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Slashback tonight brings some clarifications and updates to previous Slashdot stories, including: The facts about Debian Iceweasel; A closer look at Folding@home's GPU client; David Brin's lament; Online gambling ban may violate international law; Human species may do whatnow?; and Another RIAA lawsuit dropped. Read on for details.

The facts about Debian Iceweasel. john-da-luthrun writes, "Debian Firefox/XULrunner maintainer Mike Hommey reports on the Firefox/Iceweasel wrangle, correcting various assertions that have been made in the assorted trollfests/flamewars currently raging over the proposed Firefox rename. Hommey confirms that Firefox in Etch will be renamed 'Iceweasel,' but this will only be a renamed version of the vanilla Firefox, not the GNU Iceweasel fork — though the Debian and GNU Iceweasel teams may work together in future."

A closer look at Folding@home's GPU client. TheRaindog writes, "Slashdot recently covered some impressive client statistics for Stanford's Folding@home project, but they don't tell the whole story. The Tech Report has taken a closer look at the GPU client, running it on a Radeon X1900 XTX against the CPU client on a dual-core Opteron. The results are enlightening, especially considering how Stanford has chosen to award points GPU client work units. Power consumption is more interesting, with the GPU client apparently far more power-efficient than folding with a CPU."

David Brin need not lament — KidBasic. sproketboy writes, "I was thinking about the recent slashdot story David Brin Laments Absence of Programming For Kids, and after looking around I found KidBasic. KidBasic is quite good and teaches all the basics of programming. My 4 year old nephew and I have been able to get a few simple games programmed with it."

Online gambling ban may violate international law. An anonymous reader writes, "As Slashdot noted earlier, Congress has passed an effective ban on online gambling in the U.S. This may not be the end of the story, however. The law may be struck down by the World Trade Organization on the grounds that it violates the United States' international obligation not to discriminate in favor of domestic casinos. If the WTO strikes down this U.S. gambling ban, it would not be the first time. In November of 2004, the WTO struck down a U.S. anti-gambling law as illegally discriminating against the nation of Antigua."

Human species may do whatnow?. jamie writes, "'I might have believed this nonsense could come from some late 19th century eugenicist, but now? Is there any evidence...?' That's biologist PZ Myers's comment on the BBC story that claims the human species may split in two. It was posted on Slashdot as humor, but Myers's comments are a much-needed sober appraisal of this kind of pseudoscientific claim."

Another RIAA lawsuit dropped. skelator2821 writes, "Another RIAA lawsuit has been dropped against a defendant who had been accused of illegally sharing songs online, according to Ars Technica. Looks like the Mob tactics are not paying off for our good friends at the RIAA anymore."

ScribeCity writes "The Washington Post has a provocative piece about online experiments at identifying experts. One wonders when someone will come up with a truly effective formula for measuring human intelligence — or take a stab at doing so — that exploits all the stuff people are publishing online." From the article: "This wisdom of the crowd could be outsmarted by what Michael Arrington, editor of the TechCrunch blog, recently dubbed the 'wisdom of the few.' Sites like PicksPal rely on input from the masses chiefly as a venue for auditioning prospective experts, on the theory that these virtuosos could provide even more accurate information and predictions than the crowd. 'If you figure out which ones did the best and get rid of the ones who have no idea, you'd do even better. Distill it down to the people who really know,' Arrington said."

SeventhStar writes "Siliconera has an article with a long list of exclusive titles broken down by next-gen console. The Playstation 3 only has a few exclusive games at the moment; 29 are third-party, with 12 are made by Sony. Meanwhile Microsoft has 48 Xbox 360 exclusive games, with 23 of them are developed internally. However it looks like the real winner for exclusive games is the Wii. There are 39 titles only for the Wii and even ported games are going to play differently. When you adjust the amount of exclusive games on the Xbox 360 for its one year head start, the Wii has more original games coming out for it. Since console exclusives help determine which console to purchase is the Wii in a good spot?"

gondaba writes "The One Laptop Per Child project is actively recruiting hackers to help crack the security model of the $100 laptop to avoid the obvious risks associated with what will effectively be the largest computing monoculture in history. From the article: 'The key design goal, Krstic explained, is to avoid irreversible damage to the machines. The laptops will force applications to run in a "walled garden" that isolates files from certain sensitive locations like the kernel. "If we discover vulnerabilities, the security model must hold up enough that even a machine that is unpatched won't be easily exploitable. This gives us a bit of diversity to avoid the monoculture trap," he added.'"

