Slashdot Mirror

spectecjr asks: "Everyone's seen lens flare effects being used in various 3D games recently (including Half Life, Unreal Tournament, etc); but typically, these effects are simulated using Photoshop to create textures which are then billboarded to the screen. So how do the people who write Photoshop plug-ins simulate lens flares? All the tutorials on the 'net seem to be of the nature of the fake-out method used above. So if you were going to write a lens flare simulation from scratch, how would you do it?" Interesting question. It would be interesting to know the mathematics behind modeling lens flares, using the Photoshop model and more realistic models, if they exist.

Steven Yi asks: "This is a suggestion - why not consider IIS an 'application server', similar to they way we consider BEA WebLogic an app server? Continue using your Windows Servers to process your programming logic and ASP pages - but use a box running Apache as your true web server. This is the way many other app-server driven hardware setups are like. Internet --> (Apache Web Server) --> (IIS 'App Server'). The obvious point is that there isn't an Apache plugin to redirect Microsoft/ASP page requests, but couldn't this be written fairly quickly? I think this would be a much cheaper migration path where existing Microsoft applications/hardware can be preserved and your internet security would be greatly enhanced with a Linux/UNIX Apache server guarding the internet connection." Many saavy readers should realize that a mod_rewrite + mod_proxy combination should be all you need to implement such a feature. Has anyone deployed something similar for their production systems?

Capt Gerkin asks: "While debugging a hardware problem on my system, I had the opportunity to take a good long look at my RAM chips. The DDR memory, that I purchased online two months ago, had some interesting product codes, and the descriptions didn't match with anything at Micron's website. Although I understand they may not publish all memory on their site, it brought up an interesting question for online retail. With the hard return procedures, no name companies and faceless dealers, how often is the product we think we are purchasing really a fake? It would be interesting to find out how many times others have placed orders for something online, only to get something entirely different, instead."

Jens Lönn writes: "The Kapitza-Dirac effect is the diffraction of a beam of particles, electrons in particular, by a standing wave of light. One can interpret it as waves of matter diffracted from "crystals" made of light, it's like matter and light swap roles. It was predicted in 1933 by a pair of future Nobel Prize winners, Russian Peter Kapitza (1894-1984) and Englishman P.A.M. Dirac (1902-84), but the technology needed to demonstrate it didn't exist at the time. It wasn't until April 11, 2001, when it was observed for the first time in Herman Batelaan's lab in the Behlen Laboratory for Physics at the University of Nebraska - Lincoln. This is the first time _ever_ that scientists have shown that light can bend matter, not just the opposite."

Lagos writes "In July Darwin developers at Apple had a call for questions. Their answers were posted on Monday and may be found here. There is some discussion of Apple's place within the Open Source community, though most of the questions answered are more technical." Along the same Darwinian lines, this submission came in: Maktoo writes "Maccentral is reporting that SourceForge.net has added PowerMac G4 Servers running MacOS X 10.1 into their Compile Farm. Now any apps you have going on SourceForge, you can test to see if it'll run on OS X! Gotta love that BSD heritage... OS X is already going to benefit greatly from all the apps it can use in the UNIX/Linux space. This just makes life easier for developers to bring even more."

Bfaber writes: "According to EET, Purdue has created the first examples of quantum computing in a semiconductor. The story can be read here. Read the article for further links that include an audio interview."

Runt-Abu writes: "Some of the UK's top companies (and some of the not-so-top as well but hey...) are questioning Microsoft's policy on pricing. In an open letter to the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry several of the top companies voiced concern at the cost of an extra £880m over a typical four-year investment cycle. No one from Microsoft has commented at this time, given the current state of affairs it's highly likely many companies will not upgrade or seek alternative cheaper solutions." Basically, a large trade group is asking the British Office of Fair Trading (akin to the FTC in the U.S.) to investigate Microsoft's price increases. And Gogl writes: "It appears the attorneys general of 6 more states have voiced concern over Microsoft, particularly regarding the upcoming release of Windows XP. Microsoft and their allies claim that AOL-Time Warner was behind this, which AOL of course denies," pointing also to this piece on Microsoft's changing licensing costs.

Trapper writes: "The fourth Advanced filesystem implementor's guide article has just been released today. It covers the significance and benefits of devfs, the device management filesystem. The series of Advanced filesystem aricles shows you how to set up new advanced filesystems under the Linux 2.4 release. Article 3 covers using the virtual memory (VM) filesystem and bind mounts, article 2 covers using ReiserFS and Linux 2.4 and articel 1 covers Journalling and ReiserFS."

A concerned Anonymous Coward asks: "Now that my cable modem system is filling up with users I cannot always get "online". The service provider's tech support says that my upstream signal power is borderline acceptable. They suggest that I buy a signal amplifier from them. I'm assuming they're trying to rip me off to offset capital investment costs. I've searched google for half and hour but cannot find anyone selling or anyplace to purchase a cable modem amplifier. Does anyone know where a cable modem amplifier can be purchased? Any advice on price, specs, quality, setup?" Cable modem amplifiers? I haven't heard of such things, but of course, that doesn't mean that they don't exist. Have any of you heard of such things, or is this just another attempt to separate the consumer from their money?

Metox writes: "An article posted on www.sciam.com gives a glimpse into the future of space clothing for use in hostile environments, Earth orbit, Mars, etc. Of all the facts in the article, the one I found most interesting is that the current EVA (Extra Vehicular Activity) suit is an astonishing 24 years old. However, the article gives a good reason for this. As the EVA suit is used in a microgravity environment, mobility isn't as important, and dexterity can be enhanced by simple changes to the arms and hands. The article highlights the current tests of two new EVA/Mars contenders, the I-Suit and the H-Suit."

