Slashdot Mirror

shyam writes: "An international team of eight "satellite hunters," astronomers who pluck tiny specks of light out of the distant solar system, has discovered four new outer moons of Saturn orbiting at least 15 million kilometers (more than 9 million miles) from the surface of the giant planet. The discovery gives Saturn a total of 22 known moons, surpassing the 21 orbiting Uranus. Nothing is known about the four new moons except for their brightness. Estimates of their size -- between 10 and 50 kilometers (6-30 miles) across -- are based on assumptions of their reflectivity. Observed from Earth-bound observatories, the moons appear as faint dots of light moving around the planet. ( [Full] article)."

Let's start this off with SanLouBlues's submission about a video made by splicing old 8bit video games (I don't think it'll work on Linux, but it's worth finding a box to watch this). And now, the senseless destruction portion of the show: stevenma sent an ISP's excuse letter, including a photo of the bullet damage from the wire! friedo knows how to make a hard drive squeal, but on purpose. If that's not enough destruction for you, knisa sent in a story about a meteor destroying a 1980 Ford. Slightly less-destructive violence was submitted by Steve Stag, who notes that Nerf has discovered that their weapons appeal to adults too. (well duh!) An anonymous reader noted that Liam Neeson's lightsaber from Phantom Menace is being auctioned off for charity. WhyPanic sent us a site that talks about Vintage Unix. An anonymous reader noted that in Finland, you pay traffic violations based on your income, and this dot-com millionaire was fined $70,000 for 20 miles/hour over the speed limit! Speaking of dot-coms, warland wonders if todays dot-coms would get funding if they tried to pitch their ideas today? And now for the truly strange stuff: conraduno sent in a palindromic C program. NinjaPablo sent in a link about a guy breaking a centipede 14-year-old record by scoring 7,111,111 points (and I thought breaking 200,000 on joust made me cool ;) head_the_mongoose sent us "Call Me Darth", a Darth Vader site that simply needs to be seen.

Kagami asks: "In any discussion of the DMCA, CSS, and DeCSS, I've only seen two reasons mentioned for why someone would need to work around CSS: 1) to play DVD video on hardware with no licensed support (usually under Linux) and occasionally, 2) to use clips from a movie as part of a presentation. I kept expecting someone else to mention that that's only the tip of what the DMCA's encryption-breaking ban makes illegal. Surely I'm not the only one that's had other reasons to modify the content of a DVD I own?" Can you think of other purposes to which DeCSS might be put to use that might be considered "fair"?

"In my case, I've made decrypted copies of DVDs on my harddrive three times so far, for the following reasons:

• The movie 'The Truman Show' simply refuses to play on this sytem, or at least the disc I had did, regardless of player software used. It would always stop immediately after the copyright message. Presumably there was some problem with one of the index files, menu files, etc. Using DeCSS, I was able to play the VOB files themselves with no problems... but under the DMCA, watching 'The Truman Show' on this computer (running Windows, mind you) is illegal.
• I purchased a music-video single DVD (Utada Hikaru, 'Wait and See ~risuku~') and found it significantly more convenient to play it off my harddrive than to reach for the disc everytime I want to play one single video... but under the DMCA, making it more convenient to play discs I own is illegal.
• Another music-video DVD I have (Hamasaki Ayumi's music video collection DVD) features a menu system from which one can select any one of the videos to view, but fails to include a 'play-all', jukebox style function. I decrypted the music video portion of the disc into two huge files on my HD that will play non-stop from beginning to end... but under the DMCA, watching my music videos without stopping to select each one individually has become an illegal act.

Now tell me ALL OF THAT makes sense...

So, anyone else here have similar stories? I'm sort of surprised I haven't seen a list already... or did I just miss it?"

Johan Jonasson writes "ZDNet reports that the opening round in the appeals phase of the Microsoft case gets under way Monday, when the company is scheduled to fire the next salvos in its battle to prevent a breakup. In a 150-page document, the company will try to convince an appeals court to overturn a lower court ruling that would split the software giant into two parts."

HenryWirz asks: "My cube is situated next to the office 'Relationship Consultant' which is quite distracting. For coding I crank up my tunes, but I find it hard to read documentation with music. I think the solution to my problem is white noise. So my question is: Where can I find good white noise CD's? How about those white noise generators?" Do you find that white noise helps you concentrate in a distracting environment, or are there other methods that might work better?

NO WAY! writes: "Wired has a story about Dimensonal Media's demonstration of a holographic projection system at this year's Comdex. Apparently the damn thing can project 3-d videos or create a live projection of an object as it goes. This sounds unbelievable -- has anyone else heard of this? Check out the article." It does sound unbelievable, but then, so does the idea of thousands of tiny nanoprobes hidden in our food.

Smitty825 writes: "On Tuesday, LinuxPPC released a beta of their next product, while SuSE has announced that they will be shipping SuSE 7.0 for PowerPC on November 20! Both distros come with XFree 4.01 and KDE2, as well as the MacOnLinux emulator product."