Feelyat writes "NASA is reporting that a small storm that formed on Jupiter last year has changed color from white to red. According to an article in Yahoo News, scientist Amy Simon-Miller speculates that the storm might have gained strength as it decreased in size, similar to how 'spinning ice skaters go faster when they move their arms closer.' She says that the storm has probably 'picked up red material from lower in the Jupiter atmosphere, most likely some form of sulfur which turns red as part of a chemical reaction ...' Well, we might be one planet down, but our Solar System can still surprise."

Tito! S. writes "HowStuffWorks has up an article describing how the Nintendo Amusement Park works. This is the New York city area theme park in the making with a physically augmented ride themed around Super Mario Bros. They plan to make the side-scrolling course 100 meters long with a safe and fully interactive course with foam crash padding platforms powered by hydraulic actuators." From the article: "It's really a single 'ride' — a real-life interactive adventure that allows players to dress up as Mario or Luigi, enter the Mushroom Kingdom and perform the actions that the heroes perform in the video game. Players can jump over obstacles, land on and ride moving platforms, and smash enemies. They can even collect gold coins and punch power-up boxes."

Kingcanute writes "The BBC is reporting that American scientists are claiming that sewer gas may be successful at inducing suspended animation. The results were achieved using mice but further studies are needed" From the article: "The problem with hypothermia is it's not that easy to cool down the human body so if we can find another method to inhibit metabolism that would be very useful"

dbgimp writes "In my job at a (large) investment bank I am constantly being pushed to use grid technology. I have many problems with this (not least that our data center is at best 100 Mb/s and our software is actually more data than computation heavy). A typical batch job takes 10-30 minutes consisting of around 10,000 trades. I would far rather spend the time and money on multi-core machines and optimizing the software than on the latest fad technology. I am interested to hear from other people in a similar position and, in particular, why or why not they chose grid software over improving the existing code to leverage better processor technology, and which grid software they chose to use and why. Or, conversely, why they chose not to use grid software."

TheRaindog writes "The Tech Report has an in-depth look at Maxtor's DiamondMax 11 hard drive that provides some interesting insight on how Seagate's recent acquisition can improve deficiencies in its own drives. More valuable, however, is the fact that the review offers a detailed comparison of 17 different Serial ATA drives from Hitachi, Maxtor, Samsung, Seagate, and Western Digital. Performance is compared across a wide range of typical desktop, multitasking, and multi-user loads, and noise levels and power consumption tests also provide interesting results. Definitely worth a look for anyone in the market for a new hard drive."

Jane Walker writes "How does Linux stack up to Windows in 2006? Experts weigh in on that question in these articles, comparing the operating systems' security, reliability and usability. Get insiders' views on Microsoft's proprietary stack versus open source software, as well as Windows-to-Linux migration tips."

Jane Walker writes "On a mission to avoid paying top dollar for Cisco routers, two users say Vyatta's Open Flexible Router is a viable alternative to the proprietary norm. Find out about the pluses and minor hassles involved in deploying this alternative." This probably won't surprise the users of (much lower end) networking gear like the famously hackable Linksys WRT54G, which — like a number of internally similar routers — can be reconfigured with one of several open-source firmwares to do things impossible with the hardware as delivered.

