Slashdot Mirror

bubblywatr writes: "A Caltech physics professor, Dr. Zewail, has apparently resolved the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle (that the velocity and position of an electron cannot be determined simultaneously). He proposes in a recent issue of Nature(July 19: " The Fog that was not"), that one can solve, USING CLASSICAL PHYSICS (ie: f=ma), for the location and the position in space of a fundamental particle simultaneously by using FEMTOSECOND DATA COLLECTION (which can pick up atomic energy states), WHILE THE WAVEFORMS OF MATTER ARE IN COHERENCE (which minimizes the error of the femtosecond data because of the localizing effects of coherence). "

What does this mean? Femtosecond resolution apparently provides the localization needed to treat electrons as classical spheres in space, nearly following Newtonian physics. However, femtosecond chemistry has been around for years, so why hasn't this worked yet? Well, there is a great deal of error in gathering energy values, even when energies are collected at femtosecond intervals. This is due to freaky quantum physics i don't understand. But, as Zewail states, 'this freaky quantum error can be nearly eliminated if the matter is made coherent'. This means that the wavelike properties of matter are superimposed leading to the addition or destruction of waveforms. This is like the 'double slit experiment', in which regular light is shown through two slits, the waveforms either completely add or subtract, and what you see on the wall is a bunch of tiny spots of light at a defined point in space."

farrellj writes: "According to SF Wire, TRON is going to be released in a 20th anniversary DVD release...and they are working on a sequal, TRON 2.0. The DVD will be released Jan 15, 2002. There is also a new game in development too!" The rumors have been circulating for years. Maybe they'll get Lucy Lawless to demonstrate the proper application of a spinning disk.

robvasquez writes "Dr. Tom has done a review of a great $16.95 hard disk swapper. This could be a great tool for those of use who dual boot, without bootloaders, or danger to other drives/partitions. Flip the key and power the system up to the OS of your choice. Sure beats popping IDE cables on and off drives and boards." Some things are so simple its amazing they aren't more common. Totally clever idea.

Paul writes "I found this useful article, over at developerWorks Linux Zone that clearly explains RSA/DSA authentication. It covers what you need to get passwordless authentication implemented using RSA and DSA authentication protocols."

bwhalen writes: "Once again, China is demonstrating how much they love their citizens to have open communication. They have closed/demanded restructuring of a few thousand Internet Cafes; here's the story." Previous stories on China make clear that the Chinese government and the Chinese citizenry don't see eye-to-eye on how this whole Internet thing should work.

i8u writes ""It's hard to tell whether these things are a threat or an opportunity for ISPs. I'm talking about community wireless networks using inexpensive 802.11b radios and antennas operating in the 2.4 GHz spectrum band, and possibly other license-free bands." "

Un1v4c writes: "According to this article on MSN... "A Delaware-based archaeological group is sufficiently intrigued to send a diving team to an atoll 2,000 miles southwest of Hawaii to get an up-close look at whatever produced the rust-colored spots on the space photographs taken by Space Imaging of Thornton. "Nothing out there occurs naturally that's rust colored," said Rick Gallespie of the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery. He believes the rusty object just beyond the reef that surrounds the uninhabited atoll could be an engine and the landing gear of Earhart's Lockheed 10-E Special Electra."" See also this article on space.com and the picture in question. Apparently Earhart never had a piece of outhouse wash up on shore to help her escape.

pythorlh writes: "This site has plans submitted for a hotel on the moon. Interesting solution to the various engineering challenges. Also, Astronomy Picture of the Day has an artists concept." It's an insane cantilevered design that couldn't be built in full-gravity. I look forward to the day when "Low-Gravity Architectonics" is a required course for your B.Arch.

ahertz writes: "Just ran across another nifty keyboard, the FingerBoard from FingerWorks. It's like a giant touchpad (although the technology is a bit different), so you can type with virtually zero force. It also works as a mouse, and lets you perform guesture based commands. Would something like this be good for someone with RSI?" To me, this looks like the most unresponsive, most annoying possible keyboard, even if I'm a QUERTY typist rather than a shuffle-weird-disc-items typist, and trackpads always seem wibbly to me.

