Slashdot Mirror

dustpuppy writes: "This article talks about how volunteer students took over the administration and operation of the IT facilities at a University of Melbourne residential college. I thought the article worthwhile in that it should remind us that very few other industries have the opportunity where young people can step in and make a very real difference. We really are very lucky to live in the age that we do!" The article feels a little "gee-whiz!" and I hope student-run IT systems aren't are rare as this implies, but a positive case study is great to see. Seems like a lot of academic networks become embroiled in exercise-of-authority games instead of cooperation. Anyone with academic-net experiences, please speak up.

Jon_S asks: "I've been happily hacking on Linux for five years now, and actually started playing with computers back as a 7th grader in 1972 on a PDP-8. Somehow I didn't get into a directly computer-related field, but I soon will be. I'm going back for a masters in GIS and I will need to have some solid programming background. I've coded FORTRAN programs back in college, read lots of programming books, and have written my share of shell scripts. The one thing I haven't tackled is C or C++ programming." Put simply, the submittor is hoping to find some quality C/C++ courses on line. Any hints?

"I know I can handle this stuff, I'm a certifiable geek, but to learn something you have to do it. The only way I see myself progressing this way is to take a course that will present the right types of programming challenges that I will need to develop my skill.

Searching on Google brings up tons of courses, but there is no way to tell whether any of these are any good. There are some great courses at RIT and I know this is a good school (friend of mine got a M.S. online there), but the good classes are filled this quarter and will probably next as well."

John Q .Public writes "The Detroit Free press is reporting in this article attempts by Law enforcement in Wayne County and the Michigan State Legislature to require ISP's doing business there to verify all e-mail addresses with valid phone numbers or credit cards. One free ISP already is willing to log all phone numbers for access by the police." That free ISP is K-Mart's BlueLight.com, which is just, in their words, "being a good corporate citizen." I'm sure they'll be very successful at identifying everyone except the criminals.

coopergm asks: "I am an undergraduate nearing graduation, majoring in Biology and Mathematics & Statistics, with a bit of Computer Science as support. What graduate school (PhD) programs out there are the best for computational biology and bioinformatics? Obviously, Stanford, MIT, and Washington University in St. Louis have a serious edge by virtue of being associated with one of the major human and mouse Genome Sequencing Centers. How would one differentiate between these three? Are there other schools offering competitive bioinformatics programs in terms of reputation, quality of research and educational experience?"

sniglet999 asks: "I've got a PDA and a Nokia cellphone that can connect to the net. However the IR port on the phone is on the side, and the port on the PDA is on the top. This means I've got to hold the two together, line of site for the connection to work (with increasingly cramping hands, I might add). The idea of mounting velcro to a notepad, so that you could stick the PDA and the phone in the proper position sounds good, but I don't want velcro and it's associated adhesive attached permanently to either expensive device. 3M has some cool hooks that adhere to the wall with a pull strip. Pull the strip and the hook is removed, leaving no residue on the wall. Is there something like this on a velcro backing? Is there another solution? (Short of making and attaching a light pipe. The whole objective behind all of this was to carry less)!" These aren't the "cool hooks" the submittor had in mind, but might these serve as a way of mitigating the problem (since they are self mating, they don't suffer the major problems of velcro). Does anyone else have alternatives to velcro which they use and prefer?

Bolus asks: "I am a physician who is setting up a new adult medicine clinic with several other physicians. We are designing our clinic from the ground up with the latest computer technology. This will include computers in every exam room, a paperless electronic medical record, and a T1 for Internet access. Patients will have the ability to e-mail their physician and access parts of their chart online, such as medications and labs. What other kinds of online service would you want your doctor's office to offer? Instant messaging to your physician? A bulletin board for general medical questions? Chat groups? Video conferencing?"

Brendan asks: "As a consultant running a small company I regularly deal with many different companies and many other consultants. I just witnessed a company be blatantly ripped-off for many thousands of dollars for a product that was totally unsuitable to their requirements. The consultant who recommended and will implement this system stands to make a substantial amount of money on the deal. This begs the question: What About Ethics?" This is a question that we should think about every so often. In this day and age of dot-coms and IPOs, we all should really think about why we are in this business. Sure, there is good money to be made, but in the end, we are all about providing a service, whether that service is constructing a Web site, running a network or administrating a Web discussion board. And while you are providing that service, don't you want to feel proud about the job you are doing?