theraindog writes "Intel's Core 2 Duo is clearly the most attractive processor on the market, but which motherboard chipset is it best paired with? The Tech Report has rounded up four of the most common Core 2-compatible chipsets on the market to find out. The chipsets' features are compared and their performance is tested in a wide range of application, peripheral, and even power consumption tests. One emerges as a lemon, two as solid options, and the other as a clear winner." From the article: "Some fanboys still stubbornly cling to their favorite underdog, but most enthusiasts have seen the light and are looking at Core 2 for their next upgrade or system build. The prospect of a Core 2 system build can seem a bit daunting for enthusiasts who have spent years focused solely on the Athlon 64. Core 2 processors need new motherboards for those switching from the Athlon 64, and that requires navigating a whole new world of core logic chipsets. Since the Core 2 processor relies on the chipset for its memory controller, one's chipset choice can also have a much more profound impact on performance. "

hey0you0guy writes, "The large security firms such as Symantec and McAfee want Microsoft to allow them to replace Microsoft's Windows Security Center. Microsoft is refusing these requests. 'By imposing the Windows Security Center on all Windows users, Microsoft is defining a template through which everybody looks at security,' Bruce McCorkendale, a chief engineer at Symantec, said in an interview. 'How do we trust that Microsoft knows what all the important things about security are to warn users about?' Given Microsoft's past, with vast piles of security flaws and patches, they should at least cooperate with these companies. A dispute still exists over PatchGuard, a security feature that Microsoft says is designed to guard core parts of the 64-bit version of Vista, but which critics say locks out helpful software from security rivals."

Static-MT writes to mention a CNN article about what doctors are referring to as the first thought-controlled artificial limb. Arm owner Jesse Sullivan has two prosthetic limbs, and the left one is an advanced prototype in development by the folks at DARPA. From the article: "Sullivan's bionic arm represents an advance over typical artificial arms, like the right-arm prosthesis he uses, which has a hook and operates with sequential motions. There is no perceivable delay in the motions of Sullivan's flesh-colored, plastic-like left arm. Until now, it has been nearly impossible to recreate the subtle and complex motion of a human arm."

bradley fellows writes "Early feedback from testers already using Windows Vista RC1 (Release Candidate 1) report that the OS is more stable than expected, which bodes well for Microsoft's plan to have Vista out according to its current schedule." Mind you, "expected" is relative given how many users regard their frequent crashes as normal operation for a PC.

Skin and Blister asks: "Years ago mouse manufacturers realized that not everyone is right handed and (thankfully) created the option of reversing the mouse buttons to accommodate left handed users. Now that laptops (and obviously tablets) have integrated touch technology, the new challenge for south paws is to use a stylus in the left hand to manipulate a scroll bar on the right side of an open window. Does anyone know if there is a way to move scroll bars to the left side of a window in Microsoft Windows XP Pro?"

JaneWalker6847 writes "Don Becker, co-founder of the Beowulf project, describes the inevitability of hardware administration headaches and warns users not to expect a silver bullet to solve these problems." From the article: "We're about to see another revolution, which is in network adapters -- that we [will] talk directly to [them] from application level. That's a massive change in how you interface with them. And that brings about a new round of device drivers completely unlike the device drivers we had 10 years ago. So, that part of the world isn't going to stabilize anytime soon."

Slashback tonight brings some clarifications and updates to previous Slashdot stories including: some direct answers to Slashdot questions on the KillerNIC, recap in stolen laptop identity theft problems, a victory for one PayPal user, missing moon footage surfaces, Dell laptops unwelcome on Quantas flights, and more ZFS news from the Leopard front Read on for details.

Direct answers to Slashdot KillerNIC questions. Emptynest writes "A bit over a week ago, Slashdot linked a story on GDHardware.com and it was filled with a bunch of 'hard questions from the Slashdot Community" regarding Bigfoot Network's pending 'killer' Network card that promises to reduce in-game lag. It looks as if Bigfoot isn't backing down and has hand-picked several of the questions from the Slashdot Community and answered them in a new article."

