.0 is due for release sometime next week. Can any of these Windows alternatives to Apple's iTunes compete though with the inherent restrictions built into the wma format? Note MusicMatch has just launched a windows based service with fewer restrictions equivalent to the iTunes policy. More importantly, can these P2P services lure enough people away from restriction free Kazaa to make themselves successful, where P2P networks rely on a large user base?"

Ryan writes "Mobilemag is reporting that AMD has advanced the prototype design of their current Linux-based PDA handheld, adding full-screen video capabilities, and completing work on the device's battery charger. The device is based on AMD's 400MHz Alchemy 1100 processor." However, "AMD has yet to find a hardware maker that has committed to bringing the Alchemy-based reference design to market as a commercial product."

Kon writes "Here's a site that has photos and describes some very nice mods for the GameBoy Advance (original model), which make it function more like a video game console, yet still remaining portable. These mods include a Neo Geo joystick attachment, power management mod, and an RGB LCD monitor attachment. If you're not too squeamish you can try them as well, using the instructions which are provided."

lenin writes "The BBC is reporting that Europe's first moon mission, SMART-1, appears to be a success thus far. It also talks about the low-cost technology being used and the charged xenon (ion) propulsion system. Can TIE-fighters be far off?"

zymano writes "This article gives some details on Pentium 5. It will have 64 bit extensions and maybe a 4000 mhz frontside bus. Quote from the article,'The Pentium V is likely to fly along at between 5GHz to 7GHz, have 2MB plus of level two cache, be built on a 90 nanometer process, and have a stackable design. '"

Mr.Oreo writes "According to Flipcode, Finnish videogame development company Cat Mother Ltd. has now closed its offices, but in their last meeting the company board decided to publish all company source code as open source. A large part of the game assets are also available. Published material includes a fully playable prototype of a 3rd person action/adventure game, and a commercial quality in-house 3D-engine (C++/DirectX9). The source code is published under the BSD license, and the content is published under the GPL license. Just downloaded the engine and snooped through it - it looks pretty complete, and definitely worth having a look at if you're a 3D code monkey."

Onion asks: "Can anyone inform me why games developers don't put out games on a 'Knoppix' style live CD? This would negate coding the games for different PC platforms. Provided the hardware detection routines were up to scratch, the game could be coded using GNU/Linux for development and would run on any PC machine, regardless of OS. Only major drawback I can see would be the need to 'reboot' each time to play. Any thoughts or views on 'why not' ?"

W33dz writes "News.com has an article detailing how some ISPs are now capping bandwidth usage by some of their high end users. Comcast claims this is an attempt to create better speeds for their average users, but you can't help but wonder how much of this is in response to the RIAA's subpoenas. Interestingly enough, there is no set limit, but just a subjective limit of 'more than the average user.' The World Tech Tribune has an article on the same topic."

Noob Jones writes "The Tech Report has an article about a new video card in the works at S3. 'S3 Graphics is back with a new chip, dubbed DeltaChrome, which looks like it might just be strong enough to become a player in the mid-range consumer graphics market.' With a third player back in the graphics market both Nvidia and ATi are going to have things to worry about but this can only spell good news for customers."

=m8s=Dark Underlord writes "I was browsing for wireless stuff and came across this link that shows how to use an old satellite dish as an 802.11 antenna." The directions tout the range as being 10 miles given line of sight. We've had other stories about building antennas, but I think these are cooler because of their focused nature, but a Primestar dish is a little tougher to locate than a Pringles can or a floppy disk.

gravitie asks: "I'm a developer in my local area. I'm on what is supposed to be 'flex time', so I can work the hours that my boss and I see fit for me to fullfil the number of hours I'm required to get a week. Besides this I must clock in at 7:30 AM every day I am at work. If I clock in at 7:31 I am late, no questions asked. If I am late 3 times in one quarter I get a verbal warning. Next time I get a written warning, then it just goes down hill from there (docked pay, etc..). Is this standard in todays business world? Should 1 minute late really be considered 'late'?"

drjkt writes "Author Orson Scott Card gives his take on mp3 file swapping." Some artists are getting the idea.

Anonymous Blowhard writes "I found out today I am a member of a class that just beat register.com in New York Supreme Court!! The suit was filed by Michael Zurakov because register.com pointed his newly registered domain(s) to 'coming soon' web pages. Mr. Zurakov receives $12,500 for the harm caused by register.com while members of the class can look forward to a settlement of $5 off their next domain renewals. Register.com will also pay 'reasonable Class Counsel attorneys' fees and costs in an amount not to exceed $642,500.00, subject to Court approval.' If you want to exclude yourself from the class, giving up any settlement and not being bound by its terms, you have to opt-out."