Slashback tonight with just a few small items: an update on the AOL vs. Gaim brouhaha (good news), a slight return to the NSA's recommendations on securing that legacy Windows box, and oh, by the way, the official launch of the Free Software antidote to paying fealty forever to Redmond.

Sometimes it's nice to catch a disease. A few days ago, michael posted that Ximian was about to release its Free Software answer to Microsoft's .NET. Now it's official. Miguel de Icaza adds some detail: "Hello guys, As of today, we launched Mono, a project to implement a GPL-ed Common Language Runtime, class libraries and C# compiler to be compatible with Microsoft's .NET Framework. You can look at the press release that we put out. We also have a FAQ that covers various points and tries to explain how this is not .NET."

Newsforge is carrying a piece which ties together a bit more as well to explain how the promised benefits of .NET, as amorphous as they are, can be addressed with these and other software. Miguel has seemingly been busy on the phone today.

Hornsby points as well to "a very interesting article on the implications of Microsoft's .NET technology on open source development. The article heavily quotes Miguel, who "believes that .NET is going to be the dominant development environment for the next 20 years."

They oughtta know how to secure a box. Jhereg42 writes: "The NSA has posted their W2k security guides on a new (Slash proof :-) web site. Also included are Cisco security guides and a 'Supporting Documents' section containing docs on "Defense in Depth" and I-Planet Web Server configuration."

This is what lawyers are for. Rolan writes: "Mark Spencer has sent out an update on AOL v GAIM. It seems that the request for assistance was met well beyond the goal of US$500, at US$1700! The letter and attached response. The response was converted from an attached rtf file into an html file by StarOffice 5.2."

Thanks to all who sent along a few bucks, and good luck to the Gaim folks in the Surreal Themepark World of Contested Trademarks.

Markgor writes: "There is an article in Wired News today about a group of students at the University of Alabama (Huntsville) who entered into the 2001 ASCE/MBT National Concrete Canoe Competition with a canoe that was built to achieve forward propulsion through matching natural resonance."

"Normally, if two objects share an exact natural resonance, the excited vibrations would usually lead the weaker object to fall apart, much like the Tacoma Narrows Bridge did when the equal frequencies of the wind and the structure of the bridge matched. However, since the canoe was designed with a special mix of concrete, it was flexible enough to withstand the vibrations and harnessed it into forward propulsion. They're now talking about its possible use in space, such as interplanetary probes using natural resonance to propel itself."

It was only a matter of time until someone posed this question to the readership. After its announcement, last year, a Slashdot reader wants to know your thoughts on the issues surrounding a potential Open Source port of Microsoft's .NET.

legLess asks: "The Register has an interesting article about reverse-engineering Microsoft's .NET. Apparently ESR, Bruce Perens and Miguel de Icaza have all dropped hints that the project's already underway. The Register has this to say, though, which I think is worth discussing:

...In fact it's a risky strategy for the Open Sorcerers. If .NET isn't reverse engineered, it will surely remain a Microsoft-only platform, as even the best funded efforts to port Microsoft technology to non-Windows platforms in the past have remained at best, a niche option. But if a good implementation is produced, it has the effect of legitimizing the platform, and making much more attractive to conservative, non-committed corporate buyers. Which is certainly the last thing the Beast's foes want to see."

Yes, if we could get .NET working on non-Microsoft platforms, it would be a good thing, but I don't think that the Redmond Redwood will roll over and let this happen without a fight. How difficult would it be to port .NET, if Microsoft is free to add, extend and modify the underlying protocol to break any third-party implementation that may rear its head?

Jamie adds: XNS is worth keeping an eye on. This is a nonprofit, (promised) open source infrastructure to allow individuals to save private data which corporations can only access if they agree to (legally enforceable) point-and-click contracts. In short, it's the groundwork for an open version of .NET focused on privacy, and more. But they're making progress slowly if at all. They have a good team heading it up, and I really want to see them succeed at something besides writing whitepapers, but their mailing lists have slowly gone cold and they still haven't released any source.