Recap of stolen laptop identity theft. Kn10 writes to tell us Technibble has a brief recap of some of the major laptop thefts resulting in personal information being leaked from major organizations. From the article: "According to the FBI, laptop theft is the second most common computer crime and less than 2 percent of those stolen laptops are ever recovered. Four in five (81%) of US firms have had at least one laptop stolen containing sensitive information according to a recent study."

A victory for on PayPal user. Not-So-Anonymous Coward writes "According to his site, 'silic0nsilence', who was featured in the Summer 2006 issue of 2600, has won his long battle with PayPal Fraud. On August 15th, 2006 in Small Claims court, he was awarded $671.12 after almost a year-long war with PayPal and a user. He also successfully won a small claims suit against PayPal to commence in his case with the user."

Missing moon footage surfaces. denis-The-menace writes "Film producer and rock video director Peter Clifton was sitting watching television when he saw NASA was searching for original Apollo 11 footage. He had forgotten that in 1979 he ordered footage from The Smithsonian for use in The Dark Side of The Moon demo film. He had all but forgotten a pristine 16-millimeter film of the moon landing was part of his vast personal film catalogue"

Dell laptops unwelcome on Quatas flights. Thomas Henden writes "The Australian airline company Quantas, according to the Sydney Morning Herald, banned the in-flight use of Dell laptops on battery power. The security personnel even went so far as taping over the contacts in the batteries according to an agreement between Dell and Qantas. However the security is now somewhat relaxed — all you need to do now, is to get in touch with the personal aboard, and tell you want to use your Dell laptop, and then you will be 'advised individually.'"

More ZFS new from the Leopard front. nezmar writes "From the AppleInsider forum comes an interesting discovery about Sun's ZFS and Apple. A user who has the Leopard developer preview searched the system with Spotlight and found a mention of ZFS. He says: 'There is no file system bundle for it, nor is there a mount utility or any other one (no fsck, now newfs, etc.). There is, however, a changed vnode.h.' Looks like the story back in May might have some truth after all."

ozmanjusri asks: "At a blogger's breakfast prior to the opening of Tech.Ed in Sydney, Microsoft Australia technical specialist John Hodgson has confirmed that Microsoft will introduce its LiveDrive online storage system which can be mapped directly as a Vista drive. The service will offer 2GB of space free, with additional capacity available at a cost. Earlier this year, rumors surfaced regarding a similar scheme from Google, the GDrive. There are already hacks to do this with GMail, but Google's goal with GDrive appears to be infinite storage, accessible from anywhere. Meanwhile, the price of portable USB flash drives has been falling to the point where 2GB drives are cheap enough for every day storage purposes. Is this the start of a new era of (nearly) free online storage, thin clients and OS independent services? Will data storage which is tightly integrated to the OS be more attractive to the average user, or will we prefer to have our information stored on a physical media we can put in our pockets?"

Editorgirl35 writes "Here's an interesting story on DesignNews.com With last week's announcement that the British government thwarted an alleged terrorist attack planned for flights from the U.K. to the U.S., news that travelers are required to check their laptops as baggage on some flights has raised a new level of panic as they try to figure out the best way to protect their laptops."

muff1253 writes to tell us VMware yesterday announced the winners of the Ultimate Virtual Appliance Challenge (UVAC). The contest, which started at the end of February, was designed to test teams on their ability to create a "pre-built, pre-configured, and ready-to-run" application that could be packaged with operating systems in virtual machines.

RX8 writes "A Digital Trends article suggests that Apple's Leopard agenda is to get Windows users to use Apple hardware then convert them to the Apple camp and that Apple will also be directly targeting Dell by offering a better experience when it comes to media and related tasks. Lastly, they suggest that Steve Jobs held back on showing more Leopard features so people would not get too excited and stop buying in 2006. 'If you get too excited about what is supposed to be an incredibly amazing product you simply won't buy a new Apple this year.'"