David Steele writes "Ever wondered what you could do to prolong the life of your notebook? Or upgrade it to meet today's standards? Or maybe you want to turn your mid-range notebook into a high-end model? Hardware Analysis has an article up that takes a a closer look at the available options."

There's been lots more happening today - arrests and suspect taken from the Westin Hotel in Boston, as well as the Park Hotel in Newton, MA, which is right down the road for me. There's been some thoughtful submissons about people saving the feeds on their [PVR]s, so that the moment isn't lost in time. NATO has invoked Article 5, meaning that for first in history, I believe, the mutual defense clause has been activated. More news included below. Scott Laird writes "We've received notice that our network facilities in NYC are going to run out of Diesel in ~2 hours, and there's no way to get more diesel to them until lower manhattan is opened up. Since we're located in the same facilties as most of the other major network providers in Manhattan, odds are there are going to be a lot of things dropping off the air this afternoon."

ELBnet writes It would be a godsend if the various survivor registries would pool their data, or if someone sets up a google-like search engine to reach all of them at once - and that is a great idea. I set up the search engine at WWW.ELBnet.com/wtc but need URLs to populate it. Please e-mail me any suggested URLS and I'll add them.

Also please don't /. the site... let the people who need it get to it. Spread the word."

Radio Free Wazee writes "Radio Free Wazee has suspended its normal programming in order to provide a relay for National Public Radio. Most of the sites are slammed -- we've got room for about 320 listeners. You'll need an MP3 player (WinAMP, etc.) -- the stream is at http://live.str3am.com:2310/listen.pls Our web site is http://www.ideashot.com/wazee.org Howard @ radio free waee"

GatorMan writes "The Red Cross and Amazon.com have setup a donations page for disaster relief to aide in the recovery of our people. I've seen it jump $100,000 in an hour (thanks to my $10 I'm sure) with over 25,000 donations so far, very promising. No where else on Earth could you find support like this."

winksmith writes "as many of us look on the recent crashes in horror, we will also be pushed towards more tech solutions to some of the scenarios witnessed. i believe experts agree that the buildings may have stood up to forces of the crash had it not been for the very hot fuel burning w/i the building. the building themselves were designed to take aircraft impacts (albeit circa 1960 aircraft). this disaster may spark re-interest in fuel additives for jet fuel that would immediately put out fires upon impact.

the faa and nasa ran some very extensive tests including the purposeful crashing of a large boeing jet (B720) in december of 1984. the tests were not encouraging. details are available. figure 1-1 shows the jet crashing.

no one can second guess what would have happened, but perhaps continued research into this area might have played a role in saving a few more lives. and still may in the future."

Wiggins writes ""The Internet Fraud Complaint Center recently received several complaints that someone is using the letters, "FBI" or "fbi.gov" in an e-mail address in order to make it seem that the message is coming from an FBI employee. In several cases, the message said, "Your application is approved. Please fill out this form to confirm your identity" and solicited the person's name, address, credit card number and expiration date." More on the http://www.ifccfbi.gov/. I am sure /. users know better, but the general populace doesn't (always)."

Everyone out there who set up content mirrors helped the spread of information survive as well as it did. After the tremendous crush yesterday, conventional news sources seem to have largely recovered. However, people are still cushioning the network burden with their own mirrors and original reporting. We'll be putting up occasional updates as necessary, but for now hit that link below and you can read a ton of stories on all aspects of the story.

Ian Peon writes: "SF Gate has a short article on how the Internet "proved its mettle as a communications facilitator in a time of crisis." Kudos to all those who kept things running!"

An anonymous reader writes: "The who, what, and how are detailed in this Boston Herald story. The weapons were smuggled in the razor cases. And in order to get to the cockpit, they terrorized the stewardesses, killing a few in order to lure the pilot out. Once the pilot was out, they took control of the plane. They have identified a car driven by 5 arabs had flying instruction in arabic. The men have been traced back to different arab countries."

This WorldTribune.com story claims that Israeli intelligence reports favor the idea that the attacks may have had the backing of Saddam Hussein's Bagdhad government. According to a submission from UberOogie ,Osama bin Ladin denies involvement in the attacks. The claims, speculation and disclaimers will no doubt continue.

Connord D writes: "View the Survivor's Register Please, PLEASE go to the survivor registers, register that your looking for your family, tell your friends, pass the word around and identify those that have survived and those that are missing. Help worried families either confirm the fates of their loved ones so that they can mourn, or help them find those people that are missing." And Brian Mears, LAN Systems Operations Manager for Computer Sciences Corporation, writes: "I have created a forum on my website to allow families and friends of survivors to post messages and communicate with each other concerning this most tragic period." Here's the link: http://www.ntadmin.net/forum/.

It would be a godsend if the various survivor registries would pool their data, or if someone sets up a google-like search engine to reach all of them at once.

oo7 writes: "CNN has a stream of the first plane crash. If you'd like to download it you can from the videos section of this site; it has news updated as fast as I can and streams as fast as I can capture. Please forward any unknown news and links that you may have."

pKa writes: "The last image from WTCs 77th floor webcam is available on a few sites around the net. The original WCTA.org cam-site is dead, but available in Googles cache, where you can see the dark screen (camera already dead, most likely) at 09:52:52, 09/11/01 - just before the buildings crashed. Article (in norwegian) with screenshots available here" The stream of concern that yesterday's events will lead to an illiberal attitude toward privacy is growing into a torrent: vena writes: "CNN reported on television broadcast earlier today that the NSA was now going through volumes of recorded cellular calls for calls made by passengers on the planes. Clear admission."