"This is not an uncommon occurrence. Other consultancy firms seem to regularly help customers make decisions that are in the best interest of the consultancy and not of the client. If a sales person manages to convince a company that their product is the latest and greatest and it turns out to be useless software that crashes regularly then that is the sign of either a good salesman or a bad manager. Caveat Emptor.

Consultants are are supposed to provide a service, not sell a product. I know that the consultant is the product and there may be other products that the consultant uses that are beneficial to the client but that are not what the consultants purpose. The consultant (and this includes contractors) is hired by the company on the assumption that they will perform their duties to the benefit of the company as would any other staff member.

Is it ethically correct for me as a consultant to knowingly make decisions for the company that will increase the length or value of my contract even though I know it is not in their best interests? Obviously the answer is no.

I would hate to think that I am the exception to the rule but people in consulting with ethics appear to be few and far between. Where is the code of ethics for computing consultants and contractors? I have my own skeleton code of ethics but feel that it is time to put together a real one that could be used by consultants and contractors around the world. We are supposedly professionals and other professionals such as doctors and lawyers have one. Why not us?"

In a related question, E TiE asks: "What are good books for computer ethics and history?" Would anyone out there like to pass him a few ISBNs?

The_Myth writes "The Sydney Morning Herald today published an article on China's regime to curtail the Internet. Basically they control the one gateway to the net from their country and screen anything they deem to be undesirable. Full Article is here. Are any other countries doing this?" Well, this is nothing new - China has been doing this for years, and periodically announces crackdowns, which is what I think this is.

Wolverine writes "IBM has finally seen the light and modified the BIOS on their T20/T21 laptops so users can now install FreeBSD without worrying about turning their machine into a paperweight. Although the official fix is listed as a fix for "System can not boot from a hard disk with partition ID of n5h.(n is 1 or greater)", they may have well just posted "You can install FreeBSD so stop whining". ThinkPad T20 bios can be found here and T21 bios update can be found here."

jmoo writes: "Ars Technica has an article on startup company looking to produce holographic storage for commercial sale. The company, InPhase, supposedly is backed by Lucent and is predicting storage densities of 300 gigabits per square inch." "Backed by Lucent" certainly sounds a lot less sketchy than the repeated but never confirmed claims of extremely dense storage using multi-layer CD-ROMs.

starseeker writes: "It looks like the financial picture is not good for Applix - "the company intends to report VistaSource as a discontinued operation in its audited financial statements." The financial report is online. What happens to Applixware Office now?" For the backstory: Vistasource is the division of Applix - we've talked about this before. Still with the various K* options, the G* options, and OpenOffice the competition is tough - not to mention Abiword and all the others.

St0rk asks: "I am trying to make sense of someone else's Java code. He is another programmer in my team, but uses different programming style that generates tons of classes (just as the tick books say ;-). We are talking about 300 files, and approximately 430 classes here. I am looking for a tool/package/program that can take a relatively big amount of OO source code (Java classes) and build useful diagrams/documentation. Please note that I used 'useful.' Most of the tools out there can produce some hierarchy diagrams, but they either get too unreadable when one is dealing with so many classes, or miss too much (for example when a class A has a Vector that is going to be filled with objects of type B, there won't be a link between A and B genereated). It would be great if I can good prints as well. Any suggestions based on real life experience? (Rational Rose is too expensive, BTW)"

urbanjunkie asks: "I want to ensure my web site/database farm/whatever is as available as possible, so I checked out many HA (High Availability) packages for Linux. It seems that they -all- seem to want me to use shared storage. I don't want to use shared storage since it moves the point of failure to the disk array. I know that the disk array can be RAIDed etc, but what about a fire, power loss and any of the other things that can go wrong? I'd prefer to have something that replicated changes made to one disk to another disk located in a separate PC that may well be in a location 100 metres away. Is there anything open sourced that can do this?"

mozzer asks: "I'm doing an independent study course in university, and I'm writing an article on video games and academics - basically seeing if there's a correlation between the two. My prof suggested I take a sample of upper year, business strategy students, and see how well they fair at a strategy game (like Starcraft) and then compare how well they do in the game, to how well they did in the class. The question I'd like to ask is: What game do you think would be good to use? I'm afraid people might already know how to play Starcraft, which will skew the results (considering it has a fairly steep learning curve for new players). Or if there are any other ways we could test this sort of thing?"