Diamonddavej writes "The New York Times reports that the respected astrophysicist, James A. Van Allen, died yesterday at the age of 91. Apparently the fellow regularly worked at his office/laboratory up until a month ago. Prof. Van Allen team designed the Geiger counter that flew aboard Americas first orbiting satellite, Explorer 1. It detected unexpectedly intense levels of radiation caused by energetic particles trapped in the Earth magnetic field, the magnetosphere. The belts of radiation were mapped and characterised by later missions and were named the Van Allen belts in honour of their discoverer."

waterlogged writes "Lara Crigger writes a compelling account of the effects of hurricane Katrina on a person's sense of videogames in The Escapist. From the article: 'Hurricanes destroy more than just property; they destroy the sense of property, as well. They smash that universal belief that objects intrinsically carry some emotional gravity or weight. Acts of destruction remind us that physical substances are only equal to the exact sum of their parts: Plastic and cotton, metal or wood. What's left over is a painful buoyancy, an unbearable absence of feeling; you mourn not just your lost PS2 games or your Xbox controllers but also the fact that these once precious things have been proven completely meaningless. Even if they do remain intact after the storm (like the Samus poster), the only entity that really survives is you.'"

Bashar writes "A Bahraini newspaper reported today that Bahrain government, following the block of nude sites, have instructed all ISPs to block the Google Earth service, making them one of the few countries worldwide to block a major Google service that is used around the globe, and proving very effective. Here is the same news source, translated by Google to English."

pipcorona writes "The principal investigator of the Phoenix Mars Lander Mission released an article yesterday describing how the mission is progressing, talking about landing sites and informing the public that they are officially one year away from launch." From the article: "In parallel with the assembly of the spacecraft, our Payload Interoperability Testbed (PIT) in the Tucson Science Operations Center has been integrating engineering models of all the science instruments. Besides validating the integration procedures for the instruments, this facility will be used to verify that all our instruments work as a team-important since they were developed individually. In particular, the digging of soils and delivery of samples to instruments will be thoroughly tested."

engineer_uhg writes to tell us that Mozilla has just entered into a multi-year agreement with Real Networks to have Firefox distributed with downloads of RealPlayer, Rhapsody, and RealArcade. The Mozilla team cited Real's estimated 2 million downloads per day as a great tool for distribution. However, many Firefox supporters question the move, complaining of questionable practices by Real.

Andareed writes "Open-source software companies, such as Ubuntu (an open-source Linux distribution), are better able to respond to user request and bugs than traditional software companies, such as Microsoft. Simon Law, head of the Quality Assurance department at Ubuntu in a talk given to the UW Computer Science Club, explains why this is, and how Ubuntu is leveraging the open-source model. Simon explains how the QA department at Ubuntu differs from traditional QA departments, through its use of the open-source community at large. Most interesting is Simon's views on what motivates open-source developers to develop software, and how open-source oriented businesses (specifically Ubuntu) are making money."

Enggirl1 writes "Design News discusses Boston's Big Dig and begs the question - is it one of engineering's greatest failures? The article reveals that forums and blogs are popping up all over the Internet as vehicles for engineers and contractors to discuss, under the guise of anonymity, their skepticism, thoughts and reactions to one of the biggest infrastructure failures in the news today." From the article: "One blogger, whose profile notes that he is an ICC Reinforced Concrete Special Inspector and an ICC Pre-stressed Concrete Special Inspector, among other specialties, says he has nearly 20 years of experience performing both placement and post-placement inspections of rebar, post-tensioning systems, concrete, masonry, etc. He says if structural engineers who specify epoxy for dowels and the like believe that the work is being done correctly then they live in a world unfamiliar to him."