An Anonymous Coward wishes to put this curious query before you all: "I have been through the airport many many times w/ my laptop and have never had any problems w/ losing my data on my 2.5" hard drive, but two work associates of mine have not had the same good fortune: they had both traveled and brought their destkop 3.5" drives with them and had their data compromised/destroyed as a result of having had them go through the standard carry-on luggage x-ray machine. The drives were not defective mechanically before having gone through just to clear up any misconceptions. Were these just fluke incidents or does the x-ray system @ airports actually destroy data on certain types of hard drives? Let's hear your opinions!" Any thoughts on this? Personally, I would think that desktop HDs would be more sensitive to the shocks and bumps inherent in travel than the X-ray machines at the airport.

pythorlh writes: "NewScientist has an article about carbon-nanotube thread. Could this be the begining of "monofilament" that sci-fi has been drooling over for years?" Well, from the sound of the article, not yet. But soon, perhaps: according to the article, "The new nanotube threads are about 10 times stronger than buckypaper, and can be tied into knots without breaking. But they are still much weaker than many other fibres, such as iron thread."

Azog, joined by a bevy of like-mindeds, wrote with the news: "ICANN has selected several proposals for new TLDs for further negotiation. The selected entries, and their proposed TLDs, are: JVTeam (.biz), Afilias (.info), Global Name Registry (.name), RegistryPro (.pro), MDMA (.museum), SITA (.aero), and NCBA (.coop)." Here is the unanimously accepted resolution. cyrdog points to Wired's coverage, and pavelivanov points to the story at CNET. And as several people have pointed out, .web is conspicously absent, even though it seems like a shoo-in. Someone, somewhere is going to get that one day ... Update: 11/17 09:48 PM by H :Check out SatireWire's coverage as well *grin*.

dmatos asks: "I share a house with a family. One son is 13 years old, and has been playing with computers for his entire life. However, that's all he's been doing, is playing computer games. Recently he was given the chance of getting a new computer, and the family asked for my help in choosing it. While talking with this boy, I found out that he didn't even know the difference between RAM and HDD, despite over 5 years exposure to computers and being in grade 8. Later, he had trouble installing his favourite games because the GUI installation programs started talking about things like drivers etc. and he was worried about continuing. How beneficial is early exposure to computers for today's youth, considering what most of them use it for? Are there any programs/books that you can recommend for someone who spends a lot of time playing on them, but hasn't the slightest clue as to how they work? And do you think that early exposure is overrated?" While I'm all for getting kids to use computers at an early age, even if it's just to play games or write a paper, I wonder if it's necessary for a child in the 8th grade to know the difference between RAM and a hard drive. Wouldn't it be better to train them on the basic use of the machines and have them get the details later in their education?

Last week I came out in favor of electronic voting. Over the weekend, it turned out that its opponents' worst fears came true. Not only was some computer software buggy, but it actually threw a state election the wrong way. And though not very likely, it's even possible that this state will determine our next president! Have I changed my mind about electronic voting?

No, because the punchline is: New Mexico still uses dead trees. The bug was in the software that counts paper ballots.

New Mexico was given to Gore on election night by 6,800 votes because of buggy computer software. That software "failed to read" straight-party votes (oops!), and worse, it "also chose at least one candidate from another party."

If computer flaws had thrown an electronic-vote election, you'd be reading about it on the front page of every newspaper across the country, and pundits would be telling us (sometimes in ways very funny) how foolish we were to trust our votes to those nasty computers.

How many presidential elections does our 19th-century technology have to nearly destroy before the alternatives get serious consideration?

A friend in Sweden tells me that the U.S.A. is now being referred to as the B.R.A., the Banana Republic of America. Maybe by the 21st century we can have 20th-century voting machines installed at our polling places, what do you think?

(New Mexico could decide the election if Florida's votes are thrown out, Oregon goes to Bush, and one or two more improbabilities occur.)

Voting, right here in River(side) County Riverside County, California, used touch-screen voting in this last election. This is very different from internet voting since there was no network to the outside world. I think this is an important step and certainly should be done first.

ABC News's report describes Riverside's system and shows a photo. Randall Gardner points out that the local paper has a great story with an overview of the system and reactions from voters -- glitches, yes; late tally, yes; but all in all it sounded like a positive experience.

With a capital V and that rhymes with C and that stands for Canberra Dracophile points out an article from the Fairfax IT News website, which:

reports that voters in the Australian Capital Territory (in which our nation's capital, Canberra, lies) "could be the first in the nation to trial electronic voting at next year's territory election", according to the territory's Chief Minister, Gary Humphries. They're hoping to pass legislation next month to bring this about. Sounds cool, but the article goes on to quote Humphries as saying, "You might as well be doing it from your own home." Is it just me, or does this raise the possibility of voters being coerced into a particular vote where this sort of thing can't be seen? I'd prefer to see electronic voting available only from polling booths.

No grunge typefaces please User-interface wonks should enjoy this pure-and-simple design contest. Web Memes, Inc. is asking you to design a ballot, preferably one as unconfusing as possible while still using (spit) paper. You also get to make up your own candidates and issues.

(If the competition were digital, instead of paper, it would be a tough call between Amazon.com's new user interface and AmIPresidentOrNot.)