Allaran writes "The latest installment in the Myst story, an online experience entitled URU: Ages of Myst, is ramping up to its release. This has been up and coming for some time, but a trailer (Warning:20MB) [BitTorrent link via GameTab] has just been released, made entirely from within the game engine. Apparently, there is a significant offline game that can be played, with the option to subscribe as well."

jfreon writes "On Democracy Now Bev Harris of BlackBoxVoting fame, disclosed (near the end of the transcript) that in the compromised 1.8Gigs off Diebold's FTP site they uncovered "an actual election file containing actual votes on election day from San Luis Obispo County, California". Problem is, the date stamp was 3:31pm - during voting hours! The Diebold system uses a wireless network card. Worse: "So that means if they can pull the information in, they can also send information back into those machines. ""

deijmaster asks: "For a couple of months we have been hearing (as a major consulting firm) IBM people pushing the possibility of installing a Z/Linux VM setup at one of our biggest clients (financial). To a Linux user such as myself this sounds great, at first. Now, I am a bit reluctant when it comes to managing this kind of infrastructure, with little or no local expertise at IBM. Has anyone gone through a Z/Linux VM corporate installation and lived through the management of such a solution?"

bettiwettiwoo writes "In its 'What's Next' issue, Time has a charmingly silly piece called What's Always Next? , in which is provided '[a] sampling of the future that wasn't': things that have been predicted since day dot, but have somehow never materialized. The examples they give are: videophones; moon colonies; food in pills; cars that drive themselves; jet packs; and moving sidewalks. ... There are, after all, so many and varied things -- ranging from the very serious to the down-right silly -- that are predicted time and again, yet seem curiously absent in our daily lives. Examples: global catastrophies of the Armageddon kind (be they population overload, total environmental disasters, plagues, asteroids, or nuclear wars); a secure and bug-free Windows; the end of Madonna's singing career (her 'acting' career was, I believe, still-born)." So what are you waiting for?

rende asks: "With school soon starting or having already started for many, this seems like a timely question. The MIT OpenCourseWare project is looking like a great resource for additional information to supplement my own coursework this year. I was very delighted to find this information freely available online, and wish I would have known about it previously. I would like to ask Slashdot: Are there any other resources, offered by other schools or independent sites, that offer such a robust selection of information that would fit in nicely, with the standard classes of a science related major?"

bryan writes "Only a few weeks after cameras were found to be ineffective in catching criminals in Tampa, FL, a test of a facial-recognition system in Boston's Logan airport also came up disappointing. The cameras which were given photos of employees to detect, were only successful in 153 out of 249 random tests over the past year (about 61%). The article did not say how many false positives the tests generated. The companies involved were Indentix and Visage."

Petrol writes "I just read that Dell is installing a new mandatory click-through software license at first boot. From the article, Dude, you're getting screwed: 'Kat and I just received the Dell Inspiron 5100 notebook we ordered from Dell Canada. We quickly ran across problems.'"

Hogg asks: "I'm a senior in high school, and feeling very industrious over the summer, I started a home business. Basically, I go onsite and service computers and charge far less than what the 'pros' with the MCSEs and so on do. It's been going fairly well so far, but I wonder if Slashdot has tips, advice, or pitfalls to avoid?"

kungfooswade asks: "I am getting ready to graduate soon with my CS degree but I want to hedge my bets on finding a job and will be starting a masters degree, as soon as I am done. I am considering a masters in professional writing, so I can be qualified for technical writing positions, or just going back for a masters in CS. I am curious about the following: (1) what are the general opinions of programmers on technical writers; (2) is there someone out there who has first-hand experience in technical writing who can tell me about the work and their experiences; (3) what software is used mainly in the process; and of course (4) what seems to be the average pay? I would like to diversify my education, so that I won't be searching very long if layoffs come around. All comments and suggestions are appreciated."

SeanIBaby asks: "I was wondering if anyone used Plan 9, and Inferno/Charon for a web browser. Are there any other web browsers for Plan 9, or do you have to code your own? I've noticed that Inferno's company sells Plan 9 boxed sets for $150US. I guess this is because they include the Inferno/Charon binaries with the image, even though they let you download Inferno for free from their website. Plan 9 is free from Bell Labs."