Slack writes: "The Orlando Sentinal is reporting that China has signed a deal with a German consortium to build the world's first commercial train to float on magnetic fields."

Max Entropy writes: "This article in The New York Times (free reg. req'd) discusses new research into the atmosphere of the planet Venus. First scientists believed it was electromagnetically active--lightning storms, etc.--and now they're not so sure. Also, the scientists at SRI International have discovered a green glow on the nighttime side of the planet that is attributable to the presence of a concentration of excited oxygen atoms, whereas Russian spacecraft detected no such atoms 25 years ago. The sun is theorized as a possible culprit-- its high point in its 11-year cycle might be responsible for charging the atoms and making them glow green."

Pentapod asks: "I'm giving in to RSI and looking for a trackball mouse. I've tried the Logitech Marble Wheel but didn't find it very comfortable for my small hands. Now I'm looking for a thumb-operated trackball like the Logitech Trackman Wheel Mouse or the Microsoft Trackball Optical Mouse. These two look most promising, but there's also the Logitech Marble Mouse and the Logitech TrackMan FX among others. My question to Slashdot - the prices vary by up to A$100. So is there a real difference? What is it? Is the Microsoft 'Intelli-eye' technology really 'new' and better? Has anyone done any comparison between trackball models?"

eclectro writes "The EFF representing 2600 has appealed the district court's decision that banned the posting of the DeCSS source code on websites. The case will be argued in April." EFF's brief makes good reading. If this is new to you, we've posted a few things about the DeCSS cases before.

Technodummy asks: "I travel a lot, and need a reliable webmail address. Since Hotmail was taken over, it's gone downhill, but I haven't be able to find a reliable replacement. I also share a net account, so POP is not the answer. Any ideas?" What things do you all like about web-based email services and what aspects of them do you think can be improved on? Are there any services out there that allow you to use HTTPS to retrieve your mail rather than plain old HTTP?

Max Entropy writes: "I can't make this up, guys. NASA plans to shoot a comet with a copper missile according to this article from Reuters' Chilean bureau. It says: 'In January 2004, a rocket would launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida, a spacecraft that would orbit the sun. In July 2005 the spacecraft would separate from a battery-powered, copper projectile that would collide with the comet 24 hours later at a velocity of 6 miles (10 km) per second....It would produce a crater the width of a football field and up to 100 feet (30 meters) deep.' They say that using copper will help get more accurate readings."

kchayer asks: "I'm looking for an open-sourced system we can use to track workorders for help and problem requests on campus where I work. It seems that all products with similar functionality are designed more for bug tracking and correcting in the software development process: dcl, bugzilla, request tracker (not exactly what I want, or fully-featured enough), to name a few. While those are nice programs, and can be fudged to do what I want, I am interested in something specifically designed to track requests for help solving computer problems among students and our various staff/faculty departments on campus."

"A web-based project (perhaps written in PHP or Perl) would be ideal (accessible from anywhere with a browser), and should include access for a secretary (or tech) to enter workorders; techs to access, modify, update, and close workorders; techs or management to track both tech productivity as well as history on individual machines (and servers, routers, switches, etc..). Additional nice features would be a searchable knowledgebase, so even the average user could attempt to troubleshoot a problem; other types of summaries and statistics; email reporting to techs of workorders they have to complete; a user-accessible interface to enter their own requests for help that techs could turn into workorders. I have seen commercial solutions to this, but being budget-limited and free software-concious, I'd rather go with something free. I know handling calls and delegating work is a must for any reasonably-sized IT department; how do other shops handle this? Anybody know of such an open source package out there?"

Lardmonster asks: "My laptop is P3-750, 192Mb, large hard-disk. It would be ideal for games & LAN parties, except the graphics chip is an 8Mb S3 3D-Savage MX. These folks make a PCI to PCMCIA Adaptor, but prices start at $695! I could build a new rig for that! Anyone know any cheaper alternatives? I'd dearly love to be able to use a Voodoo3 PCI (or similar) with the laptop." Something like this looks promising, but is this really the answer for better graphics on a portable computer? Are there PCI cards that will not work well with this adapter?