Jane Walker writes "Dave Roberts talks about Vyatta's open source router and how open source technology may soon alter the landscape of enterprise networking." From the article: "Initially, we believe that the x86 PC running Vyatta -- given the range of hardware that's available in the PC world -- can basically replace the midrange of the router market; to use Cisco terminology and model numbers, simply because it's convenient shorthand, basically from the 2800 series to the 7200 series. There's a whole host of equivalent products from Nortel and Alcatel -- but essentially in that range. I wouldn't describe it as Cisco model numbers so much as T1 branch office to gigabit LAN product categories."

khorner writes "I joined a local XP User Group in May of this year. As the IT Manager of Application Development for a 90+ year old agricultural cooperative, I'm introducing the concepts of agile development and need the support. Right off the bat, we've acquired some review copies of books and I volunteered for the O'Reilly book: Learning SQL on SQL Server 2005. I have been working with various versions of Microsoft SQL Server since 1999, so I figured I could give it a go." Read the rest of Kevin's review. Learning SQL on SQL Server 2005 author Sikha Saha Bagui & Richard Walsh Earp pages 325 publisher O'Reilly rating 4 reviewer Kevin Horner ISBN 0596102151 summary The organization and inconsistencies take away from the value of the book as a whole

Historically, I've found the O'Reilly books to be great references for professional programmers. I began with David Flanagan's Javascript: The Definitive Guide -- I think it was the 3rd edition. I enjoyed them for their reference value as well as business-oriented examples. Learning SQL on SQL Server 2005 does not, in my opinion, follow the mold I have become accustomed to from O'Reilly.

Learning SQL on SQL Server 2005 covers many of the topics necessary to introduce relational databases to the beginner. It is based on the authors' university course curriculum and it is evident with the review questions including with each chapter.

The authors cover important topics at an adequate depth for its target audience; however the organization needs some work. The first six chapters flip-flop across what I consider to be logical boundaries in a discussion on database development: schema versus data. Tools are a platform dependent subject necessary to discuss implementation.

The database provided could use some refactoring to get to a more cohesive and production level design. Not to be nitpicking, but as an example, equivalent domain level attributes for example, student number, are represented across tables as different column names. This is the attention to detail that drives me nuts on the professional level.

Chapter 1 sets the tone by touching multiple concepts and incorporates a smothering of screenshots. Over the first 25 pages (half being images and query result tables) we load the demo database, modify it, select from it, and cover to the Management Studio's syntax color coding and customization. Quite a lot to start off with for a novice, all with the assumption MS SQL 2005 is installed and ready to go.

Chapter 2 jumps into simple data selection of a single table and briefly hits the new MS SQL 2005 concept of synonyms.

Chapter 3 tries to focus on the schema oriented topic of table creation but falls short when jumping over to data topics like INSERT, UPDATE and DELETE. There is good coverage of data types, but we don't cover any design concepts of why we create tables and considerations for doing so. To the authors' defense, they state this is not a book on theory, but I think some level of theory is an important aspect to learn SQL.

Chapter 4 introduces the data selection concept of table joins and to do so, introduces the schema concept of keys.

Chapter 5 provides good coverage on internal functions for strings and dates and sets the foundation for more advanced queries.

Chapter 6 takes the reader through a logical process of developing a complex query. This is a good example process of taking a simple query and developing it further to satisfy a business need. Unfortunately, we experience some more inconsistency when we develop a join query using the WHERE clause - an inefficient and undesirable method the authors' discussed in chapter 4. Again, we jump from data concepts to schemas when we hit views and temp tables.

Chapter 7 through 10 present set operations, sub queries, and aggregate functions in a progressively logical manner. It would have been nice to have this progression prior to Chapter 6 and incorporate the concepts in the query development.

Chapter 11 throws in a thin coat of an introduction to table indexes and constraints: the final jump across topics.

Overall, the book provides an introduction to SQL topics. In my opinion, the organization and inconsistencies take away from the value of the book as a whole. If SQL is your profession (or you want it to be), with a list price of $44.99, Celko's SQL for Smarties is the better investment.