Anonymous Coward writes "This story over at eetimes.com reports of a semiconductor made of diamond that is able to run at 81 GHz." Mmmm, foreshadowing.

lump writes "A notorious spammer, based in New Zealand, who had his name and other personal info released first in a national newspaper, and then on the web, has shut down his operation, citing harassment. What interests me about this case is that, in the 5 or 6 days since he has supposedly stopped operating, I personally have had one (1) spam email, to an address which had previously averaged around fifty per day. Colleagues report a similar reduction in spam. All I can say is 'excellent.' Hate to say it, but in this case, vigilante type action seems to have had the desired result. This needs to be publicised, as anything which slows down spam can only be a good thing."

Moryath writes "Used to be, everyone put an auto-responder in their email server's virus scanner. That way, some dingus sends in a virus, you're protected, and they get notified so they scan and fix their system. Of course, all these stupid things ever do is reply to the From: field, and possibly to Abuse@domain, webmaster@domain, etc... as well. Enter viruses like Sobig. We've had them for years in various forms, they spoof the From: field with another email from another victim's contact book, and all of a sudden random people are getting bounces of emails they've never sent. I have actually gotten more bounces today than actual Sobig attachments. So what does the Slashdot crowd think? Is it time for the people running these mail servers to take down those autoresponders? Are they guilty for part of the damage things like SoBig have caused, since their ill-configured mail servers are doubling, tripling, or even quadrupling the amount of traffic one Sobig infection produces?"

RunAmuk chimes in with this off-beat query: "Several of the software packages the company I currently work for sells, are 'critical' applications at our client's sites. As such, we have to have support staff on call 24/7 and the company provides several cell phones for this purpose. These cell phones are rotated through the support staff on a weekly basis, so that everyone gets a chance to share in the joy of the 2am support call. This morning as I overheard the pass-off of the phone ('Sorry about the antenna, my cat was chewing on it') it brought to mind a couple of the other 'incidents' that have occurred where the phone didn't quite make it to the hand-off. I'm sure we aren't the only company to have had amusing incidents like this, does anyone have any good stories to share?"

"Incident 1: A group of us were standing around the front desk after a meeting. The VP walks up (management are supplied with phones as well in case client calls get escalated) and someone says, 'I tried calling you last night but you weren't answering your cell phone.' The VP replies 'Yeah, my dog ate it!' Everyone laughed thinking it was a modern day take on the 'my dog ate my homework' story. Everyone laughed even harder when he reached into his pocket and pulled out a Ziploc bag full of small pieces of electronics and black plastic, handed it to the administrative assistant at the desk and said 'Please order me a new one.' His German Shepard saw the phone sitting on the coffee table and thought it would make a good chew toy.

Incident 2: While waiting for an important call from a client, one of the support guys was carrying the cell phone with him absolutely everywhere. The team leader knew this, and while he was on the phone with another client (on a speakerphone), he was surprised to see this support person come rushing into his cubicle without the cell phone. The team leader looked curiously at the support guy wondering what was going on and got a mumbled response:

'I flmsdd shll fdn dbn tlt.'
'You what?'
'I flushed the cell phone down the toilet!'

A burst of laughter came from the other end of the speakerphone, and the client says 'I think I'll call back later, it sounds like you've got your own problems.'
'How the h**l did you flush the cell phone down the toilet?', the team leader continues.
'Well, I was waiting for that important call to come in, and I had to go to the bathroom so I took the phone with me. When I finished, I stood up and flushed the toilet and heard a "plop". Looking down all I could see was the phone (a StarTac) swirling lower and lower in the bowl, then it was gone.'

The burst of laughter from the surrounding people was nothing compared to the laughter a few minutes later when the support person was crouched with his head over the toilet listening for the phone while the team leader dialed the number. Not being able to hear anything they counted the phone lost, and put in a requisition for a new one.

A couple of weeks later, no one was really surprised when a plumber had to be called in because one of the toilets kept backing up. Half an hour later the plumber left, leaving a tightly sealed bag containing a now black and brown cell phone at the front desk. The phone was proudly(?) displayed in the support person's office for several weeks afterward until one extremely brave co-worker took the phone home, and after a very thorough drying, cleaning and sterilization, replaced the battery and brought the once again working phone back to the office! . . . of course everyone still refused to use it."

daksis writes "CNN has posted an OpEd piece from the New York Times that raises some interesting issues. With the current advances in biology, we as a society are facing the real possibility that "immortality" could some day be the norm. What sort of social impact can we expect when/if life expectancies are measured in centuries?"

The Llama King writes "Love transcends all, including gravity, the atmosphere and orbital altitudes. According to this story at the Houston Chronicle, "Yuri Malenchenko didn't let the fact that he's living aboard the international space station stop him from marrying his bride, Ekaterina Dmitriev." The bride was at Johnson Space Center near Houston, while the groom circled 240 miles above her. The honeymoon will have to wait."