Busily coding your next election... ...is Jason Kitcat, who says "I'm working really hard on the next release and haven't given it the PR time it deserves." Allow me.

FREE is "Free Referenda & Elections Electronically," "the first open source system for conducting electronic votes." We're now jumping from mere electronic tallying of votes in polling places to actual internet voting, so please keep your hands inside the browser at all times.

Originally an academic thesis, FREE is now GPL'd, written in Java, and its design background is available in whitepapers. I haven't tried running it. Someone let us know if the project could be useful.

See also thebell.net, which comments:

...the majority of paper punching systems used in the U.S. do not produce repeatable results when ballots are tallied more than once, which means that election officials lack the means to objectively distinguish between fraud and error under these circumstances. ...we should in fact be looking to Internet voting systems in order to try to reduce those faults and thus provide for more security than what is available today -- not less security.

The seriously skeptical view Let's end on a sobering note. Scoffing at The Bell's claim to have tackled the subject a mere six months ago, Rebecca Mercuri points out (on Dave Farber's IP list) that others have been thinking about internet voting for over a decade. She writes:

Internet systems indeed DO promise FAR LESS in the way of auditability (recounts) and anonymity (privacy) than do the paper and other manual systems presently in place. To promote the belief that Internet voting, in any way provides a SAFE VOTE, is wholly erroneous.

She has an intimidating collection of links to (mostly) academic papers on the subject on her Electronic Voting page.

And in conclusion The only viable form of government is perl-based: we need a bicamel legislature with an eclectoral college. Thank you and good night!

And now for something completely the same! A note from timothy: The next piece in our continuing Hellmouth Revisited series is online. Feel free to go read it.

In a humorous departure from the normal question fare, B747SP asks: "In my office, we have a healthy disrespect for the comfort and safety of our colleagues, and the accompanying arms race is strong, and competitive. We've tried everything from hurling balls of paper back and forth, to stress balls, flying torpedoes, Nerf weaponry al-la thinkgeek.com, and even Air Soft guns (I did say no respect for safety!!!). OK, so that's my office. What about other Slashdotters? What ordnance do you use in your office to keep that sucker in the next cube on his toes? Do you build your weapons from stuff around the office, or do you buy from a store?"

jothenull writes: "A Florida judge ruled that a "Broward County ordinance requiring cable giant AT&T to allow rival Internet access to their systems violated the First Amendment."" Available wherever AP articles are found. Since cable systems get a monopoly from local municipalities, it only seems fair that they be required to fulfill certain requirements - carrying a diversity of programming, permitting access to a variety of ISPs - but the cable services are fighting their part of the bargain tooth and nail.

Alphamike writes "This story was spotted on BBC SCI/TECH. Studies of the Y chromosome in more than 1000 men from Europe and the Middle East have enabled scientists (writing in Science) to trace the lineage of 95% of European men to 10 common ancestors (!). The story also talks about how the data was used to date early migrations from Asia and the Middle East. "

thehawk writes: "In what could be a landmark decision in the area of online privacy rights, a New Hampshire court granted the father of a public school student the right to obtain Internet usage records of all students who used computers and Web access supplied by the school district. The district was also ordered not to withhold records that may be requested in the future and was forced to pay plaintiff's attorney's fees...." The New York Times also has a story on this.

The records in question are log files created by the schools' proxy servers of what URLs are accessed by the student body. The school district in question isn't censoring Internet access with any sort of censorware product (they use teachers to monitor what students are accessing), and the parent would like to prove that the students are accessing porn sites. I do not believe it is an invasion of privacy to access these records; if there was an invasion of privacy, it occurred when the school district collected the records on their students, not when someone else requested to see them.

Some comments of mine that didn't make it into the Times article: I hope that this situation casts some light on Internet usage at public facilities. Many, many Internet services are set up to create detailed log files by default -- proxy servers, Web servers, various login mechanisms and authentication mechanisms, etc. These records are being collected, and they are just lying around on machines or tape backups here and there, and they are, if the entity that collected them is a public entity, public records accessible under FOI laws. If you want to prove that your local school/library shouldn't be censoring the Internet, request the records. (I'll help! E-mail me.) If you want to prove that your local school/library should be censoring the Internet, well, I won't help, but I still support your right to get access to public files.

And while this situation is about records collected by public entities, the same records are routinely collected by private entities as well. Is your Web access going through a proxy server at your ISP? (The answer is more likely to be "yes" than "no," by the way -- a proxy can be installed that is transparent to the end-user.) Then your ISP is collecting detailed records of every single URL you access through their service. How long are these records being retained? Who is the ISP selling them to? Do you know?

kchayer writes "JWZ ^[?] 's current obsession includes an audio webcast. Recently he added to the site a description of what it takes to broadcast music over the Internet. Makes for an interesting read, and a good summary of the DPRA, DMCA, their relationship with the RIAA, and other issues involving music copyright and the recording industry in general. His summary at the end says it best: "What's going on here is that the music industry establishment are absolutely terrified of the internet...and are trying to ^[?] force things to continue to be done as if turn-of-the-century technology was all we had to work with.""