An interesting article about a web-based discussion system we've mentioned before: nebby writes "A while back Slashdot ran an article which pointed to a k5 submission by myself which discussed ideas about a proposal I had for a new moderation system. Half-empty is an online community with an open submission queue I've been building over the past year which implements this moderation system, among other things, and has been growing steadily with interesting posts and discussion about topics such as government, poetry, stories, and technology. Well, I'm proud to announce that the engine that drives Half-empty, Glasscode, is now available for download. It has advanced features such as distributed skins, category filtering and permissions, and the said global moderation system. Hit the link for how this all came to be, and what I'm hoping for the future."

BBSes, Half-Empty, Glasscode, and my sanity.

Just a bit more than a year ago, me and my good friend Isaac Oates (author of the Eternity BBS software from long ago) sat down and decided to create a website. We were missing the days of BBS yore, where discussion flowed with intellectual posts about all kinds of topics, trolls were sparse, and flames were hearty. We wanted it back. The root of all evil seen in online posting today, Isaac and I decided, was that people were not caring what all of their peers thought of them, and were not in anyway motivated to think through their posts. We also saw alot of the current weblogs out there restricted in what could be posted, and by whom. They were also confusing to the newbie (granted, half-empty is overwhelming right now), and we wanted anyone and everyone with a Internet connection to be able to stop sucking information out and start dumping some back in.

We wanted to create an online community (the kind that Katz has recently been raving about) that would have no limits on discussion and would by its nature make people want to get involved. It would allow the users to get an ongoing rush of content, or eliminate the content down to just being about, say, Birds. It would let the users know what other people thought of them. It would allow for the obvious identification and silencing of blatant trolls. It would be fun to use, and would be addictive.

We started chipping away last January, at the turn of the millenium. Unfortunately, Isaac was sucked away into the depths of UIUC, unable to continue the project. Fortunate or not for myself, this was a project stuck in my head and would not leave me alone until it was finished.. I'm sure most of you can relate. I became addicted to it, adding piece after piece, rethinking the architecture and rating/point system over and over again.. making myself a self-proclaimed psychologist of my users-to-be. "Should points be a reward, or a punishment?" .. "Will they rate stuff down they disagree with?" .. "How much of a focus should be on points, and how much on content?"

I spent most of my second semester freshman year at Cornell (when not doing homework or intoxicating myself) coding this beast. I rebuilt it from the ground up several times, and knew the source code much better than my Chemistry book (and boy, do my grades show this fact..) Summer came and went, and every night after seeing friends I would return home and sit in front of the screen hacking and tweaking away. I saved some cash and got it running on a overclocked Celeron off of e-bay. Half-empty had only one user, one voice, but this would all change soon enough.

I forget the exact day in September, probably the day after we got our cable modem, when I proclaimed to my housemates that we were going to test roadrunner's bandwidth and see what would happen. Knowing that I couldn't afford a real connection, my plan was to open the site, get a gigantic flood of users somehow, and pray that one of them sees what I'm trying to do and decides to help me out. I plugged it in, started it up, set up the DNS, and half-empty.org became live.

Now I needed some users.. I decided the most complicated part of the system (and the most discussable) was the moderation system, which still wasn't perfected. I wanted feedback about both the setup I was doing and the site itself, so I posted a kuro5hin article announcing the site and briefly mentioning the system. I had a steady stream of people checking it out then, the server was stable, and I was happy. A request was made for more information about the specific math involved, so I bit and typed up the in depth explanation linked above. A bunch of "Ideas" (half-empty's content) got posted, and discussion took place with only a few minor bumps.

About 100 people signed up that night. The next day, I was minding my own business when I heard a "Oh shit." from my housemate in the other room.. sure enough, we were about to get semi-Slashdotted (mind you, this was a cable modem) I killed my PC, grabbed the RAM out of it, slapped it into the server, prayed, and surprisingly it survived. I had 500 new users in two hours. The posts were coming in at a pretty crazy rate. (This was the only time that I saw the rate of input that I've envisioned since I started working on the project.)