Joel writes: "A security robot called Marvin is patrolling the corridors of Waikato University (New Zealand). Science students at the university's mechatronics laboratory built the 1.5m-high Machine, which runs on two 12-volt car batteries and can patrol the university corridors at up to 35 km/h."

Gemini writes "Gamespot has an article on how Squaresoft is to go multiplatform, starting with Final Fantasy XI. This is good news for Nintendo." Well, good news for the Microsoft's X-Box as well, since they will release for it as well. But I'm sure Sony has happy to hear that it will be out for the PlayStation 2 first, since that will be key to their strategy for defeating the X-Box.

OberonX writes " Psion has issued some new PDA concepts which are quite breath-taking. My favourite is ACE but HALO looks quite neat too. Both of them are concepts, many situations are still to be taken care(like battery life) but they sure look promising. "

Canuckanuck writes: "The Space Telescope Institute which operates the Hubble Telecope has this story about the discovery of an unexpected hereto unknown population of wandering, planet-sized objects in the outer Milky Way that could be 80 times less massive than our beloved Earth. The viewing took place in M22 (a globular cluster) by way of microlensing. These things could be the smallest bodies ever seen beyond our solar system, which don't orbit a star. More information can be seen at JPL's website."

John Holkeboer writes: "Is biotech all that bad? The scourge celebre of environmentalists is gaining supporters right and left for nothing less than its environmental soundness. Genetically engineered corn requires less pesticide spray and is a renewable resource that could replace petroleum. For example, Dupont is developing "Sonora"- a stretch resistant fiber that can compete with polyester but isn't 100% petroleum-based. As one industry chemist points out, "Clearly, for the chemical industry, sustainable development is the future."" The Village Voice also has a good biotech article this week, talking about the genetically engineered bollworms that we mentioned a few months ago.

Motor writes "Caldera is to "introduce per-seat licenses for their upcoming OpenLinux Workstation 3.1." I'm not sure how I feel about this. I guess theoretically they can do it, although it sure feels wrong somehow. But I've always been somewhat wary of Caldera.

Matt Watson writes: "MSNBC is running this story on Compaq's shifting mainly to software and services. The article states that the sluggish PC market is partly to blame." More specifically, Compaq is talking about "industry-specific" packages. Niche marketing, basically, but with a very lage company that can concentrate on certain areas.

meta5table writes "Scientists have just discovered a previously extinct tree in Mauritius. This is not quite as significant as the Wollemi Pine, but it is still pretty cool. Now I just wish someone would find a thylacine."

Peter Kuhns writes: "Awesome article about Big Brother using USGS satellite photos to ferret out a fraudulent farming company that scammed insurance companies over lost crops. The USGS apparantly takes lots of infrared (re:remote sensing) photos of the entire nation and stores this data going back a number of years. This is a big wake up call to farmers, the government, and potentially the USGS, who could suddenly be in the business of big business." Another very cool use of USGS data is drawmap, which I discovered a few months ago.

Welcome to Slashback for the evening: Yes, another big security problem with the world's second-most popular web server, a slight revision of the plight of Silicon Valley's homeless, and good news from the Indymedia front.

Remember, Free Software Sinks Ships curtS was one of the many to point out that "MSNBC has an article about a security hole you could throw a cat through." This might be more exciting if it was the first time, but jamie posted about a very similar-sounding flaw a few months ago.

Calling off the dogs of war. An anonymous reader writes: "Slashdot reported that Indymedia had received a court order to hand over the logs and other records pertaining to the IMC's coverage of anti-globalization protests in Quebec City. Now FBI has dropped the case. Here is the press release."

phunhippy points to coverage at Wired as well.

