Slashdot Mirror

juniorboy writes "This is an article reviewing 5 web-browsers that run on Linux. " Really not a lot of surprises, but its itneresting that the number of reviews of this nature focusing on Linux are increasing.

Marius Kjeldahl writes "I noticed a local LinuxMandrake mirror got the 7.0 directory a couple of days ago but without anything in it. Today I checked again, and there is an iso image for LinuxMandrake 7.0 there. " Gael Duval from Mandrakesoft sent us an overview of whats new and improved in Mandrake 7. Check it out to see if you really want to download a whole ISO ;) Graphical Install, Disk Manager, new config tools, compiled with pentium optimizations. Lots of nice bits.

James writes "The UK's GCHQ has set a challenge for visitors to their website. They have broken up a secret message and hidden it around their site... if you can figure it out, then they say you could be suited to a job as a spy!" I wonder if you automatically get an Aston Martin and a Walther PPK.

livewirevoodoo submitted a story that I read yesterday but didn't initially think of posting here. On second thought, I think that Sam Raimi is directing Spiderman in a feature movie. The Evil Dead series is pretty dang awesome, and since I'm a junkie about seeing comic super heros on the big screen (I loved Burton's Batman, and am watching out for the upcoming X-Men flick). There is also about a Bruce Campbell Peter Parker. Not sure about that one.. I always thought Parker was well, more geeky then the uber macho Campbell. But anyway, not the standard Slashdot-fare, but I thought a lot of you might like it anyway.

try67 writes "ZDNet has this article discussing a method developed by several scientists (including Adi Shamir - the S in RSA, the guy who later found a way to crack RSA, GSM alg. cracker, and all-around very cool guy) of finding and stealing encryption keys from servers. The key's randomness seems to be what's giving them away." This is an interesting piece, but why do people continually feel that my credit card number is the most valuable piece of information I own? There's more than e-commerce at stake, people.

jarv writes "While idle, a friend messaged me with the URL to an incredibly funny (geared towards us geeks of course) Matrix parody. It's not quite complete, one page is added each day. It's worth it. Go...read...laugh." We're posting this in case there's a Slashdot reader who hasn't seen (and submitted) it yet. It's been all over IRC for the last week.

duder writes "Well, it appears that Macromedia is going to open source their Flash player. There is a article at benews which contains an purported e-mail from Macromedia's Flash Player Manager. " From what the e-mail says they will be "releasing the Flash Player Source Code SDK & Flash File Format (SWF) SDK, in mid January."Update: 01/07 02:39 by H :A very big thank you to David Michie who helped bring me up to speed-looks like SWF has been open for quite some time, and Macromedia had announced the opening of the source back in May. Check out OpenSWF.org for more information.

kiltboy writes "CIhosting had a major failure effectively eliminating 48,000 e-commerce sites. They claim it was a DNS failure but customers are complaining of old data being restored and some pages just being gone. MSNBC has picked up the story here along with some human interest stories. " I've talked personally with several people who've been dealing with this, and as people know, we've had hosting issues before. It's one of the most frustrating aspects of working on the Internet, but can anything be done about it? What do you think?

max_cool writes "Sony has announced that it is splitting its stock in preparation for a strong PS2 release. This could make many people very wealthy or destroy the company. Daily Radar has a full report on Sony's strategy and why they think it will succeed."

Solipsist_Nation writes "John Benditt, Editor-in-Chief of Technology Review, said of their Innovator of the Year, 'De Icaza was chosen both for his accomplishments in the GNOME Project and as a representative of the open-source software movement, which embodies a creative new mode of innovation: a large-scale collaboration over the Internet. People like Miguel are the future of technology.'"