You can purchase Learning SQL on SQL Server 2005 from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Editorgirl35 writes to tell us Design News has posted their annual engineering salary survey. While it does offer encouraging results with salaries up a bit from last year it also shows that engineers are, on the average, doing a lot more to earn that paycheck including supervisory and budgetary functions. From the article: "Kody Baker, a 28-year-old mechanical engineer agrees, "Yes, we are doing far more than just designing products," he says. He's a project manager, manufacturing engineer, product designer, R&D engineer, test engineer, CAD systems specialist, CAD instructor/mentor, and more, juggling many roles in his job as a mechanical application engineer at Honeywell."

Rakesgate writes "A second Trojan used in the latest zero-day attack against Microsoft Office contains characteristics that pinpoint corporate espionage as the main motive, according to virus hunters tracking the threat. This eWeek story walks through the attack, which uses a tainted 18-slide PowerPoint file, a Trojan dropper, 2 Trojans and a server in China that is used to communicate with compromised machines." From the article: "'Once this type of attack is out, it's very unusual for it to be limited to just one company. I think it's safe to assume that it's ongoing, especially since there is no patch for this vulnerability,' Huger added. Microsoft plans to issue a patch on August 8 for users of Microsoft PowerPoint 2000, Microsoft PowerPoint 2002 and Microsoft PowerPoint 2003. In the meantime, anti-virus experts are urging Microsoft Office users to be on the lookout for suspicious attachments, even those that appear to come from colleagues internally."

luckyguesser writes to tell us that Physicists at the University of Bonn are claiming to have knocked down one more quantum computing hurdle. Utilizing what they term "laser tweezers" they were able to sort and align seven atoms while capturing it on film. The plan is to construct a quantum gate using atoms imprinted with data.

chowsapal asks: "I've recently switched from another line of work into computer programming, where I work as a contractor. I'm making more money than I need, and more than I'm used to even working 20 or 25 hours a week. I'd like to work more, and rake in even more money, but sometimes it's hard to stay focused for more than 5 or 6 hours at a time. What do other programmers do to motivate themselves? Do you work a specific set of hours? In a specific location? Are there types of breaks that you find really increase productivity? Does diet and/or coffee consumption make or break the deal? Do you end up working late at night for the quiet? I realize that on some level you just need to suck it up and put in the time, or stop worrying about it and enjoy your time off. However, the question stands: How do you work best outside an office environment?"

Anonymous Coward writes "Here is a look at 10 current IT and network research projects, from active cookies to faster wireless LANs to the latest anti-phishing schemes, that could be making their way out of labs and into companies and homes soon." Still no virtual sandwich I see.

Christian Bakke writes "QPAD is famous for their cloth mouse pads. But they are now producing hard surface mouse pads too. ClubFnatic looks at the brand new QPAD XT-R hard surface to see how well it performance. This mouse pad is supposed to be worth 47 which is of course a lot of money. The reviewer tries to see if the pad is worth this much money with cheaper alternatives available." I use a hard mouse pad from func.net on my living room chair arm, but given the 20 odd free mousepads in the office, it's hard to consider paying for one.

The New Revelation writes "Physorg reports that engineers at UBC have developed a single occupancy vehicle that achieves a ridiculous 3145 MPG! From the article: 'The Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) Supermileage Competition took place June 9 in Marshall, Michigan. Forty teams from Canada, the U.S. and India competed in designing and building the most fuel-efficient vehicle... The UBC design, which required the driver to lie down while navigating it, achieved 3,145 miles per US gallon (0.074 liters/100 km) -- equivalent of Vancouver to Halifax on a gallon (3.79 liters) of gas -- costing less than $5 at the pump.'"

motorheadabega writes "BBC is carrying the story that as of today the PS3 is available for preorder for only £550 ($1,020). All that and they can't even guarantee delivery before Christmas." From the article: "The electronics giant had originally planned to launch the new console in the spring, but was forced to delay because of technical problems with its high-definition Blu-ray DVD drive. The PS3 comes in two different models. The basic model has a 20GB hard drive, while the more expensive model comes with a 60GB one. The lower end model also lacks wi-fi, a slot for memory cards and a HDMI port for high-definition programmes. "

rpmsci writes "The computer servers that fill huge data centers are producing more heat with every new generation of processors. It's a problem that's sending engineers on a search for cooling fans that are both small enough to fit inside ever-smaller server chassis and powerful enough to dispel increasing amounts of heat. At Hewlett-Packard, they've found one answer in an unexpected place: model jet airplanes."