This Old House - gr8dane writes "I was just checking out the Sunday posting on /. about .commers in homeless shelters and Salon is running an update to the same story. The previous post prompted quite a bit of feedback on /. and this update article seems to support those who felt the Sunday article wasn't indicative of the industry as a whole. 'John Sacrosante says he went from six figures to a shelter. His friends say there's something fishy in San Jose.' Quite interesting ... "

DoctorZ writes: "In response to reading the recent article about Zero-Knowledge's withdrawal from Linux development for Freedom. I emailed them discussing my concerns along with everyone else's. Here was their response:

'Hello,

We know....

We understand your disappointment. It is not a easy decision. We are not giving up on Linux. Our entire Freedom Network is Linux based!This decision was taken in response to the number of people purchasing the Linux version as compared to the number purchasing the Windows version. While many of us at Zero-Knowledge are Linux enthusiasts, the number of interested Linux users downloading Freedom simply didn't warrant continued development efforts, and we have chosen instead to apply our development resources in a way that will maximize value to our customers.

Once again, thank you for expressing your concerns.

Regards,

Alan"

DoctorNathaniel writes "The Sudbury Neutrino Observatory has just released it's first results. SNO is basically a big tank of heavy water in a deep, dark mine in Canada that is used to detect particles coming from the sun. This result is very cool to anyone following the the science of neutrino oscillations: the new data goes a step further to proving neutrinos have mass, and that neutrinos from the sun can 'change flavour' into different kinds of neutrino. The data exclude "sterile" solar neutrinos. This data expands and compliments the results announced by Super-Kamiokande in the last few years. My glee in all this is of course partially due to the fact that I'm a collaborator on the SNO project.... a regular 'SNO-flake'."

Bithy writes: "Thought you might find this to be interesting, especially on the heels of Jurassic Park 3. These beasts look like something out of an artist's imagination, especially the sloth-like herbivore." Apparently, this is the first time that that these "sloth-clawed" dinosaurs have been found in North America.

cygnus writes: "Hardcore tech upstart site ExtremeTech.com got to check out an nVidia reference board, their findings are here. While most of the drivers and hardware were beta, they gave it some positive play. The story has a few large photos that are worth a gander... The reference board has only two PCI slots and no onboard Ethernet. Ouch. I'll stick with my Mac for now."

Kengineer asks: "I've heard a lot of hype about techies with MBA's being in high demand. I'm an Engineer who does validation for a Voice over IP company, and before that I coded software projects for a controls automation company. I am considering returning to school to seek an MBA, so I'd like to hear from those of you 'dotters who already have buisness degrees, and your post-MBA experiences."

$hy_guy asks: "I hope you guys can give me a hand here. I wanted to purchase a new Power Book but I want to be able to still connect to my office via a VPN connection. I am not going into why I'm going to purchase a Power Book but I'm looking for some solutions. Is there anything available for OS9 or OSX, I would assume that there would be a better possiblitiy with OSX. I also rather not run a Windows emulator within OS9 or OSX to do this."

accountant asks: "A very close friend of mine is a qualified usability tester. She gained her Master's Degree last September and now has a good job with a mega corporation. Unfortunately, times being what they are that mega corporation is looking at a mega merger and mega job cuts. It's tough finding jobs in usability at the moment (a lot of companies haven't grasped the concept of usability, nor usability specialists, and a lot of dot coms have no cash to take on more staff). It's especially tough if you have less than one year of experience. Usability, especially on the desk top, is a major priority for Open Sourced environments like KDE and Gnome. Who's doing the testing in such Open Source environments? Are they doing sizeable studies, running focus groups and doing statistical analysis on user test results? Money is handy, of course, but there must be opportunities to feed a resume and help the Open Source community. Your thoughts and URLs please?"

Baddas writes: "Anarchy Online, a MMORPG from Funcom scheduled to come out on the 27th of July, is currently in it's 4th series of beta testing. This beta has about 100,000 people involved by mailed keys. However, the more interesting thing is that each of these people has to download a CD worth of information from servers mostly located in the EU. This may well be one of the largest tests of trans-continental bandwidth ever, as I've never heard of 100,000 people trying to download a single game in the space of 3 days or so (the length of time the emails went out over). This isn't some 150Mb D2 test or something, this is a full 600Mb of data. I think this could be an ideal location to use Swarmcast from OpenCola, since they could enable all of us waiting on this side of the pond to get the files."