Oryx Gazella writes "Unable to access Hotmail this Christmas morning? This would be why! You may have received an error like "unable to locate host", or "no such domain" after your browser was directed from www.hotmail.com to lc2.law5.hotmail.passport.com. There are no NS records for the domain passport.com in any of the root name servers. Hotmail (www.hotmail.com) uses the Passport Service (www.passport.com) which allows users of the Microsoft Messenger Service to login using their "Passport" and to add other Passport members to their contact list. The new MSN Messenger Service 2.0 is integrated with MSN Hotmail and Microsoft Outlook Express for real-time email notification, and retrieval. " Not being a Hotmail or regular Windows user for that matter, I cannot verify this - but I've gotten several e-mails from people this morning wondering about it.Update: 12/26 01:39 by H :Click below to read the quite humourous conclusion to this story.

Effugas writes "Oh, this is just beautiful. Linux user Michael D. Chaney of Doublewide.Net, upon reading of Microsoft's Christmas loss of the passport.com domain, took it upon himself to donate $35.00 for the world's largest software company to restore service for its customers. I've heard about Linux empowering its users to truly prevent downtime, but this is ridiculous ;-) I'm still laughing--Merry Christmas, Microsoft, from the Linux community to you! "

mwalker writes "Transasia Corporation is claiming over a million dollars in damages based on their claim that a search engine request using the word 'Leonardo' brings up not only their web sites but also those of the MIT-published Leonardo arts organization. What's worse is that the police have now raided the publication for incriminating papers (papers containing the word 'Leonardo')." Okay. This is over the edge. Way worse than the Etoys/etoy stupidity. I'm making a personal donation to the Leonardo Defense Fund, 425 Market Street, 2nd Floor, San Francisco, California, 94105, U.S.A. I strongly urge other Slashdot readers to take their own appropriate actions - short of lawbreaking or violence, of course. Here's the Leonardo Finance site so you can see the enemy's face first-hand. Unbelievable!

Pzykotic writes "The great actor Desmond Llewelyn, who played Q in all but 2 Bond films died in a head-on car crash in England today at age 85. I loved that guy, he will be sorely missed." Here's the BBC story. 72 readers submitted this news before we got it posted, so obviously Mr. Llewelyn was a bit of a geek icon, eh? Update: 12/19 07:51 by CT : I just watched Thunderball last night. God he was cool.

After last Sunday's story about Microsoft looking for Linux skills, Alfred Perlstein wrote in with the news that talented FreeBSD admins can also find themselves positions with Microsoft, in particular, at Hotmail. The Hotmail guys do seem to have a sense of humour though; witness hostnames like rotate-the-shield-harmonics.hotmail.com.

Stephen Hurrell asks: "I'm interested in getting feedback about how people and/or sites running Linux with all the usual applications like apache, samba, perl, php, jdk's, postgresql, oracle, X, etc. are handling the Y2K problem. Particularly how they are Y2K testing and communicating results in order to ease management's open source concerns. What do you do and what did you find? There may be a silver lining in Linux that in fact most applications may be using UNIX time structures and that the open source community may be able to respond quicker than Brand M for patches and fixes. Hopefully this may result in increased trust and usage of open source products. What do you think?"

Maktoo writes "Apple has folded their network gaming technology into the Darwin project . The source can be compiled to run on MacOS X/Darwin, Win32 and Linux with the help of Apple's OpenPlay technology."

gabedude writes "Quake3 Arena Demo is released for Linux." At long last it's here, and Linux players can start joining the fun. You can find it at the Quake 3 Arena page. I'm still hoping to snag one of the special tin versions, but this will let me get in some fragging.

kematmit asks: "I was thinking about getting a modulator to transmit a video signal (from a DVD player) to all the TV's in the house. I know this is possible, but has anyone here done it? What modulator do you recommend (and where should I buy from) ? How well does it work? Can you send stereo sound as well? Thanks for the help!"

Invicta{HOG} was the ffirst to write us about today's new Salon piece. It covers the first legal battle open source faced, quite some time ago, John Lions and a look into the history of Unix. It's a pleasant read.