GothChip writes: "Ananova are reporting that just hours after the terrorist attack on New York, the FBI started approaching ISPs asking for help in installing Carnivore."

mkelley writes: "This is only the beginning folks...looks like the internet is going to be blamed for this...Wired has a story that is sure to cause panic. This is going to be the goverment's way to push wiretapping into your email and web surfing. In this time of crisis, people in high places are going to use this to get their agenda through. "Blame the Internet" is going to be the rallying cry for everything ..." If you're interested in the details of the planes the terrorists chose, a Semi-Anonymous Coward writes: "American Airlines flight 77 confirmed down, crashed into the Pentagon, Washington DC. Flight 77 (Dulles to Los Angeles) is scheduled as a Boeing 757-200:

Boeing 757-200 data and history:

American Airlines Boeing 757-200 photos:

• American Airlines flight 11 confirmed down, crashed into World Trade Center New York. Flight 11 (Boston to Los Angeles) is scheduled as a Boeing 767-200:
• Boeing 767-200 data and history
• American Airlines Boeing 767-200 photos

United Airlines flight 175 confirmed down, crashed into World Trade Center New York. Flight 175 (Boston to Los Angeles) is scheduled as a Boeing 767-200:

• United Airlines Boeing 767-200 photos

United Airlines flight 93 confirmed down near Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania. Flight 93 (Newark to San Francisco) is scheduled as a Boeing 757-200:

• United Airlines Boeing 757-200 photos: United Airlines Boeing 757-200 photos"

Further news of the events going on around the world following the attacks earlier today on New York and Washington. To follow things even more closely, you are encouraged to join realtime CNN coverage in channel #cnn_newsfeed on irc.idlenet.org. (Doubtless there are other similar IRC and IM feeds going on -- please post them in comments.) In addition to the news below, note that CNN has reported that multiple suspects were arrested with a van loaded with explosives in the vicinity of New York's George Washington Bridge. Update: 09/12 04:29 AM GMT by T : Many readers have reported that the van in question was found not to contain explosives, though its occupants were held for questioning. And Giacomo DiGrigoli, international product manager at PayPal.com, wrote with word of a donation fund on the PayPal website where folks can make donations to the American Red Cross.

Contradicting earlier reports, reader Adam Brookman writes: "I can guarantee that no car bomb went off in front of the State Dept. in DC. My father is part of the critical personel at State dept. When I read that I called him. He said he heard the same thing and he also heard that the building was hit by a plane, but neither were true."

Worth reading is this analysis of the motives and some possible suspects in today's violence, at Jane's International Security News. They've picked three plausible attackers. Motive aside, Jack Bryar has a convincing take on who is really most hurt by the attacks today.

babyruth writes: "amazon.com has a Red Cross Relief fund set up on their homepage, where you can contribute online. Only several hundred have contributed so far, let the power of /. help!" Iridium provides a link straight to the donations page, noting that "All standard fees are waived -- all proceeds go directly to the Red Cross." Of course, the Red Cross is -still- in desperate need of blood. If you can donate, please call 1-800-HELP-NOW to find the donation center nearest to you.

iggyflashbulb writes: "CNN reports some oddball group not associated with bin Laden is attacking Kabul at night. Are they taking advantage of the NY situation or did they create it?"

An anonymous reader writes: "Following the sad (and outrageous) mess of these terrorist attacks, results are already starting to impact the country. When a RSM failed on one of our 5500 Ciscos, we recieved the following notice

'Due to a national emergency completion of your case, delivery of your parts or engineer will be delayed until further notice. Several areas of the country have restricted transportation and currently no air traffic is available. Cisco will notify you as soon a we are able to dispatch your order.'

There doesn't seem to any information on Cisco's site."

CERT is in action as well: SilentTone writes: "Ween Hall at Carnegie-Mellon University was evacuated today so the the Computer Emergency Response Team could go into action."

Many readers have been assembling mirrors for the overloaded news sites of the world. Jon Anhold writes: "I've compiled more photos and what not, mirrored many of the sites around to help the load. They're available here: http://ziggy.dreamland.net/wtc/"

Owen Bossola writes: "This is a simple webpage I put up with shots I took all day of the World Trade Center. I go to school across the river at Stevens Institute of Technology and I watched the whole thing from campus. It is absolutely nuts, I'm looking out my window and for the first time, downtown NYC is dark, and there aren't two large buildings gleaming back at me."

rhyder writes: "I was last in the World Trade Center and the attached World Financial Center on Saturday evening. Many people I know work in those buildings, even more live and work in the shadow of those 2 towers.

From the Port Authority of NY and NJ:

1. The Port Authority
   
2. Trade Center Concourse Level Map
   
3. Trade Center Plaza Level Map
   
4. Trade Center Complex Overview
   
5. Area Map showing southern tip of Manhattan and the Trade Center location."

An Anonymous Coward seeks more information about an interview that Washington area readers may be able to provide: He writes: "Fox News channel 5 (local around 6:30ish E.S.T) this evening had an interview with a witness about what he saw at the Pentagon the moment of impact. His interview was the basic 'I was in my car looked to my side..blah blah' but then he said something totally unexpected. He observed a second airplane immediately swing behind the first in a follow like manner and swoop down on the Pentagon only to pull up at the last second, out of the smoke cloud, and fly away. His description of the plane was pretty detailed, saying it was propeller-driven ... He stated everyone around him who were also outside their cars saw the SECOND Airplane following the first and it was also going in."

Anyone else able to confirm this rumor?

Jon Bishop asks: "Why Today? Why did this attack happen on September 11, 2001. Here is a guess. I played with the date commonly used for programming. YYYYMMDD returns 20010911. 911...in 2001. Is this play on numbers intentional or coincidence?" It may be significant that the anniversary of a Congressional resolution "favoring a Jewish homeland in Palestine" falls on this date. Then again, if you go back a century or two, you may find a lot of anniversaries that seem just as significant.