Within a week or so, roadrunner took notice, and pulled the plug. I thought it was over for a while until I got an e-mail from Tim Wilde of dyndns services.. he had been a member of half-empty during the time it was up, and didn't want to see it fade away. Putting me into their slice of "cool stuff" on their budget (as Tim put it), half-empty would survive. I went into a coding spree for 48 hours, fixing any big bugs I could since the site was going to be dead for a few days. Tim arrived, put the box into the cage and plugged it in, and half-empty was back.

Of course, most of the folks who had been there originally had drifted away because of the downtime. The site has managed to addict a handful of people, however, and we've been trudging on ever since. There have been creative stories and plays discussed, politics, coding, and even a dirty joke or three :) It's become apparent that the moderation system, if nothing else, has caused people to read, preview, edit, and post their thoughts. I'm happy with what it's become, and can only hope that the mentality there will remain the same while the userbase gets larger.

So, today I've reached the end of this road, and probably the beginning of another. I've released the source to Glasscode, and (hopefully) have made it straightforward to setup and install. It's a Java-based servlet application, with many of the features seen in slashcode, with additions such as skinning, appending to posts, selective archiving, user tiers, category permissions and overviews, and plenty more. It provides a component based system for adding new types of content, and there is even an skin development kit to aid in the creation of new skins (which when accepted by the central server will be available to all Glasscode based sites.)

Hopefully this hasn't been too drawn out of a story to culminate in a software release.. I'm hoping that you've been entertained by my struggle against the need to code that most of us have learned to accept and embrace. One thing that many hackers need to learn that computers are just tools, tools which will be ultimately used by people. Linux, Gnome, Glasscode, and all software is there to help people do things or think in ways they couldn't before. With this in mind, Happy Hacking :)"

Alec Muzzy writes: "La-Z-Boy has finally realized that there is a market for geeks. A new chair called The E-Cliner they've developed features a built-in wireless keyboard from Sony as well as a data port and surge protector for your laptop. As if that wasn't cool enough, the arm rests have storage compartments for beverages and remote controls! All this chair is missing is a retractable LCD monitor and a set of satellite speakers behind the head rest!" Kurt The Pope moved out last week, and I just bought a recliner to replace the one he took with him ... if only I had known to hold out for a few weeks. I like the outlet idea: One time I got my laptop's power cable stuck in the retractable footrest. Sparks went flying and the metal supports sliced into the cable. It was sweet, except for the part where I had to wait a week to have electricity for my laptop ... but why does this chair have to come with 6 months of WebTV?

tf23 writes "ApacheToday's got an article about mod_perl and shared memory. The article is part IV of the improving mod_perl series. For any perl/apache coders (or anyone coding with Slash or Bender) this is a good read.
Quick links to the other parts:
Improving mod_perl Driven Site's Performance -- Part III: Code Profiling and Memory Measurement Techniques
Improving mod_perl Driven Site's Performance -- Part II: Benchmarking Applications
Improving mod_perl Driven Site's Performance -- Part I: Choosing Operating System and Hardware"
This is in part one of our holy grails, caching all of the comments for current stories. It would make those near 2000 comment stories a lot easier to stomach for the Web servers.

StoryMan and a lot of other people found this interesting: "Okay, here's a weird one. This is the first I've heard of it. A long article on MSNBC describes this new 'thing' called 'IT'. Apparently it can be assembled from a bunch of parts. Jobs loves it. Bezos loves it. But what is it? Anyone have any ideas? Is this for real?" I think it's an A-driven experimental swibble.

From "Service Call," a short story by Philip K. Dick:

The young man flushed, swallowed noisily, tried to grin, and then hurried on huskily, "Sir, I'm the repairman you asked for; I'm here to fix your swibble."

The facetious retort that came to Courtland's mind was one that later on he wished he had used. "Maybe," he wished he had said, "I don't want my swibble fixed. Maybe I like my swibble the way it is." But he didn't say that. Instead, he blinked, pulled the door in slightly, and said, "My what?"

"Yes, sir," the young man persisted. "The record of your swibble installation came to us as a matter of course. Usually we make an automatic adjustment inquiry, but your call preceded that -- so I'm here with complete service equipment. Now, as to the nature of your particular complaint..." Furiously, the young man pawed through the sheaf of papers on his clipboard. "Well, there's no point in looking for that; you can tell me orally. As you probably know, sir, we're not officially part of the vending corporation ... we have what is called an insurance-type coverage that comes into existence automatically, when your purchase is made. Of course, you can cancel the arrangement with us." Feebly, he tried a joke. "I have heard there're a couple of competitors in the service business."