Today, more on setting up XFree86 4.0 with Debian; getting broadband in Whitefish, Montana and other metropolae; coming changes for players of EverQuest (but at least with a bit of explanation), and more words from the hellhole -- err, Hellmouth. Just read on.

Getcher Woody in prime operation! You may have noticed the report Saturday that Xfree86 debs are now available, and many readers pointed out problems with setting the newest XFree up. A mysteriously unnamed correspondent writes: "i've written an article to answer some of the questions raised and give an intro into how to set [XFree86 in Debian's unstable tree] up (3dx specifically)."

"Sir, I can't sell this to you without your GPS coordinates. No -- really, store policy." einstein writes "MSN and Radio Shack have gotten together to provide high speed internet access that will cover most of the continental US, looks to be great for rural areas, but the downfalls include: $59.95 a month upfront, for a year, $299 bucks in equipment, only works with Windows 98, and you have to buy a computer from Radio Shack. ugh."

D'ja ever stop to think of it this way ... Mr. Buckaroo writes: "Verant Interactive is again trying to change the license agreement of Everquest to make it legal for them to gather whatever information/files from your machine they deem necessary. They are also changing the agreement to prevent sale of characters, items, etc. I remember when games were just games."

Mr. Buckaroo included the full text of a letter to players from John Smedley Verant Interactive's president and CEO. It's long, but worth reading.Makes you think about the voluntary nature of this and the other software you use, and what you're willing to tolerate on your own system.

Dear EverQuest Players,
An exciting time is now at hand. Within the next 2 days the Login Servers will be coming down and we will be doing a patch that will add the EverQuest Store into the front end of the game. At that time, the first product we will be offering will be the EverQuest: Ruins of Kunark (RoK) upgrade for existing customers. This will allow existing customers of EverQuest to purchase RoK for $16.95 (Plus S&H). In addition, we will offer various shipping options depending on which country you live in. EverQuest: Ruins of Kunark will be launching on April 24th. We want to insure that this product is in everybody's hands on or before that date.

In addition to this change, we will also be modifying our User Agreement and Software License to add in some additional Terms and Conditions that we will require everyone to agree to before playing EverQuest.

The first of these changes concerns the selling of EverQuest Characters and Items outside of the game (i.e. things like Ebay). Here is the text of this change:

"You may not sell or auction any EverQuest characters, items, coin or copyrighted material."

You may ask why we are doing this. There are many reasons, but first and foremost of them is the amount of trouble this is causing our Customer Service group. Simply put there area lot of people out there who defraud others and we are being put in the middle of it, and we don't have the time or the resources to assist people with these disputes when they arise. The next reason is amore philosophical one and that is that we believe people should have to earn their items and characters in the game rather than from buying them outside the game. Obviously the second point can be argued from other perspectives that we do in fact respect, but we wanted you to hear ours.

The next change to the User Agreement and Software license concerns our efforts to stop people from hacking EverQuest and from doing malicious acts that we feel can affect EverQuest as an ongoing business concern. We have developed the technology to check for these hacking tools/programs and report that fact back to us. Without getting into the specifics of this technology, I can say that we in no way will search a user's harddrive(aside from the EverQuest directory during the patching process), registry nor will we send back any information other than the fact that a user is in fact running one of these programs (specifically we are NOT sending information about everything the user is running back to our servers).

It's disturbing that the amount of recent developments in the hacking community force us to do this. Many will say "ShowEQ" isn't worth worrying about. To us, it's cheating and it's not something we can allow in a game like EverQuest where it affects other people's enjoyment of the game. In addition, although this is the first time we'll be acknowledging this, ShowEQ isn't the worst offender. Recently we had someone attempting to bring down our servers with another malicious program. We were able to quickly identify what was going on and insure this didn't happen again, but nonetheless the potential is there and we need to be able to quickly identify and stop these types of programs. Again, I want to say it clearly that we will in NO WAY send any information back to the Everquest servers other than information regarding programs that we feel interfere with the intended operation of EverQuest. We have had this technology available for some time, but recently we've found it's going to be necessary to go to greater lengths to stop this kind of thing. To those of you concerned about privacy (and rightly so) I want to say that we feel it's necessary to do this but we want you to be informed that we are going to try these measures to protect both ourselves and the game's players.

Here is the text of this change:

"You hereby grant us permission to download Game-related files to you. You also grant us permission to access, extract and upload(i) Game-related data as part of the patching process and (ii)data relating to any program that we, in our reasonable discretion,determine interferes with the proper operation of EverQuest."

[Updated 4:10GMT by timothy:] Reader Ted Milker set me straight on the above item, writing "That letter you posted about Everquest is months old. And it all came about from Everlore copying EQ Vaults archived news. EQ Vault restored a backup, and one of Everlore's posters decided to "scoop" that story without even reading it very carefully. Ruins of Kunark has been out for months, and April is past." Sheesh -- given game development time, I thought they meant next April! Mea culpa.

Involuntary servitude is another way to spell "truancy laws" Finally, Part Two of our trek through the Hellmouth is online. Read for more reactions on the world of bullies of all ages, and how to pull through it.