Markgor writes "Found an interesting article on the recovery of treasures from the sunken Egyptian city of Herakleion. The city, along with the cities of Canopus and Menouthis, sank to the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea after a massive earthquake. The cities were only known through Greek tragedies, travel logs, and legends until last year when they were rediscovered." As a kid, I always wanted to be in archeology - things are different obviously. This city is interesting - I've seen shots of it found by using satellite photos of the seabed.

gatkinso asks: "My first job after leaving college was programming on an MAI Basic Four minicomputer (an MPx 8000). Even then I could tell that this was a hideous platform - and that was in comparision to the VAX that my college was running! Fast forward 11 years... and I am faced with such a beast again. This time I am converting a small businesses MAI system to a Linux based solution as opposed to actually maintaining the system. My problem is this: how to get the data from the MAI system to the PC? The MAI system does support ethernet, but this particular system doesn't have a NIC (or for that matter a driver for the nonexistant card). I can set up a serial connection, but the fastest rate I can achieve is 9600 baud. Tape is a solution.... but were are talking about 9 - 10GB of data.... and this will require close to 100 tapes! So what I am looking for is information about MAI Basic Four systems - where can I get hardware and software for such a beast? Also, documentation would be nice (I have a fairly complete set of documentation already, but more is always welcome)."

openbear asks: "Last year the loft complex that I live in installed video cameras at the front gate so residents can see their visitors before they buzz them in. I have no problem with this, by itself it is a cool idea/ Now a small group of overprotective residents have convinced the property management to install video cameras in all of the main hallways on each floor of our building. This is where I have a problem. The reason is because the locations for the new video cameras will wind up capturing the front doors of about twenty residents in the building. Add the fact that the video feeds from these new cameras will be recorded and saved for two months and the situation gets legally-questionable quickly. So here is my question: We have all become accustom to video surveillance cameras in public places. We don't think twice about a camera in a department store or in the hallway of a hotel, but how would you feel about cameras in the building that you call home? Isn't there some law stopping the property management from recording who goes in and out of peoples apartments even if it is done by accident?" Updated!

Update: 06/05 5PM EST by C :Sean M. Bober sends in this related question, which attempts to put a humorous spin on things while asking a very important question: "Recently, my 'technical lead' has taken a liking to setting his webcam on the cubicle wall so that he can observe us working. First of all, I would like some fun and creative ways to get him back. Secondly, I would like some feedback as to the ethics of this situation. Finally, I would like some discussion as to it's long-term impact on employee morale..."

Joane Lispton asks: "I would like to ask the Slashdot crowd if they can help me do the following: I want to fit a x86 motherboard, two drives (Maxtor HD and CD-RW unit) and _two_ PCI cards into a 1U case (plus fan & power supply). Is this feasible? I was wondering whether there is some sort of "L-shaped" adapter that allows you to place PCI cards PARALLEL to the motherboard... Any tips are greatly appreciated!" I distinctly remember something like this existing for ISA cards, (it plugged into the normal ISA slot and had ISA slots that mounted parallel to the motherboard). Has a PCI equivalent been introduced?

person-0.9a writes: "It seems that the ccTLD organization is very unhappy with how little they get from ICANN. They're so unhappy in fact that the ccTLD's have removed themselves from ICANN. Check out this article on zdnet for the full story."

dameon asks: "I have been looking at using samba to serve NT Files in my office. Currently we use NT servers and pay a premium for HP NetServers. I recently arranged the purchase of a small cluster and a 1.5TB NAS device for some CFD calculations we are doing. My NT Server is scheduled to be replaced this year, and I don't want to spend any more money than I have to. So, I wanted to use the existing VA NAS device to do the serving. I ran into one problem: the lack of commercial Anti-viral software for Linux. My company (large to say the least) uses Norton Antivirus exclusively. They will not accept anything else. I cannot guarantee that the client PC's all have updated Virus Definition files, so I need to have the server protected. My question is this: What will it take to get commercial Anti-Viral packages to list Linux as a supported platform? I am surprised this hasn't been a bigger issue to date. Or perhaps I am missing something." Anti-virus scanners aren't anything new to Open Source software, is this the reason why players like Symantec haven't tried to break into it? If not, what would Unix users need to do to convince Symantec and other commercial entities that there really is a market for native virus scanners?