Stern morality replaced humor. Pulling his lank body upright, he finished, "But let me say that we've been in the swibble repair business ever since old R.J. Wright introduced the first A-driven experimental model."

For a time, Courtland said nothing. Phantasmagoria swirled through his head: random quasi-technological thoughts, reflex evaluations and notations of no importance. So swibbles broke down, did they? Big-time business operations ... send out a repairman as soon as the deal is closed. Monopoly tactics ... squeeze out the competition before they have a chance. Kickback to the parent company, probably. Interwoven books.

[...]

A swibble. What the hell was a swibble? And he was on the in, industrially speaking. He read U.S. News, the Wall Street Journal. If there was a swibble he would have heard about it -- unless a swibble was some pip-squeak gadget for the home. Maybe that was it.

You can find this story in The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick, Volume 4: The Minority Report.

Thoughtfully, he added, "In fact I'd say the real war was a war over swibbles. I mean, it was the last war. It was the war between the people who wanted swibbles and those who didn't." Complacently, he finished, "Needless to say, we won."

Will G writes: "3DRage has posted an article entitled "Quantum Computers: How they work and How they will effect us" by Alan Cline. Not only can quantum computers run one billion times faster than typical silicon-based computers, but also theoretically, they can run and consume no energy. That being true, quantum computers could obsolete the silicon chip much as the transistor did the vacuum tube. This paper is intended for the general reader, and explains basic quantum computer features, and the paradoxical effects quantum theory produces in a practical world. This paper discusses how quantum computers originated, the inevitability of their use, and how they differ from classical computers." An interesting nugget to add to this comes from leelaw2000, who writes: "New Scientist have published this little news story about the development of a kind of quantum shielding that might help the development of real quantum computers. Now if they can just get Quake on it ..."

Mojo Jojo writes "There's a story on developerWorks about DARPA-funded work being done at Stanford Research Institute (aka SRI International) to develop soemthing called Event Monitoring Enabling Responses to Anomalous Live Disturbances (EMERALD) -- software components that are capable of providing anomaly and misuse detection for networks. EMERALD components monitor local activity, then work in conjunction with analysis engines for visualization, response, correlation, and data logging to provide a global picture of what's occurring throughout the network. Sort of like having beat cops and police call boxes throughout your network (or something)."

Cmdr_Pooky asks: "I like to play a lot of online games and like to use such things like Roger Wilco and play a LOT of Half-life. Is there a device that acts like a switch that can be activated with the feet? I would love to be able to touch a button with my left foot for talking to my clan mates and hold down another button to prime grenades. Anyone know of such a device?" As if game controllers didn't have enough buttons already, this might actually be something that may help some gamers (and get some of the annoying buttons off of the hand controllers!). Are there any such devices for PCs or consoles?

SuperRob writes "Ars Technica posted a story called "Laws that Don't Suck", outlining the new Telemarketing laws enacted or amended for 2001. Be sure to find out what your rights are, if Telemarketers piss you off as much as they piss off me."

chandas sent in linkage to a story running at ZD Net about rascism at Microsoft. Apparently seven former and current black employees want $5 billion, saying that Microsoft fosters a hostile work environment. Is racism an issue in the tech industry? I've been reading Chuck D's autobiography (He is smart as hell) and he talks a lot about racism in the sports and music industries so this subject has been on my mind a lot lately, but it never even crossed my mind that it might be an issue in the tech industry. Of course, as a pasty white boy I probably wouldn't even notice even though I've always thought of the internet as colorblind.

Popocatepetl writes "Apparently, you can get a job if you tell Indian government officials you can "hack" a government web site. This story is short on details, but may be interesting nonetheless, especially since the FBI is mentioned."

edmz asks: "As of this day anyone with resources can deploy their Web site and be accessible worldwide. Thanks to telcos wanting to charge for use of their infrastructure this might change soon, who knows. But the point is that its possible in this very moment. Now, let's be imaginative and think that in 10 years we will be able to have a truly wireless Internet. What things are being done now as to guarantee that we will have a public and big enough part of the spectrum so that we can broadcast, share and communicate as we do with the net now? Will all of the spectrum be private, and thus, possibly pay per use?" A wireless Internet, when created, will be one of the first major advances of the 21st century. How long will it take before it becomes a reality?