Carl Merritt writes: "Since many sites seem to be creaking under the load today I've dumped every relevant picture and video I can find onto my server, please feel free to suck up some of my unused bandwidth with downloads or links: http://www.binaryvista.com/WTC/ I'll probably leave it up for a couple weeks, or until CNN asks me to remove their pictures ;-)."

An Anonymous Coward writes "I just want to remind everyone that there is still active air cover over at least Chicago. A tanker is orbiting O'Hare and at least what appear to be two F-15s are making the rounds. If you would like more information including frequencies I suggest subscribing to the CARMA mailing list at QTH.net for up to date monitoring information."

Disheartening news from Egypt: soulflakes points to this story of some Egyptians celebrating the attacks today. Here's a BBC piece which indicates the feeling is shared in some other African countries. This doesn't mean that all or most people in any country feel the same way.

yoda389 writes: "I'm getting reports from friends that gas prices are jumping to as much as $5.00 a gallon. There are huge lines at all gas stations here in my hometown someplace in Wisconsin." And ikohl1 writes: "A friend just informed me of how gas prices were raised to $3.50 in a town near where i live. I didn't believe him at first but I found this article on Yahoo."

Gas prices may fluctuate in the short term, but in the long haul, effects on exports of goods physical and abstract may be affected just as drastically: elliotj writes: "MSNBC has a Steven Levy opinion piece on the possible implications of today's attack on America and governmental policy on encryption export restrictions. Personally, I think we need to determine exactly what happened before blaming physical or electronic security measures for a role in the tragedy. I heard the planes were hi-jacked with knives ... that doesn't sound very high-tech or a sign of significant security failings to me. It is the act itself that is so shocking and sickening."

Dr. Manhattan writes: "NASA has released some movies showing how water boils in microgravity... and it's very different from how it behaves at one G. This has implications for the design of cooling systems in space and perhaps power plants on Earth."

Baldrson noted a bit running on Yahoo right now where the AOL, Time, Warner, Netscape, CNN mega corporation is in talks with AT&T for their cable network. The inevitable and scary consolidation continues ever onward. The US govt will be sold on eBay in a few years, but only Microsoft and the corporation formerly known as Netscape AOL Warner CNN AT&T Time (NAWCAT) will be left to bid. But since Nawcat will already own ebay, there will no doubt be rumors of unfair play.

Joe writes: "Someone introduced me to a new game called Robocode and now I'm hooked as well as my 17 year old son. We are both learning Java while playing the game or I should say while building our Java robots. The game is setup to teach you how to handle events, how to create inner classes, and other Java techniques to build more sophisticated Java bots. I have a c++ background so I've been helping my son with his bots, but he's catching on very fast. It's turning out to be a cool and easy way to get the kid clued into programming and best of all its free." I'll bet if the little Logo turtles shot at each other, I would have had more fun programming as a kid.

wbav writes "According to this article on cnn HP has anounced that they are releasing two new models. At 6 ounces it sports a 203 mhz processor and 32 or 64 megs of ram depending on the model. It comes with Pocket PC 2002, and support for VPNs. Very nice." I do wonder what will happen to the Jornada, given the HP purchase of Compaq - my understanding is that the iPaq has kicked far more butt then the Jornada.

nelomolen asks: "The school year is upon us, and I'm sure there's more than one school network administrator out there who is facing the same problem I am... web filtering (loud hissing ensues). Most administrators are stuck without a solution, with administration breathing down the back of their neck for a workable one. Put aside for a second that almost everyone hates the idea, we need something to tide us over until these laws are overturned (optimism). Does anyone know of any filtering solutions (client or server-side) that will strictly allow access based on TLD *then* domain name? For the sake of weathering out these laws, the easiest solution is to give unlimited access to .gov, .int, .us, .edu, .mil, etc, and explicit access to the handful of useful .com, .net, and .org domains that are out there. Has this option been explored by anyone? It seems to be a reasonable temporary fix. Is there currently any open-source software that can do this?"

Alec Muzzy writes: "Did you know that Microsoft Research, the first research laboratory started by a software company, just turned 10 years old? Their website is currently featuring some highlights of their research in the past 10 years and how it is applying to the new products Microsoft is making today - for instance their work in Real-Time Fur will be used in some XBox games, and Speech Recognition may be in future Pocket PC's. Reading these pages gives you a real insight into what new technologies Microsoft is working on."

More on the Battlebots trademark dispute, proof that some of your are listening to Dr. Who on the Beeb, and a memorial -- finally -- for Alan Turing, in tonight's round of updates, corrections, and further info.

That eerie, eerie theme music will get in your head all day. sideshow-voxx writes: "The BBC has announced that there will be more installments of the Audio Adventure Dr Who - Death Comes to Time available on the web in the New Year."

This is cool news (the accompanying art is a nice touch with this Dr. Who presentation), but it would be nice if they would put the episodes into more audio formats as well.

Things always seem to get more complicated. Eric Molitor, ("Linux hacker and Builder of Violator - Linux powered BattleBot that competed in May") wrote about the BattleBots vs. Battlebots story of the other day, saying:

"As a BattleBot competitor I was horrified when I noticed your article but here are some corrections... BattleBots INC != BattleBots the show.

BattleBots INC is suing and not the TV show. (Comedy Central tapes the tournaments and airs portions of the finals on a TV show. But thats just like showing NFL games mostly. The TV company just pays a licensing fee to broadcast the event.)

Do a little research and the guy registered his domain at least a year after the first BattleBots competition in Long Beach. (Early 1998) In fact the battlebots.org domain was registered after BattleBots.com, and after BattleBots applied for their TM.