Publishing and Broadcasting Ltd, Australia's biggest media company and allied to Microsoft, has teamed with IT services company, Acxiom, to create that country's biggest private data repository, according to this story. It will hold the cross-matched details of Australia's 20 million people culled from government electoral rolls, Microsoft-related Web sites including Hotmail and Passport, credit card reports, casino records, bank statements and a variety of undisclosed other sources to provide marketing profiles of the country's entire population. The plan is then to sell these to marketers, insurers, banks and others. Naturally, consumer advocates and privacy groups are wary. A similar Government-sponsored scheme, the Australia Card, was universally rejected by citizens more than ten years ago. Australians are generally not protected by any privacy laws. What do you think: is it ok for private enterprise to hold such detailed information on our private lives, offering these to the highest bidder? Is privacy dead?

Mr.Pantz writes "Epic's GreenMarine updated his .plans with some news on Linux support (and such) and UT. Here's the goods: I have permission from Tim to open source certain parts of the engine for the purposes of improving Linux support. What I would like to do is make available the code I have written for Glide, Mesa, input, and audio. I would appreciate Linux programmers taking the time to submit improvements to me at brandon@epicgames.com. I will look into putting up a webpage for this and perhaps a discussion forum. Please email me your input or ideas. I'm leaving to go home for Thanksgiving tomorrow, so I may not be able to start on this until I get back on Friday. Right now I'm working on the Mesa renderer, because I would like to release that soon, if possible. The code that I open source will not allow you to really dig very deep into the engine, but it will let you do a lot of stuff to the renderer and X windows interface. Since my time is split between non-Linux related projects, the Linux port could no doubt be improved if it gets some attention from experienced Linux programmers. "

ParadoXIII asks: "I would like to know what the /. community defines as science fiction. What separates it from fantasy or from regular stories? Where and when did the genre originate? What are the goals and purposes of its writers (if any)?" We've probably gone over this in several scattered articles from Star Wars to The Matrix, but I think it still deserves a dedicated discussion. In short, I define Science Fiction as: "fiction in which the characters react to fictional developments of science". But maybe you all think that's too generic. Thoughts?

Pfhreakaz0id writes "Looks like the U.S. government is starting to (seriously) look at workplace injuires. See the story at CNN. Labor Secretary Alexis Herman says, 'Real people are suffering real injuries that can disable their bodies and destroy their lives.' Amen. Under the rules, a worker who has an ergonomic injury diagnosed by a doctor would be entitled to have the work environment fixed to relieve the cause -- by changing the height of an assembly line or computer keyboard, for example. "

Jah-Wren Ryel writes " Vnunet is reporting that IBM has a version of Linux ported to their S/390 mainframe architecture waiting in the wings. Apparently there are two versions, one that runs under VM (a kind of meta-os, sort of like VMware) and one that runs on the bare hardware." An "anonymous source" and "speculation from analysts" story. Nothing official from IBM. Please read and judge accordingly.

Cooper writes "Saw a piece on Sharky Extreme about a new ATI chip dubbed the Rage 6, which they say is going to be used on Microsoft's x-box as well as for PCs. It's got an on-board geometry processor like the NVIDIA GeForce. " Wow. 2 gigapixels per second? Wow. The graphics market is starting to really heat up - check the earlier story about the Voodoo 4 &5.

pq writes "CNET, via The NYTimes has this coverage of Linus and his remarks at Comdex. iMacs, Transmeta, Open Source, the 2.4 kernel, Mindcraft, Mozilla, Linux Everywhere(tm) - this has it all. " Also following the keynote, Transmeta's webpage announced Crusoe (we mentioned that last night).

pcarter writes "Scientific American has an interesting article about the possibility of unifying all the fundamental physical forces (electro-weak, strong and gravity) by 2050 and how it might be done. "

Stickster asks: "What is the deal with Linux's ability to exchange information with the new Handspring Visor (Deluxe)? I realize that there is the USB/serial cradle hardware question which will affect people depending on their boxen, but right now Handspring says only WinPC/Mac can do things like HotSync. Isn't the PalmPilot connectivity solution set for Linux pretty well-developed at this point? And how does that bode for the Visor?"