g8oz writes "Compaq is trying to 'visioneer' its way to the future. Cringe-worthy buzzword, yes, but check out how they've combined the notebook/desktop computer into one. Lick your lips here." Some of the ultra-thin laptop designs look interesting to me, but as to the others, there's no accounting for taste, I guess;)

Nikato Muirhead writes: "Need I say more?" and points to this page at LinuxToday which says that Mandrake is preparing a beta -- for PPC. Considering the price of a used-but-decent G3, this sounds fun to get in on. (E-mailing sympa@linux-mandrake.com with "SUB cooker-ppc" in the body will start you on the road to beta-testerhood.)

jonbrewer writes: "The NYTimes is running a great article talking about the growing trend of Diesel cars in Europe, their fantastic mileage, and the fact that America ignores them. While the article wows us with 78mpg for the Audi A2, I'm happy with the 45mpg my TDI Golf makes." Until diesel pumps are everywhere, I think I'll hold out for my solar/hydrogen-fuel-cell/flywheel hybrid.

rlsnow writes "Kubrick's (Spielberg's) upcoming movie AI has a promotional campaign to warm the hearts and blow the minds of puzzle-hungry science-fiction lovers everywhere; more than 3800 of them at last count, in fact. The group's latest accomplishment has been the development of a distributed computing client to brute force one of the more fiendish puzzles. The combined power of this group is pretty incredible -- the emergent phenomena of directed distributed cognition is startling. This may be the closest this many humans have come to developing a (somewhat focused) hive mind,, yet."

mizhi writes: "MSNBC reports that AOL6.0 will be bundled with Windows XP and given prominent placement on the desktop in exchange for exclusive Internet Explorer support. They're also talking about making Windows Media Player the exclusive player for AOL. No monopoly here... keep moving along..." What about MSN? Mozilla? If AOL isn't going to switch to a new Netscape or Mozilla browser to base their client upon, what happens to Netscape?

tahpot writes "The ACCC (Australian Competition and Consumer Commission) is about to challenge the DVD regional zoning system. The ACCC claim that the the system may breach the Australian Trade Practices Act. The ACCC claim that the zoning system prevents small film companies from distributing their movies around the world, with their sales generally too small to justify catering for region four. This reduces competition in the advantage of US studios." They've been thinking about this challenge for a while. Who knows if anything will come of it, but it can hardly hurt.

legLess writes: "Salon is carrying a thought-provoking article saying that 'The soft-porn fixation embarrassingly displayed at E3 is dooming the gaming industry to the nerd-geek ghetto.' It says that the gaming industry, in terms of sales and audience, is much closer to porn than Hollywood. Some great quotes ('[GOD] CEO Mike Wilson decided that preeminence should also involve a lot of cleavage and dwarfs'), and interesting thoughts ('Games should be treated as art, but they are becoming more and more like hamburger')."

Lukenary writes: "For years, Cisco and Juniper have been stuck in the "smart fringes, dumb core" view of routers and the Internet. If Larry Roberts and his new company, Caspian Networks, have their way, all those promises you've heard about the Web being the new entertainment medium may play out. "Smart" routers will be able to pick out different types of packets (text, voice, media, etc.) and intelligently sequence them to their destination more efficiently. Broadband that can really stream high-quality multimedia. Worldwide, high-quality IP-based long-distance telephone. Even faster dialup connections." While the Wired reporter doesn't question the greatness of these new routers, what it means is that the backbone companies gain greater control over what traffic they will and won't permit, what they'll speed up and slow down, etc. This is likely to increase their profits at the expense of the health and dynamicism of the overall network. ("You're a residential customer, you can't serve data, only consume it!") These are the issues we've looked at before here and here.