So this kid (running a script kiddie hosting service no less) registers a domain after somebody applies for the TM and then asks for $5K to give it up. Sounds like cyber-squatting to me. Also take a look at the dates on the website for the replies, etc. Things don't look right ....

Still BattleBots is dumb not to have registered the .org domain.

For a little history on BattleBots and the law suits, etc. that RobotWars got into that nearly destroyed this sport take a look at http://www.robotcombat.com/history.html.

Greg and Tray gave up a lot and everybody got together to dodge RobotWars/Profile records lawsuits to prevent the sport from happening. I'd hate to see them unfairly get a bad name."

Thanks, Eric.

Something to see in England. slathering wrote with news that the Alan Turing memorial written about in this Slashdot story has finally materialized. He writes: "I read about this in this months IEEE Annals of the History of Computing (who doesn't have a website). But I found the website for the memorial itself. Apparently funding was found for the Alan Turing Memorial since it was unveiled June 23, 2001 in Manchester, England. It was funded without any donations from the computing industry."

NegaMaxAlphaBeta writes: "For those of you interested in Intel's Itanium 64 bit processor, EETimes has a nice update article to let us know what's happening with this beast. With an 8 stage pipeline, as opposed to the 20 stage pipeline in the P4, clock frequencies are obviously not as high (~1 GHz). Other notable numbers extracted from the article: 130 Watts power consumption, 328 registers, 6 MB of onchip L3 cache ... quite nice (well, not the power thing). I'm sure many people can appreciate 64 bit integer ops; for me, it means single instruction xor for the 64 bit hash codes used in chess transposition tables."

nelomolen writes: "Looks like MP3.com is trying to promote a new $2.99/month ($29.99/year) ad-free service. as a listener I've come to love MP3.com as it provides exposure to a LOT of good music (and bad). In the past I know artists have had it out for MP3.com in regards to their "payback for playback" -- wonder if this new ad-free subscription service will help?"

stinkbomb writes "The venerable Association for Computing Machinery has posted a legal brief on it's site regarding Felten vs. RIAA. The ACM position is: 'ACM believes that the application of any law to limit the freedom to publish research on computer technology will impose a cost not only on ACM's members, but also on the academic community, the process of scientific discourse, and society in general.'"

bobthemonkey13 writes: "It appears that Microsoft's 'secure' E-Book system has been cracked. MIT Technology Review is reporting that an anonymous programmer has figured out how to bypass the 'advanced antipiracy features' in Microsoft Reader. This sounds a lot like what Dmitry did except for two things: The MS E-Book hacker has (wisely) decided to remain anonymous, and he's not publishing his program. God bless the U.S., where moving a book from your home to your office is a federal offence." Along similar lines, an Anonymous Coward indicates this story at USA Today titled "Expert Hacks Hotmail in 1 Line of Code." "I'm in awe! Unless someone can figure out how to execute pseudocode or half a line this isn't beatable. I hope this get's fixed or the whole future of pay-per-view web services could be impacted. :-q" Good thing Microsoft isn't quite sure what to do with all this universal-password stuff. (Thanks to Sacha Prins.)

Jamie adds:

In other news about poor security where you least expect it, Kitetoa informed Veridian a little while ago that: "Any script kiddy can root your web site. And... By the way... Someone already did it (as you should have seen at www.veridian.com/upload/ if you knew anything about internet security)."

I don't know what that URL gives you now, but as of this writing, and for the last several hours, it's read:

fuck USA Government
fuck PoizonBOx
contact:sysadmcn@yahoo.com.cn

This is the same Veridian that the Defense Department picked to track computer network attacks on DoD systems, specifically attacks coming from China.

UserID 3.14 writes: "I got this story from the Lawrence Livermore National Lab web site. The idea for carbon anode electrochemical cells has been around for a long time, but waste ash was always a problem. The new system uses very fine particulate carbon for full conversion to CO2. The CO2 has non-polluting industrial uses, including refilling the used up oil wells (so they don't collapse). Of course, the greatest benefit of the whole scheme is how it almost doubles power extraction efficiency (up to around 80%)." The article has some good information about the differences between the types of carbon found in nature, too.

thatrez writes: "Microsoft 's Windows Advanced Server, Limited Edition, is now available for computers based on Intel's 64-bit Itanium chip. The Itanium chip supports greater amounts of system memory and offers stronger floating-point, or mathematical, capabilities than current 32-bit desktop processors. The extra memory support and the floating-point capabilities increase the performance of Web hosting, data warehousing and other applications." Now available in this case means that certain OEMs will soon be selling systems loaded with 64-bit Advanced Server, and later other manufacturers will join in. 64-bit versions of XP are expected sometime next year as well.

YorickFinn writes "Common Dreams recently posted an article by Norman Solomon on "Denial and the Ravaging of Cyberspace." In short, Solomon argues that the commonly held view of the net as the last bastion of truly democratic mass communication is, in fact, a myth. For instance, he points out that "Websites operated by just four corporations account for 50.4 percent of the time that U.S. users of the Web are now spending online...." Ultimately, Solomon claims that the net may become more like "interactive digital TV," with the decline in the use of browsers and the increasing prominence of technology such as MTV.(The "M" is for Microsoft, formerly WebTV.) All told, his forecast is somewhat bleak, but not entirely unfounded. Worth the read."

Atomic Snarl writes: "The ASTROVIRTEL project is mining a 7 Terabyte archive from NASA, ESA, and others for all things astronomical. One recent discovery is a new Kupier Belt object larger than asteroid Ceres. APOD story here, ESO press release here. They're looking for more research projects, too. Just the thing for all those spare cycles on your G4 Cube... ;-)"

Lester67 writes: "Infoworld has a pretty cool article on the "the Parasitic Grid," which is basically people (mainly in large cities) opening up their high-speed access through 802.11b to anyone that wants to use it, and how it may threaten telecom profits. One guy has a pretty interesting use for a Pringles(tm) can too (but only after you've removed your hand)." This article ties together several of the recent stories on free-for-all community networking, and fits in nicely with the recent post on bridging networks with 802.11b.

ryarger writes "Woo Hoo! After a seeming eternity of wait, there is finally an implementation of stored procedures for MySQL. It uses Perl as the stored proc language, too!" Also note that this piece of work was done by OSDNs own Krow. Very cool work I must say.