Dominic writes: "Seems microsoft have been hacked (possibly) again, acording to infoworld." They don't seem to have a lot of evidence, but there's some interesting commentary related to this, and the earlier crack where the source code to Windows and Office was supposedly stolen (I'll believe that when I see it).

katananja writes: "This article shows how you can connect your DC to Linux and make use of your high-speed Internet access: 'I finally found the combination of what works and what is needed to properly set up Linux to act as a dial-up ppp server and allow my DREAMCAST console to access it. What led me to actually work on this project was my desire to utilize my current method of Internet access (CableModem) because I just didn't feel like tying up my phone line every time I wanted to use my DC on the Internet.' "

SL33Z3 asks: "I've been toying with the idea of creating a Handspring Visor Springboard module. However, since I have no real formal training (and don't plan on it anytime soon), no hardware knowledge and am very new to C/C++ programming, I have no idea what to even search for when looking for documentation and technical publications for beginners. Where can I find the information I need with at least some very simple examples of how to handle simple I/O operations on a proprietary piece of hardware? I've pored over the technical documentation on Handspring's site and viewed the hardware specs and even got excited to find all the parts and accessories I needed were easily accessible and reasonably inexpensive. If I can get some help, I'll be glad to start developing and posting my experiences on a site for future beginners to view as well."

Matt asks: "I saw the Bush IBX100 set-top box the other day and have been searching the net for more information about it. At approximately £80 it would seem very hackable (i.e. upgrade to Ethernet and add in a larger hard drive). It would make an excellent 'consumer' device for those of us using PAL TV systems, perhaps, much like the devices from the previous Slashdot stories: 'Embedded Linux Box' and '50-Dollar Hackable Websurfer'. Has anybody seen inside an IBX100 yet? The fact that the built-in browser is Netscape strongly suggests it's already running Linux/BSD, but what else is inside?"

It's backpedaling time when it comes to the alleged Sega / Nintendo joint venture ... just goes to show how easy it is to get signals crossed in a business where no fact is necessarily stranger than fiction. Words from our recent FBI visitee. More Lego madness too, combining modern technology with that funny smile that haunts even we scoffers. All below -- smile!

It was still an interesting concept, though. Gemini writes: "Just thought I'd let you know IGN made an error regarding Sega and Nintendo forming a joint company. Their retraction is [here]"

Tenryujin adds: "IGN DC reported that Sega has not stated that they will be developing software for rival consoles. They also have already stated in the past that their next generation console beyond the Dreamcast is already in development (as I'm sure Sony's hard at work on their PlayStation 3), but that's far in the future. "shifting focus" and "moving away completely" are two entirely different things. :)

Nowhere have they announced that they are getting out of the hardware business. This time next year, we'll have X-Box, PlayStation 2, Indrema, Gamecube and Dreamcast."

Marge, your child is so artistic. Keep him away from my family. You've seen a massive lego train layout, and you've seen the lego desk, but are you ready for ... something more inspiring and enigmatic? Eric Harshbarger, reknowned sculptor of the Lego Desk is at it again. He circulated an e-mail saying, "... I have finally finished the 'LEGO Mona Lisa'. It is viewable at: [this link] whew..." Yow. If you are anywhere near Auburn, Ala. this week, perhaps a polite e-mail to Eric will let get you a close-up look, but he will be packing it up this weekend (Nov. 5th).

The mind boggles.

And the fastest update in the West -- hwaara writes: "The guy who got ruined by FBI has updated his page with answers to common questions by Slashdot readers, check it out here." That includes questions like: 'What the heck were you doing visiting a just cracked site and port-scanning?!' to which Andreas has some pointed words.

Thinking (witch) caps for next year ... Karl writes "Halloween: the perfect opportunity to share the software. Instead of handing-out shrink-wrapped candy, give out the ole' stack of Debian GNU/Linux CD's when those trick-or-treaters ring at the door. The implications and possibilities are endless. If anyone wants to be part of this GNU/Linux Halloween give-away distribution rampage, please e-mail me. I'll probe all sorts of sponsors and get the CD's to give out in 2001. We can print CD labels that have helpful URLs, or LUG URLs and stick them to the CDs. E-mail me with any enthusiasm, ideas, or comments: your input will steer the project. (NOSPAM: karl-at-tux.org)"

This sounds like a great idea to me. Save up all those nice boxes that America Online has been spamming you with, remove the inner label, and re-use. ;)

H310iSe writes: "The California Recorder has an article covering another of the many ridiculous Web patents out there, this one held by TechSearch claims rights for a "'remote query communication system' patent, which covers a method for compressing and decompressing data transmitted from a server to an end user." Basically they're patenting Web servers. What's interesting is their selective enforcement, they are currently suing Greg Aharonian, one of their most vocal critics, for infringement on their patent. He's fighting it. TechSearch has quite a history of aggressive patent enforcement ("extortion" claims Intel's spokesperson Chuck Mulloy), some major players like United Airlines have caved in; Intel, however, has not (surprised?)."