ViceClown writes "Blizzard announced in a press release that Diablo II is now looking at a Q1 2000 release and will not be available for the holiday season. They did mention, however, that there may be a limited 1,000 person public beta test around the end of the year so if your lucky enough you can get your fix before everyone else! Read more at IGN PC. " But on the positive side, Rob and I will remain productive throughout the rest of the year.

ViceClown writes "Microsoft is teaming up with RadioShack in a sweeping 5 year deal to set up Microsoft 'stores' inside RadioShack brick and morter shops. Customers will be able to view demonstrations and sign up for MSN internet access. "

emerson writes "News.com is reporting that Hotmail has finally taken the plunge and decided to implement the MAPS RBL spam "blackhole" list. The article notes that they have seen a marked decrease in spam in just a short time. Read the whole article." More and more ISPs seem to be jumping on the MAPS RBL bandwagon. It's a very good thing IMO, especially for the "free" e-mail services that attract spammers the same way picnics attract ants.

HWeissfield writes "ZDNet has an interesting article by Jim Seymour concerning the recent advances by ASPs and how this new paradigm of software use could potentially change the way that productivity is created." (More below.)

HWeissfield continues "I saw this as an unsurprising evolution of the way that the Internet is influencing our society today, but I question whether we can really leave critical applications and reports to someone other than ourselves. It may be common to use the terminal paradigm on mainframes where computing power is grandeur and reliable connections can be made, but what about the chaotic and unpredictable mass that is the Internet? Where could Linux fit into this structure that may be prevalent in the future?"

For one thing, it may mean "instant" commercial accounting and tax software for Linux, BSD, BeOS etc. without begging companies that publish such things for ports to your favorite OS. For example, Intuit, publisher of Quicken, Quickbooks, and TurboTax, is reportedly ready to roll out cross-platform, Web-based apps big-time. If they do this - and if their competitors follow them - it'll save a lot of small businesses, from the need to maintain a Windows or Mac box in a corner to run financial software after they've switched to Linux, *BSD or BeOS as their primary OS.

This is a "must read it all the way through" article. It's deep and thoughtful and (as HWeissfield points out) it raises many questions. Care to take a crack at answering some of them?

HWeissfield writes "ZDNet has an interesting article by Jim Seymour concerning the recent advances by ASPs and how this new paradigm of software use could potentially change the way that productivity is created." (More below.)

HWeissfield continues "I saw this as an unsurprising evolution of the way that the Internet is influencing our society today, but I question whether we can really leave critical applications and reports to someone other than ourselves. It may be common to use the terminal paradigm on mainframes where computing power is grandeur and reliable connections can be made, but what about the chaotic and unpredictable mass that is the Internet? Where could Linux fit into this structure that may be prevalent in the future?"

For one thing, it may mean "instant" commercial accounting and tax software for Linux, BSD, BeOS etc. without begging companies that publish such things for ports to your favorite OS. For example, Intuit, publisher of Quicken, Quickbooks, and TurboTax, is reportedly ready to roll out cross-platform, Web-based apps big-time. If they do this - and if their competitors follow them - it'll save a lot of small businesses, from the need to maintain a Windows or Mac box in a corner to run financial software after they've switched to Linux, *BSD or BeOS as their primary OS.