Cheshire Cat writes: "I came across an article at mercurycenter.com. It's about how the Roman Catholic Church is the largest ISP in the Philippines. While it is very low cost, it also filters out porn sites. An interesting quote from the article: '[A user] types in the Internet address for a Playboy Web site. Almost immediately, the computer displays this admonition: 'Thank God you were not able to enter that bad site. CBCPNet suggests that you access wholesome sites instead. God Bless You.'"

Paul Maud'Dib asks: "My mother is both a teacher at a local college as well as a writer for a major textbook publisher. She has spent the last four years writing, reviewing, rewriting, sending out for reviews, rewriting again, shifting focus, and then a little more rewriting. Unfortunately, she was paired with a cowriter that had good ideas but lacked the ambition to fulfill her part of the project, leaving my mother to write practically the entire book herself. These kinds of problems--review, rewriting, collaboration--as well as the general purpose of such a book (not to make money, but for education) seem to fit quite well into the OSS development model. Not to mention the $500+ most college students would save given such a model. Yet very few, if any, real textbooks have been developed and published in such a manner. What barriers, if any, prevent such publishing and what should be done to stimulate the OSS model in textbook publishing?"

falco writes "I'm just about to enter my softmore year in computer science and I have begun to question myself about my decision to become a computer scientist. I have been told by alot of graduates that CIS and CS majors are being hired for the same job for the same money. Is this true? Can anyone clear up any misconceptions and truths about this issue? If the previous is false, what are the differences in jobs that a CS major would receive compared to a CIS major? As I'm sure many of you know computer science is more difficult by a factor of 10. I've been questioning whether it's worth wracking my brain with all the math in the CS major. Help and advice would be appreciated."

nofx_3 writes: "Viahardware has a preview up of VIA Cyrix's Samuel 2 core processor. The Samuel 2 is the first .15Micron x86 processor, and has a die size below 50mm2. 3D performance is still lacking, but 2D performance is every bit the Celeron's equal. Also, it requires no active cooling. Sounds like a great Linux Webpad CPU." Remember when AMD was an also-ran instead of the (arguable) price/performance leader? Nice to hear about the smaller players, especially when they're making inexpensive integrated hardware my mom would like to use.

Tom asks: "I was once a Dvorak keyboard user but the fact that where ever I went I was forced me to go back to QWERT. IMHO the ultimate solution would be a small software independent hardware converter that acts between the keyboard and where you put in the motherboard. This solution would allow you to move to any computer and quickly use Dvorak without messing with software key remapping. I searched hard around the web and the only thing I found that was close to it was the Chameleon Keyboard Customizer also linked here (just scroll down a bit on this page) made by some company named Sirius Industries. Does anyone know where to get this converter or have any other hardware converters that they know exists? Or any type of schematic diagram that will let one build such a convert? Help is appreciated." The first link lists a number for Sirius Industries, but it was tied to a fax machine at the time of this writing. It would be nice to know if they are still in business and if there is any way of contacting them directly about their product.

Kinchie writes "Now that Warner Brothers (read clueless Muggles) owns Harry Potter body, soul, and Nimbus 2001, they have begun an all out litigious onslaught against fan sites; check the ZDNET story here. Great public relations move guys. I sure hope that you can manage to intimidate a few hundred children and children-at-heart. Falstaff was right about lawyers."

Zeus305 writes: "Today NuTec Sciences, Inc. will be announcing its purchase of the world's fastest commercial supercomputer, second overall only to ASCI White. NuTec will use and lease time on the 1,250 clustered IBM servers to analyse genes decoded by the human genome project to try to better understand the causes of diseases like cancer by running month-long algorithms that analyse the relationships between different areas of the genome. This beast will have 2.5 terabytes of RAM and 50 TB of disk space."

madumas writes: "This article reports that the crew of the ISS (or alpha, or...) seem to have some problems with their air scrubber. They need replacement parts so fix the regenerator. It's interesting to see that they are a failure away from an emergency evacuation. For now, they are planning the shipping of the spare parts that should be done Dec. 26. Let's hope for them it doesn't fail."