Hobobo writes: "This article on the New York Times talks about whether public records that are available in local government offices should or shouldn't be available online. It also talks about the "practical obscurity" of people checking files in police offices and whatnot, and public records on the internet are "too public," and the privacy and freedom of information issues involved." If you'd like to try it, you can use "Giuliani" and "5/28/44".

Steve Nakhla writes: "According to this article, Excite@Home has begun snooping users' downloads in order to find copyrighted or pirated material. Violators have their access cut off. As an Excite@home user, this alarms me. What exactly is their definition of copyrighted? Doesn't the New York Times copyright their online articles? Can I not view them any more for fear of violating Excite's policies?"

bubblegoose writes "In Washington state Qwest customers are asking for a refund due to losses of service during the Code Red thing. Qwest is refusing to give the refunds. Excite has a story about it here." I tend to think this is just complaining bull crap. My net connection when down too, and I don't run around demanding $5 back. I'd be more upset if I was a business and my server rooted by this. The irony is that this will probably end up just pushing subscription software.

AxsDeny writes: "The makers of the ever-so-popular FireWire, Apple Computer, are being given an Emmy by the television industry. Apple will receive the primetime Emmy, which is given by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, in a ceremony later Wednesday at the Goldenson Theatre in Hollywood. " So, maybe we can start giving Pulitzers for better keyboards and Oscars for a printer that really prints scripts well. Heh.

Last week you asked Sam Lantinga , developer of the Simple DirectMedia Layer (SDL) about SDL and other issues related to gaming. He's responded with answers about the SL port to Sony Playstation, game audio, DirectX, his new job at Blizzard, and more. He even drops some hints about some interesting gaming developments to watch out for.

Out-of-the-box Linux 3D support?
by phutureboy

This may be more of a question for everyone else than for Sam (but Sam can feel free to answer also :) I'm not a big gamer, but I would play some if it weren't such a bitch to get the proper libraries working under Linux. Last time I tried was about 6 months ago... After following some really complicated directions and compiling umpteen obscure drivers I finally got SDL and hardware-accelerated OpenGL working. I had to disable it and revert to my previous versions, though, because it locked up my system a lot during games and made X pretty unstable. Anyway, my question is this: is multimedia support for Linux getting any easier to install? Is it possible that someday I will be able to install a distribution and have it automagically configure hardware 3D support, install SDL, etc.? Or is Linux multimedia still too much in the toddler stages?

I'm just a lowly PHP coder. I don't understand all this low-level mumbo jumbo. I just want to fire up a game every now and then and blow shit up. Is there hope for me?

Sam Lantinga: Yes, more and more distributions are starting to set up 3D out of the box. 3D on Linux is always a moving target however, so the best bet is for distribution to both include 3D detection and setup, and also to include information on how to upgrade the drivers to the latest versions.

As anecdotal evidence, Mike "Heimdall" Phillips, who up until recently worked as Q/A and technical support at Loki Software, Inc., installed Mandrake 8 on a box containing a Rage 128 video card, and the installation detected and set up 3D acceleration out of the box. He was up and running with most of Loki's 3D titles immediately.

Graphics Hardware Drivers
by m2

My question is a bit tainted by my personal opinion in this matter, but I'm sure Sam will be able to provide a different (and surely interesting) point of view.

At the risk of being a tad Linux centric, does the availability or unavailability of hardware specifications and technical documentation on graphics hardware affect a Linux game developer and why? With two concrete cases in mind, on one hand NVIDIA who provides binary drivers and "high level" documentation about their cards, and on the other hand, ATI for which there's source code for the drivers with support for half of the features the hardware offers, but neither openly accessible hardware documentation nor much "high level" docs, how do you think this can affect the future development of games for Linux (proprietary or otherwise)?

SL: From my perspective as a cross-platform game developer, the objective is to write a great game, not to have to read technical documentation on particular graphics hardware. With the improvement of the OpenGL API implementations on the Linux platform, the need for game developers to get their hands dirty with the technical details of the graphics drivers is slowly going away. IMHO, this is a good thing. :)

Now, in reality there is always a need to look at the way the driver interacts with the hardware, either to fix bugs, or to improve graphics performance. For this reason, it's a great thing to have the source code and full graphics hardware specifications available - it allows the developer to make smarter choices about graphic implementation, and results in a better game. This is true of Linux as well as Windows, and interestingly Linux is a richer field than Windows when trying to find out how hardware and drivers really interact.

In the specific case of NVidia, I've been impressed with both the quality of their drivers, and the responsiveness and commitment of the company towards Linux as a whole. While it's true that there is no guarantee that this will continue, it's very refreshing now.

What's your status with Loki?
by Mr T

Was your departure good? Daniel Vogel also left. Is Loki in a good position or did you leave because of some problem. What's the deal?

SL: My departure was good. I left because I was very interested in the opportunity to work on original game content at Blizzard Entertainment.

Loki owes me money like all the other employees, but they have stated that they will pay me back, and I am very hopeful that they will do so.

Blizzard Entertainment
by j7953

What are you working on at Blizzard? Do you get paid for continuing your work on SDL, or do you have to do that in your spare time?