BillC writes "Boston Globe reports that all the Martian features which looked like water just under the surface might merely be the land features left behind when glaciers retreated thousands or millions of years ago."

websensei noted that Turbo Linux has filed for an IPO. As someone who has been through this, good luck to you guys: I hope only the best for all the companies doing the Linux thing: Turbo Linux has huge market share (although not as much in the U.S.) so they have a good shot. The press release doesn't give any interesting information (number of shares or pricing) but thats normal for this stage in the process.

Baldrson writes: "Wired reports that the only scheduled rocket launch for the CATS Prize has failed. Since the CATS Prize has a deadline of November 8, the enormous hard work and enthusiasm that has gone into this competition will meet with a lot of disappointment. This is unfortunate, because in my original prize announcement, I specifically requested that many individuals put up small amounts of money for their own awards so that there would be no single point of failure. The bright side of all this is that others are now taking that meta-challenge seriously. See, for example the Stark Draper Open Source Rocketry Award."

maraist writes: "Larry Wall's Altanta Linux Showcase Talk on Perl 6 is now available. Highlights: Perl will be interpreted by Perl (syntax can look like any language), variables will be more localized and OO, more support of both low level and high level constructs, and the core will be streamlined."

katananja writes: "According to this page Playstation 2 is the industry's big disappointment. This article compares de DC versus PS2 in many ways you can imagine. To better understand the PS2's limitations and the Dreamcast's strengths, you need only look at the available video memory for your answer. While the DC has 8MB of VRAM, the PS2 has only 4MB of VRAM. The main problem arises because a polygon takes up roughly 40 bytes of RAM. When you have 5 million of them in a given second, this amounts to 5 million/60fps = 83,333 polygons in a given frame of animation. If each of these polygons uses 40 bytes of VRAM, you will use 3.33 MB displaying these 5 million PPS. This doesn't leave the PS2 much room for its framebuffer which uses around 1.2MB just to display the end data, not to mention that you still need to leave room for textures to put on those polygons." This is obviously biased 'cuz the site is 'Segaweb' but it's got a lot of interesting tidbits. As always tho, the real test is the games.

macnigel asks: "I'm an editor of my school's newspaper and plan to write a commentary on the effectiveness of the D.A.R.E program. I would like to hear what Slashdot's audience has to say about the Drug Abuse Resistance Education program that's in place in most schools around the country. Comments and experiences are welcome. I raise this question in light of a fairly recent study by Harvard University. The study goes on to claim the sucess of a new approach to the problem of binge drinking. Should D.A.R.E try new approaches to the problem? Can D.A.R.E ever hope to impact drug abuse among youth?"

Motor writes "The final 33 candidates for election to the GNOME foundation have been announced." It looks like a great list of people.

sdweber asks: "I am the president of the LUG here at Lehigh University. Many members of the group have expressed an interest in having a guest speaker or speakers come in and talk about Linux, Open Source, or other geek-friendly topics. Looking for a good speaker, however, is proving harder than I thought. There are a few big names that come to mind quickly (ESR, RMS, and others) but beyond that I'm not sure where to look. Has anyone had a good/bad experience with guest speakers? Who are some good people to chase down? Of course, being college students, we don't have a whole lot of money to offer the speaker, but there are plenty of interested listeners eager to learn. Any suggestions?"

Kevin writes "For the first time ever, researchers from a company called Optobionics surgically implanted an artificial retina into three patients who are blind from retinitis pigmentosa. These highly-experimental prosthetic devices, made of silicone computer chips, are intended to restore ambulatory vision, thereby giving people the freedom to walk without the assistance of a cane or guide dog. Researchers are begining to develop computer chips that might function in place of damaged photoreceptor cells."

mach10 writes: "An article here shows that a scientist has been able to create fibers that collect ambient light, strong enough to power a dotted matrix for display. It can reach 30 times ambient light, and they are soon hoping to expand the area to replace signs on roads. Hrm ... But my sundial watch still doesn't work in the dark =\" Add this to some ultra-efficient light source (like white LEDs?), a low-power processor, human power and some solar cells, and most of my requirements for portable computing happiness would be met.

Aardvarkm asks: "I am currently searching for a host for a student film company's web site. Unfortunately, being college students, price is a major factor. I'm looking for a web host where I can get 100+ MB of space, at least 5GB per month of bandwidth, unlimited POP3 email, and the ability to stack domains and/or host a domain within a subdirectory of the site. And I need to do this at the lowest cost possible and preferably on a monthly payment system. Have any of you had experiences with such hosting services? The company's second film is going to be released shortly and we'd like to get the site up as soon as possible. Thanks for any help you can provide!"

bt445 pointed us to the desk of the future (well, kinda: we mentioned it here a couple years ago, but it's looking much nicer now. Mobile chair, multi head monitors, customized air flow: it would seem a shame to write code with this bad boy: it really looks like you should use it to drive a mech.

nomadic writes: " Salon has a really interesting interview with recent ICANN board member-elect Karl Auerbach regarding his view of what ICANN should and should not become. Basically, he thinks it should be almost totally restructured, and I can't say I disagree with him. And whether you agree with his views or not, I think a lot of people here should appreciate the fact that someone with serious geek credentials made it to the board."