nicadic writes: "The FCC may add a requirement to the AOL-Time Warner merger agreement that would force AOL to make its IM system interoperable with at least one other provider of instant messaging services. Have a look at the full story here (www.washingtonpost.com)" With that small concession, it looks like the merger is likely to go through.

legLess asks: "I've been the Alpha Geek at a 50-person firm for 4 years, and now I'm leaving. The firm didn't have a real IT person before me (they'd only had a network for 6 months), but they absolutely need to hire one now. I'm going to need to be present for the interview, and I'm going to have to ask the tough questions, because nobody else here can. But I've never interviewed anyone before, and I've done very little interviewing myself. What's the best approach?" I'm sure quite a few of you have been in this position before. What help can you offer for those folks who may soon find themselves in this position?

"It won't be too hard to tell if someone's a good fit, personality-wise, but what about skills? Decision-making? Reaction in a crisis? I dislike the aggressive, confrontational style, and I believe it's counter-productive. I don't want to skirt concrete technical issues because we must be sure the person's qualified. OTOH, I don't want to give someone a written examination or stage a bunch of fake system emergencies to see how he or she performs. Do you have a stock list of questions? (e.g. What is the last mistake you have made? How did you solve the problem and what did you learn?) What's been successful for you (on either side of the desk), and what's failed?"

Chris Gardner writes "ZDNet has an interesting and informative article on the upcoming battle between XML standards proposed by Sun and Microsoft. Microsoft's standards lie at the heart of their .NET initiative."

dmatos writes: "Yet another game show (YAGS?) is going to send people off into space for winning. This time, however, it will be to the international space station, not the crummy old fungus infected mir. Now all you need to get into space is a good knowlege of trivia, and fluency in German. How long will it be before this plan is canceled as well?"

HomeySmurf asks: "I am wondering if anyone is interested in a free mathematical reference document in hypertext similar to the now unavailable Eric Weisstein's World of Mathematics (Slashdot article about its demise here). I know that the body of this work was by Eric Weisstein, but the information itself is fundamentally open, and it is a horrible shame that there is not another similar document project in mathematics. Or at least I haven't been able to find one. Many of the math world submissions and corrections were by various knowledgeable individuals, much like an open source project. I know there is a GPL-like license for documentation, and that it could really come into use here. I would certainly like to be involved in such a project, and there are many different directions this could take." I remember reading about Mathworld when we talked about its demise. It would be interesting to see if a group of people could come up with something similar. Any volunteers?

Reality Master 101 writes: "Saw this on Voodoo Extreme: id Software's Todd Hollenshead made some very interesting posts on Quake 3 World about Quake 3 on Linux. Calling the sales "disappointing" and saying the support was a "nightmare" due to the "multiple versions and everchanging kernels", he said there will not be a retail version of Q3 Team Arena. One thing I found especially interesting was that he said "retailers don't want it". Not good news for the Linux shrink-wrap software movement."

pfignaux writes: "From Steve Fox's CNET Insider, 'The world's first Internet-ready digital camera, a 3.34-megapixel model with a built-in Web browser ... You can also use the camera to send and receive images, movies, text, and voice memos via e-mail, and you can fax images directly from the camera as soon as you've taken them.' I seem to remember something like this in the movie, Until the End of the World, where Solveig Dommartin sends Sam Neil a video snapshot." Well, this probably must be qualified as the first (any counterarguments?) digital still camera with a built-in browser, but the Sony Vaio GT1 looks pretty Internet ready to me;)

winter@ES asks: "I'm looking for some "IP impairment" software for Linux. What I'd like is the ability to write some scripts that filtered/routed all traffic flowing through a box, with rules like 'For all traffic going to IP x.x.x.x, delay all frames by 400 miliseconds; reorder every 5th frame, and drop every 3rd frame.' There are remarkably few hardware/software solutions out there that I've been able to find to do this kind of thing, and the solutions that do exist are mostly targeted at backbone ATM-based networks. Anyone know of a nice open source tool for simulating poor network conditions?"

psychohorsie writes: "The BBC are reporting that the British intelligent services and the police want all of the telephone calls, e-mails and internet traffic in the countr to be logged and kept in storage for [7] years. If this comes to pass, this is a major blow to democracy in my opinion. They may have good intentions with this stuff to begin with ..." Hian Bosu also points to this story in The Observer . The shape of things to come?