This is a "must read it all the way through" article. It's deep and thoughtful and (as HWeissfield points out) it raises many questions. Care to take a crack at answering some of them?

booboo writes " Stuck with a firewall on NT? InformationWeek has the news that Checkpoint has announced plans to port their Firewall-1 and VPN-1 code to Linux (2.2 kernel) "

VooVoo writes "The Australian Broadcasting Authority has taken Australia to new heights of ignorance following hot on the soon to be implemented draconian Broadcasting Services Amendment (Online Services) Bill. It has proposed to introduce an access restriction system where Net users will have to supply personal details if they wish to access R-rated material online. (R-rated is softcore and way tamer than X-rated and XXX-rated). The scheme was announced on October 27 and Australian's have until November 7 to object. The ABA wants people seeking R-rated or "likely to be classified R by the Classification Board" material to provide their name, address, birth date, email address, and credit card. Check out what the ABA has to say about it. "

Can Savas writes "After Toshiba's $2.1 Billion settlement of the lawsuit on the "probably" faulty floppy controller, others have filed lawsuits against Compaq, HP, Packard Bell/NEC and eMachines. I wonder where these lawsuits are heading but I guess some will strike it rich (having suffered nothing at all to boot). These lawsuits show how unsufficient the jury system is for cases like this where the jury is likely to be clueless. If any of these manufacturers end up settling or losing the suit, then there might be some real problems for the entire industry. "

pq writes "The NY Times has a progress report on molecular computers: the results are finally rolling in. This July, HP and UCLA reported molecular logic gates; now Yale and Rice are reporting the ability to cycle those gates on/off and HP is announcing conducting wires less than a dozen atoms across. Interesting review - to quote, `this should scare the pants off anyone working in silicon.' " Mmmm...nano.

pq writes "Donald Knuth talks about "God and Computers" as part of the MIT AI lab's 1999 lecture series - a live webcast is available from here, and archived transcripts will also appear there. " Looks like three are finished already, with more coming over the next few weeks. Knuth is always worth listening to.

phatlipmojo writes "'The FreeBSD Driver Database, a resource to encourage driver development, has been expanded to encompass all open-source BSD operating systems. The site has been renamed to the BSD Driver Database to reflect this change. The BSD Driver Database is designed to help device driver developers who need hardware or volunteers to test their drivers, find people willing to donate equipment and/or their time. The goal being to increase the base of supported hardware for all of the BSD-derived open source operating systems.'

moron0 writes "Phish has partnered with emusic.com to offer a Halloween show from the archives because they won't be performing one this year. The show will be webcast on Halloween, and then available for purchase in MP3 after the webcast. " It's actually a re-broadcast from 1990's Halloween show, or as eMusic calls it: "...the early years of Phish's legendary Halloween tradition, prior to the development of the band's 'musical costume' concept. " Whatever. Something to listen to.

Finally home long enough to compile some quickies. option8 sent us the MacCrate which probably isn't up to code. Course neither is this one (thanks pkr) Speaking of cases, Deega sent us a site where you can get air brushed cases. rafa noted that Propaganda Volume 12 is out. UM_Maverick has started YALS called Linuxtopia.com pq wrote in with a picture that proves that a spell checker is probably a good idea. RoLlEr_CoAsTeR found something on Brunching Shuttlecocks which lets you combine Advertising and Perl: its actually extremely clever. Speaking of perl, ThePixel noted Perl Toys, which I think we mentioned a year or so ago, but with Christmas coming up, it probably is worth checking out again. Especially if you want magnetic poetry. Speaking of stuff to buy, JbirdUAH noted that Copyleft has Slashdot frisbees! Just in time for Winter! jhopson sent us a retelling of beowulf starring people you know. Lexie (who should really ask CowboyNeal out) sent us Eunuch which I'm not gonna explain, but its definitely wierd. motardo noted that Dalnet is for sale on eBay. Ant noted that Google seems to have an interesting result if you search for 'More evil than satan himself'. Speaking of evil, jsfetzik sent us Sinux the Linux for sinners. And how about Captain Zion's link to FsckU-FsckMe(tm) which is not for children, but is pretty amusing. Maybe you'll find auto.pron.org a little more wholesome. Finally, jetpack pointed us to Forum2000, which I'd never seen before, but am glad I did. It was mentioned in a comment awhile ago, and then we were assimilated. Super wierd.

splinter writes "How nanotechnology will change the world is an article predicting that, as in the last turn of the century, an industrial revolution is coming soon - only this time we will see molecular nanotechnology rather than automobiles. " Mmmm...nanites. Beautiful, beautiful [nanites].