StoryMan writes "Inside.com is reporting that Salon jumped the gun when it reported that SDMI had been cracked. I think this is fascinating. There's obviously a faction within SDMI that doesn't want this thing to fly. (I say this because I'm assuming Salon's 'anonymous' tipster must have been someone within the working group.)"

nomadic asks: " Reuters recently published an article about how American scientists, as well as foreign-born scientists who work in America, tend to dominate the Nobel prizes in science; it attributes this mostly to the fact that the U.S. government tends to invest more in science research than its foreign counterparts (the National Science Foundation funded 78 U.S. winners before they got their Nobels), and private and corporate entities contribute large amounts as well. The article talks about the scientific and economic culture of the U.S.; young scientists exist in an extremely competitive environment, where they are encouraged to challenge traditional authority. But it only touches on education a little. Now I've seen some truly venomous attacks on the U.S. educational system on /. by people in other countries, but this article implies while the U.S. is behind in science and math education in elementary and high school, 'there is something that happens on the college level'. Does the U.S. 'catch up' at the college level? I'll be honest, the exchange students I've met from more math and science-savvy educational systems have been well-educated, but not on some higher plane of thought that the media would lead one to believe. It seems commonly accepted (though I'm not sure I agree) that a high school graduate from most countries in Europe is on the average better-educated than one from the U.S. How about a college graduate? Graduate school? Is the U.S. dominance in science only about financial investment in the U.S., or can the U.S. university system take some credit?"

dmatos writes "Scientists have found a completely new type of life in a well in Greenland. It doesn't fit into any existing phylum, so they were forced to create a new phylum for them. It's a 0.1mm long freshwater organism which reproduces by parthogenesis."

scottnews writes: "Tom's Hardware has posted this story about a new chipset for the AMD Athlon processor with 8MB of embedded DRAM in the chipset for 9.6 GB/s of sustainable bandwidth." Thatsa spicy meatball.

This episode of Slashback brings a quartet of deja-vu inducing tidbits for your continuing edification and amusement: SuSE, not just Red Hat, will run on all those fancy schmancy new machines from IBM; DialPad sends a nearly bewildering apology to be-spammed e-mail recipients (bewildering because not enough other companies have done the same); laptops of the non-Transmeta variety; and some more information on optical switching, etc. Brush up on randomness, read at your own risk.

You can put that in your lap and smoke it! (Three from the webpad front) Kazin writes "[G]o and check out www.qbenet.com - they've got a tablet-style laptop thing. A bit pricey ($2900 US), and runs windows, but we can certainly fix the second part."

Strangely, a name that you might recognize from The Soul of a New Machine but might not expect to be selling computers now seems to want some of the webpad action, too. Matthew Peretz writes:

"'Home heating and cooling control giant Honeywell (NYSE:HON) has released a Net appliance based on National Semiconductor's WebPAD reference design.

The $995 device weighs less than three pounds, has a 10-inch LCD touch screen panel and connects to the Internet via a base station that uses a cable or DSL connection. The device can be used with any Internet service provider. It will use a battery that can hold its charge for as long as five hours, the company said.'

You can check out the story and actually see a photo of the thing at: http://www.allnetdevices.com/wireless/news/2000/10/11/honeywell_ships.html"

EdotOrg writes "National Semiconductor is slated to 'release' the Geode WebPAD, come Q4 2000, based on the QNX embedded operating system. It has a web browser (including Macromedia Flash, RealPlayer 7.0), PDF support, an IBM-optimized Java layer, full text anti-aliasing, support for USB, 11 Mb/s wireless, and PCMCIA support. Screensize is 9.5x11.75 inches (800x600), with a touch screen and software keyboard."

When oh when will someone make a webpad with LED backlighting instead of flourescent, though? That would help make a

Shedding light on the subject. ksan writes "I've seen this article on Slashdot and remembered that there is an not old article at EDN Online describing how engineers can switch over 200 THz of a light bandwith using laser tunable diode. It's worth a read to know more about optical communications." Great link.

To err is corporate, to apologize uncommon. FeeDBaCK writes "I recently recieved a newsletter from Dialpad even though I had selected not to recieve mail from them or any of their partners. I just deleted it, as I tend to do with mails that I get which were unsolicited. When I opened my mail this evening I recieved the following e-mail from Linda Crockett, the manager of customer care for Dialpad.

Subject: Apology from the Dialpad Team

Dear Chris,

Thank you for your interest in Dialpad.com. We want to extend our sincerest apology for sending you our newsletter without permission. When you signed up for our service, you indicated that you wish not to receive promotional email from Dialpad or any of its partners. We sent our new company newsletter to all of our users thinking it was more of an informative piece on our services rather than a promotional advertisement from a third party. We now understand this was not in the best interest of all of our users.

Again, we apologize for this inconvenience and will make sure you no longer receive any emails from Dialpad. We encourage you to visit our site and sample the many new products we have recently launched. We hope you continue to use Dialpad to make long distance calls from anywhere in the world to the United States.