SL: I am working on an upcoming unannounced title. It's great fun and I can't wait for it to be announced so I can tell people what it is that I'm working on. As for SDL, I'm still working on it in my spare time. There's a rumor of a super-elite crack team of developers working on the next generation SDL API, but I can't substantiate it. :)

Directx 8 and SDL
by drenehtsral

From playing with it, and noticing what has been conveniently removed from the documentation (but is still in the libraries), it looks like DirectX 8 is trying very hard to do away with directdraw and work purely through the 3d engine. Sprites are just 2d textured polys, etc ...

This leads me to believe that any future enhancements/optimizations/support/testing/etc ... that will happen with directx will be only on the direct3d part, and directdraw is probably going to be unsupported. Do y'all have any plans to deal with that?

SL: The next generation SDL API is leaning towards the concept of a texture manager and a plug-in architecture for operations on those textures. This should for the most part be a natural improvement upon the current design, and will lend itself well to 3D hardware acceleration. This design is for the 2D surface API though. At this point, the plan is to continue to support real 3D through the OpenGL API.

SDL and OpenAL (among others)
by Eugenia Loli

So, I was always wondering if there is going to be a 'real' integration between OpenAL and SDL. Currently, a lot of people are just using SDL_mixer which does a pretty good job for little shareware/oss games, but when it comes to commercial sound, 3D positioning and all these buzzwords, SDL needs OpenAL to break through against the goodies of DirectX has to offer.

Also, what about a wrapper against D3D? There is currently a nice integration with OpenGL, when SDL needs to use 3D acceleration, but under Windows (where a lot of SDL games already exist) most of the coders are using D3D. Also, based on the fact that D3D 8 is not as bloated as previous versions, a wrapper for other OSes could be easily achieved (IMHO).

Last question, again on the spirit of 'SDL Vs DirectX', are there any plans for more support for more input devices, like force feedback wheels etc.

Take care and thank you for all the hard work you have put on SDL the last few years. (and also greatly thank you for the BeOS port! :)

SL: Okay, there are several questions here. First, thanks for the appreciation! It should go to all the developers who have contributed to SDL and to products using it, because without them, it would not have become the great API that it is.

As for integration between SDL and OpenAL... SDL audio is fairly lightweight and designed to have mixer implementations be built on top of it. OpenAL is a heavy-weight 3D audio API. Different applications have different needs, and one audio API may suit a particular use better than another. You can always choose to use SDL for video and OpenAL for audio, or SDL for audio and another API for video, etc., you have many choices in the design of your game.

As an aside, there is support in the Linux implementation of OpenAL for using SDL as a back-end, and in fact this was used at one point to get the Linux implementation working on Windows. However, this isn't generally needed because of great native audio support.

There are no plans for a Direct3D wrapper for SDL. OpenGL works well on Linux, Windows, MacOS, and many other platforms.

Finally, yes, the device support and event model in SDL 1.3 will handle a much wider range of devices. Whether or not force feedback support will be included will depend on the state of the drivers for these devices across the range of platforms that SDL supports.

Gamecube, Xbox?
by evilMoogle

With SDL for PS2, are there any plans to do the same for the other next-gen platforms, the Gamecube and the Xbox?

SL: I don't know of any plans, but I'm sure somebody will do something as an exercise at some point. That's one of the great things about open source software. I'm constantly surprised at what people are doing with SDL.

higher level?
by magic

With X-Box supporting DirectX only (and a special version at that) and PS2 not supporting OpenGL in general, some of the utility of SDL is lost. For example, I can write a SDL & OpenGL game that compiles and runs on OSX, Linux, and Win32. But window, input, thread and audio management are the least of my problems when moving to X-Box or PS2... I have to rewrite my whole graphics pipeline!

There are, of course, some very good commercial 3D API's that will abstract over this problem. One of the strengths of SDL has been that you have abstracted over the low level and have avoided getting into the sticky business of fighting OpenGL and Direct3D for the 3D API. This also limits the utility of SDL, however, because of the lack of a solid, free API for abstracting the 3D API.

Do you see SDL moving higher up the graphics pipeline in the future, or is it your intent to continue to avoid higher level 3D calls?

SL: I like side-stepping the 3D API issue. :)

I don't plan on adding a 3D API abstraction at this point, however I'm open to the idea of getting a single working 3D API that would cover the platforms you mention. My suspicion, with my limited experience with the PS2 hardware, is that it would take longer to write a functional API that could cover the differences in platforms than it would to get a working subset of OpenGL implemented. There's a reason that many PS2 developers write directly to the hardware.

Sony Development Costs
by debrain

Sony charges stiff fees for Playstation (2) development licenses. Was one of the primary focuses of SDL a way to circumvent these fees, broaden the PS2 platform, broaden the SDL platform, or broaden Linux as a viable game platform?

SL: Mostly the port was done as a fun toy. The intention was to broaden the SDL platform, and possibly allow the average person to write games that would run on the Sony Playstation.

End-user availability?
by DeadMeat (TM)

I brought this up before when the port was announced, but nobody knew the exact answer, so maybe I can get it straight from the horse's mouth ...

From what I understand, the PS2 Linux distro uses a proprietary, binary-only driver/library/program to allow programmers to access the PS2's graphics chip. My question is, how will this hinder end users' ability to get their hands on SDL-based PS2 games?

Does this mean they'll have to buy a copy of the $200 Linux development kit? Or are developers allowed to freely redistribute the graphics runtimes? (Or have you found some other way around this, perhaps by accessing the PS2 hardware without the binary runtime?)

I'm just afraid that most PS2 gamers (read: non-geeks) won't find SDL games too attractive if they have to buy a $200 Linux kit to play them.