blitzrage writes "Here is some info on the long awaited Civilization III game from Sid Myer. Thankfully the patent got back to Sid Meier, after some games of hot potatoe with it. The story is on Neoseeker." Having large portions of my life to the original, II, Railroad Tycoon and Alpha Centauri, I'm not sure if I should be joyful about this, or fearful of the time I'll lose.

mduell submitted an MSNBC story about a company in Russia offering more trips to space. No docking with the space station for these tourists tho. No word on price... instead of a week in Soyuz capsule, how about you give me half of the multi-million-dollar-fee, and you can stay at my place and I'll get you drunk. You'll feel like you're in zero Gs, but with a bigger room.

kchayer asks: "If all goes well, I'm looking at purchasing some new hardware this summer to beef up my current system. However, despite some searching I've done on Google and elsewhere, I've been unable to determine an accurate answer for this question: How big of a power supply will I need? I am looking at an SMP (dual) Intel P-III 1ghz system, with three 80mm case fans, a high-end 7200 RPM IDE hard drive, a hard drive fan, high-end video card (possibly even Nvidia's new GeForce3), DVD, CD-RW, SBLive!, and other standard hardware. Is my current 300W ATX supply going to cut it? Or do I need something bigger? Suggestions as well as ways I can calculate potential power consumption would be appreciated."

Lleutierpe asks: "If you have built your own Playstation controller interface (using the DirectPad Pro interface) and have also upgraded to Windows 2000 for a measure of stability (i.e. you prefer crashes twice a month rather than once a day), you may have noticed that the drivers that supplied you with so much gaming pleasure no longer work. I myslf ran across the problem this weekend, as I gained enough spare parts to put together a dual-processor server (two 333 Mhz. P-IIs with 9 gigs and a Voodoo3) that I intended to use as a gaming server. As it is currently my best working computer, I was rather irritated to discover that not only would it not install my Analog PSX controller, but my computer had the gall to pretend like it was installing my controller. Needless to say, I was incensed. I set about in search of Win2k drivers, or even NT drivers in a pinch, but I found nothing after a full day of searching." So much for the "improved" driver support of Win2k. I remember trying to use Windows 2000 over a year ago, and I still remember having trouble getting drivers for hardware that worked just fine under NT4 or 98. Has this situation improved by now, or are there still drivers, like this one, that Windows 2000 still won't support?

"Seeing as my expertise lies in making things work that intend, but fail, to function rather than making things work that haven't the least dream of cooperating, I decided to put a query to the Slashdot users. Has anyone had any experience with porting Windows 95/98/SE joystick drivers to Windows 2000? I still haven't emailed the authors yet (who emphatically deny the existence of any NT-based drivers) because I would hate to bother people who had already provided me (free of charge) with schematics and drivers unless absolutely necessary. Anyone who could lend a hand in this matter would be profusely thanked. Let me know if I've overlooked anything, obvious or not.

For those of you who haven't run across the DirectPad Pro site yet, you should visit it. They have schematics to build interfaces for almost all consoles except for the Dreamcast, PS2, and the upcoming generation of consoles. The PSX dual-shock controller is excellent for playing games with complicated controls like Mechwarrior, since it has 12 buttons and 3 sets of axes."

dertx writes: "Just found a wire article about a recent crackdown on 400 CyberCafes in Tehran by the Iranian government. Apparently now anything enabling internet access in Iran must be 'registered' with an obviously state-run trade union. I guess this is cheaper to implement than China's site filtering system."

Motor was among the first of the hundreds of readers with this sad news: "Douglas Adams, author of the Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy has died of a heart attack, aged 49." I still remember the first time someone pointed out the Hitchiker's Guide to me, and what a changing point even the first few pages were. It's easy to see he'll be missed.

Motor writes: "The Register has an interview with Monte Davidoff, one of the men responsible (along with Gates and Allen) for the original Microsoft BASIC. So what does he think of Linux... CPRM... Python... RMS and GNU software? Great stuff."