Regards,

Linda Crockett

Manager, Customer Care

I applaud Dialpad for showing that they truly care about their users. More companies need to follow Dialpad's example. I know we are all tired of recieving e-mails from various companies and web sites without asking for it. Thumbs up to Dialpad."

Funny, isn't it, that the companies which send me unsoliticed "newsletters" and "company updates" don't get a lot of my business? Sounds like DialPad is exhibiting some of that elusive quality known as enlightened self-interest. And since they have a cool product, it sure would be nice, to to mention smart, for them to release a version for Linux. Sooner or even sooner, telephony will be normal instead of novel.

A Big Blue rising tide floats multiple penguins, or something. An unnamed correspondent points out that in addition to Red Hat, IBM's eServer line and S/390 machines will run other distributions as well, including SuSE. "Here's the link. Goes on to tell you about the eServer's and S/390. Wish I could be posting game company news, too, to show inroads onto the desktop. Guess that will happen with time :-)."

Max Entropy writes: "EETimes reports that a German company named Pact GmbH has developed a chip containing 128 microprocessor cores as part of the company's 'Extreme Processor Platform' (XPP). 'Each of the XPP's 128 processor cores sports its own 32-bit fixed-point multiplier, yielding a theoretical output of 12.8 billion multiply-accumulate operations per second at an expected clock frequency of 100 MHz. Pact claims the architecture will scale to produce devices capable of more than 400 giga operations/s in 2002 and into the peta-ops range within a decade.' The transistor budget for this behemoth is 30M, fabricated on a 0.21-micron process." Of course, each one of those processor nodes is completely proprietary and requires some peculiar programming.

Reality Master 101 writes: "Saw this originally in Pop Science, but check out NEC's press release. More like a capacitor than a battery, it can be recharged in 5 minutes and has a life of 10s of thousands of cycles. NEC claims it has the highest energy density of any electrochemical device, as well as a current discharge rate 20 times higher than lead batteries (20mAh device: 9A in 10 seconds... electric cars, anyone?). To top it off, they can make it in a credit card-thin format. Very cool, and about time!"

Mr. Sketch asks: "With all the multiple pipelines, prefetching, caching, etc., that goes on in modern the (Bogo?)MIPS be a more accurate measure of a processors speed? If this is the case why don't chip manufacturers rate and advertise their chips with the MIPS value speed, but it seems like nowadays the MHz value is pretty much meaningless and we (as well as chip manufacturers) need to be using something else to get an accurate measure of the speed of a processor." I agree that clock frequency is next to meaningless when it comes to discussing the real speed of today's processors, but would MIPS really be a better replacement?

Shostykovich writes "There's a story here on the LA Times about some interesting organic-LED technology being explored by the likes of Kodak and IBM. These LEDs are made using "organic compounds", and they're hoping to replace LCDs with these in a few years." Light on tech talk, but they see to think that these could work for head displays.

Smitty825 writes: "The LA Times is reporting that scientists have discovered planets that have no sustaining stars. They are still pretty big (like 5-15 times Jupiter's size), but they are still too small to be considered Brown Dwarfs! Read the full story here." There's also a story in space.com.

ArsonSmith writes: "It seems that at primates.helixcode.com they have been able to get Debian GNU/Linux up and running on the Compaq iPaq PocketPC. This seems to be the first main distribution to be running on a handheld." The Debian Way may sometimes seem ponderous and conservative, but obviously that's not always the case. How'd you like to be able to apt-get new apps on your PDA? This is a detailed description which should interest anyone lucky enough to have one of these cuties.

MuthaPussBucket writes: "Luckily for consumers, prices of hard drives continue to come down and now more manufacturers such as Sony and Panasonic have licensed the TiVO and ReplayTV technology to use in their own products. SE takes a look at the Panasonic ShowStopper Hard Disk Recorder Model PV-HS2000. This one looks as though it's one of the pricer ones but it's also one of the better models."

dameon asks: "I have been asked by my supervisor to select a replacement for our current SGI Onyx2 space heater. The current setup contains 24-195 Mhz IP27 processors, 12GB main memory, and around 140 GB of total storage space. We use it to run a bunch of CFD (computational fluid dynamics) code. Currently the demand on our system is so much that the jobs are backing up. So, they came to me with two quotes and said: "Which one is better?" I have had limited experience in the field of powerhouse number-crunchers. The two quotes I have received are from HP and SGI. SGI's quote is for: an Origin 3400 with 12 GB Memory, 24-400MHz/8MB R12K's, and 1/2 TB of storage space. HP is offering 3 9000 series N-4000's adding up to about the same specs in total, with the exception of the processors. Hp is offering 550 MHz PA8600's (1.5MB) processors in their setup (it also has more storage space setup with a hyperfabric configuration). All of the software we use will run on both platforms. So, I would like to put this to the Slashdot community: Which one is better?"

"The HP system is freaky expensive, but is the extra 150 MHz/processor worth the extra money? What else do I need to take into consideration? SGI's processors (while slower) have more cache. Overall, what do I need to look out for when spending this much money? What is the best deal? Am I missing another possible solution altogether? And yes, I already suggested a cluster of linux boxes similar to the one at Los Alamos, but the apps we use have no Linux support."