SL: The SDL port runs on Sony's Public Beta of Linux on the Playstation 2. This public beta is loosely based on a derivative of RedHat Linux, and works just like any other Linux system. It boots from a memory card, but once booted, it can access the network and hard drive like a UNIX workstation. You can download software RPM archives that were built on Linux for the PS2 and install them normally. This is the way I distribute the SDL runtime packages and Maelstrom for the PlayStation 2.

Since the Linux beta is publicly available only in Japan, I'm not sure what would be included in a commercial product that would be released in the U.S..

MikeCamel writes: "The BBC announced today that Fred Hoyle, astronomer, science populariser and science fiction writer, died yesterday, aged 86. He is best known for having coined the phrase 'Big Bang,' though he was actually an opponent of the idea, and advocated the 'steady state' theory. He also believed that life didn't start on Earth, but that we were 'seeded' from outer space."

farrellj adds: "Hoyle was famous for a number of things, inventing the term 'Big Bang,' figuring out how stars create the heavier elements, and his most controversial, the idea that the seeds of life on earth came from space. He was also a noted Science Fiction writer, with many books, sometimes co-authored with his son, Geoffrey. We have lost one of the more original thinkers in the field of Astrophysics. You can read more at the NY Times site. (free reg. required, yadda yadda)"

SyD writes " Apparently there is a major security hole on Hotmail that could allow crackers to read your e-mail. A hacking group known as root core discovered the hole and reported it to Microsoft. " This isn't the first time that the folks who are gonna give us a internet wide universal login system had a hole. The funny part is that I posted a story almost exactly like this like 2 years ago, and about once a week, someone emails me and says "I think my boyfriend/girlfriend is cheating on me and I really need to know the backdoor into hotmail to find out". No I'm not kidding. You can't make that stuff up.

bubblegoose writes: "There is a large radiation storm in progress caused by a solar flare on the backside of the Sun. Here's a story from Spaceweather. It has a pretty cool effect on radio signals. I was picking up a 6000 Watt North Carolina FM station from near Philly." Bubblegoose also brings you this link to dxing.com, a site all about listening in when freak atmospheric conditions create unusual RF propagation patterns.

Skavookie writes: "Newsweek has an article about the Sklyarov case that I'm sure a lot of Slashdotters agree with." Sort of preaching to the choir here, but in Newsweek it will reach a lot of people who wouldn't have known about the case at all otherwise. And yeah, Levy is the guy behind Crypto and Hackers.

HarlanC writes: "This story discusses the arrest of two Korean brothers who run a website [warning, page requires Korean language support] that allows peer-to-peer file sharing. Note that the Recording Industry Association of Korea reports local companies lost $154 million in sales in 2000 due to use of the program, even though sales increased to $31.5 million in total sales in 2000 from $29.2 million in 1999."

marmaluke writes: "Check out this story at Techtv.com. They built an explosion containment facility at Lawrence Livermore Lab that can take a punch and won't wake up the neighbors. They are going to use it for 'assessing the performance of the non-nuclear, or "primary," component in stockpiled nuclear weapons.' I just think it would be cool to have a little room to blow stuff up in! Anyone got any old PCs that you just don't know what to do with?" Also sounds like a good Dr. No / Dr. Evil unseen-extermination chamber.

ianchaos writes: "According to an article in New Scientist, solar cells that 'self assemble' from a liquid have been developed by scientists at the University of Cambridge. The breakthrough could make it cheap and easy to cover large areas, like roofs, with efficient, ultra-thin solar cell coatings. Now they just need to try coating clothes with the stuff to make the wearables more viable."

sgups writes: "An article in the Toronto Star says NASA was finally able to launch its robotic explorer named Genesis to gather and return tiny particles of the sun after being delayed for 9 days. The samples will be returned sometime in 2004. It will gather atoms from solar winds at a point about 148 million kms from the sun and these would be the first time extra terrestrial samples will be returned since Apollo 17's moonwalkers brought back one last bundle of lunar rocks in December 1972."

dunkerz writes: "The BBC News site has an article on how the great chess players play so well: they use a different part of their brain (or so German scientists say)."

BrentRJones writes: "Fly saliva could protect us from a dangerous disease, says this article from Nature. Reality is always stranger than fiction." This disease is one of the possible causes of Gulf War Syndrome.

tsieling writes "The local Vancouver gutterpress, Vancouver Sun, is reporting that a local with a name whose initials and last name spell out Armani has been allowed to keep the domain armani.com. A refreshing decision from the often-tilted balance that the UN domain posse tries to strike. Check it out."

Pru writes: "Over at MSNBC.. ( yah yah just ignore the first two letters) there is an interesting article about a camera that is swallowable. It transmits its pictures back wirelessly. And with price at only $450 a camera, disposable of course, it can't be too long before cameras this size are well down under $100 -- now then the fun does begin ..." Just imagine the potential for cam sites now. I imagine now in addition to the living room cam, bedroom cam, and bathroom cam, they'll have to have a colon cam.

Markgor writes "Just finished looking through some pictures from the recent Vintage Computer Festival in Marlboro, Massachussetts, the first time that it's been held on the East coast. The best pic has to be the one of the Sol-20. Here in Ottawa, we have a bunch of vintage computers sitting in one of our museums, including an Altair, but I haven't seen an intact Sol-20 in a long long time"

cbirdsong64 writes: "Planet Gamecube has a story about the Gamecube launch quantities for the U.S. and Japan. Apparently, the Japanese launch will consist of 500,000 Gamecubes, all purple. Nearly 900,000 Gamecubes will be shipped this year in Japan. The North American launch will have 1.1 million (!!) units availiable, with no colors announced. The Big N plans to ship a total of four million Gamecubes worldwide by March 2002. They're doing a whole lot better than Sony did last Christmas." Maybe when the much-anticipated Gamecube ships, I can pick up a discounted PS2 and GT3 :)