Phluck writes "It seems that the modem tax myth might come true, the FCC is trying to decide whether ISPs should pay a fee for using the telephone network. Naturally this tax would probably be passed on to customers. Check out the whole story here on ZDNet. " Scary - I can remember when these chain mails went around.

hornerj asks: "I was just reading the highlights on the 2.4 kernel and I see that Linux currently has support for more than 4 IDE devices. I have always been told that multiple controllers was a thing of the past and that finding a good controller was impossible. Where can I find more information on installing a second IDE controller, for my 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th devices, and where can I find out which IDE controllers are supported? I haven't seen the HOWTO for multiple IDE controllers yet. Is there one? Thanks. "

Jason Perlow noted a story that popped up at ZD Net talking about a new investor at LinuxMall. Sco has entered the Linux World with an investment in the web store. Its interesting to note that they talk about doing this as publicity.

Many people wrote in with this, but Mephistopholies was first. Daemon News, the monthly magazine for all things BSD, now boasts a daily news service, called, unsurprisingly, Daily Daemon News. Read on for some personal opinion.

The number one FAQ is probably going to be "Aren't Slashdot and Daemon News competitors now?"

Well, maybe. But to see this in just those terms is to ignore the wider point.

Which is, of course, that the various sites all have the same aim -- to provide a forum where BSD afficionados can discuss events relating to the different BSD operating systems, outside of the more traditional (and rigid) mailing list framework.

It's a major milestone in the development of the BSDs that they now generate enough news to support daily sections on several different sites. This would have been impossible a few years ago, and difficult even 10 or 12 months back. The BSD projects continue to grow, despite carping from a small minority that they are doomed.

Obviously, you can expect to see similar stories cropping up on Slashdot, Daily Daemon News, and other sites (such as FreeBSD Rocks). What will differentiate the sites more than anything else is the quality of the discussion that ensues. With my slashdot.org hat on I'd like to see Slashdot leading the way in generating high quality discussion. But with my freebsd.org hat on, I think it's far more important that quality discussion is promoted wherever, and in the wider scheme of things that's much more important than the site that happens to be hosting the discussion.

pq writes "The New York Time is running a mainstream review of Google, and how it plans to remain free of banner ads. (NYT, free registration, blah blah.) " Nice little bit - with a bit of the history to the site and what they plan to do - and check out the other jobs at Google. Head Chef - maybe I wouldn't have to eat packet o' sauce and noodles all the time.

jmaggart writes "QNX Software Systems is offering a downloadable demo of their "realtime" OS that uses a POSIX filesystem and comes complete with a GUI that supports windowing, a dialer, browser, and a webserver.

codec7 asks: "Ever since I read the article a about Australia legalizing reverse engineering, I've been curious -- How DO you reverse engineer software? I'm an average programmer really interrested in computer graphics, and would love to get into some software packages to see how they work. Nothing underhanded, strictly educational. I get off on algorithms. Anyway, am I in over my head even contemplating it? I have a feeling that by the time I could really reverse engineer anything (even with help) the information would be grossly obsolete and I could pick up better tips and tricks from some gaming mags. I would appreciate any direction I could get from readers who know a little about this kind of stuff." I figure it's probably best to discuss this now while it is still legal someplace in the world.

Ron Rangel writes " This website gives you quick, open, online access to simply run your applications on Linux. Or at least thats what they say." I tried it and it was kind of fun. You sign up (moderately intrusive questions), then Telnet (no ssh) into servers running several flavors of Unix and several Linux distros on different (Compaq) hardware platforms. Want to play with SuSE Linux on an Alpha (or whatever)? Here's your chance!