avidreader writes "Another Sky Press is making a serious go of the neo-patronage / tip jar model — their tagline is 'Welcome to Another Sky Press. We want people to read our books even if they read them for free — though we'd love it if you bought a copy!' Not only are they putting the entire text of their releases online, but they're selling the dead tree versions at cost plus optional contribution. Their first release is garnering some great reviews - 'Intelligent fiction for the mentally unhinged.' According to their website, there are more projects in the works — everything from a short story anthology to a coloring book by artist Jesse Reno. They've also got interesting essays on why they're doing this and neo-patronage. They're even getting neo-patronage some mainstream attention — the Metro Times calls them '...more punk than the punks at Dischord Records.'"

Jane Walker writes to tell us that the Christian Science Monitor is becoming quite the proponent of open source. The aggressive nature of OSS was a large part of what drew CIO Curtiss Edge into the fold, it seems. From the article: "But beyond the tangibles like open source code it was the community that made a convert of Edge. Behind all the open code, it was the forums and flexibility that were the driving forces he believes breeds better developers than those that toil away with proprietary code. Open source software makes developers more aggressive and more apt to go out into the communities that exist around the software to find solutions to their problems, Edge said, rather than holding on some proprietary help desk line while tech support looks up the answer."

SkinnyGuy writes "Fiber to the Premises (FTTP) or Fiber-based broadband is still in a very few areas, but PCMag's Lance Ulanoff has it and he seems to really, really like all 15MBPS of it. There's also an extensive slideshow on the whole installation process." From the article: "The power out is connected to the box, and the fiber ends in the box and comes out as Cat 5e, which runs back through the hole all the way to a new D-Link router. That's right: In addition to the box on the outside and the UPS inside, Verizon also gave me a new wireless G router, which includes four wired ports. This is a lot of free equipment (though I might incur some charges if I were to quit FiOS before the year had gone by). All this--not including the through-the-tree cable run--took another 2 hours or so."

opieum writes "VMware has launched Virtual Infrastructure 3.0 today which includes ESX 3.0 and a number of management utilities." Relatedly Jane Walker writes "SearchOpenSource has two authors that try to show why VMware ESX Server is miles ahead of Xen and Virtual Server. Discover what to watch out for when running ESX Server and how to avoid sprawl in your virtual data center."

wigwamus writes "BitTorrent inventor Bram Cohen warns on potential 'absurdity' of Network Neutrality laws and concedes that his hook-up with Cachelogic is creating a system that might contravene Network Neutrality. He suggests there'd be no difference between big media footing the bill for their own upload costs of their offerings and subsidizing the consumer's download costs of the same."

theraindog writes "The web is swirling with reviews of AMD's new Socket AM2 processors, but they're not the only new chips launching today. ATI and NVIDIA have both introduced new core logic to accompany Socket AM2, and The Tech Report has a comprehensive comparison of the new chipsets. ATI's CrossFire Xpress 3200 and NVIDIA's new nForce 590 SLI are run through an exhaustive suite of application, peripheral, and power consumption tests with surprising results. The nForce 590 SLI definitely has the edge when it comes to the sheer number of integrated peripherals and extra features, but the CrossFire Xpress 3200's performance is competitive, and its leaner approach pays big power consumption dividends. It looks like ATI may finally have a credible alternative to NVIDIA's domination of the Athlon 64 chipset market."

scottZed writes "Danish researchers found a simple way to make curiously shaped air holes in a bucket of water. Simply rig the bucket to have a spinning plate at the bottom, and depending on the speed, you can get an ellipse, three-sided star, square, pentagon, or hexagon. The effect may help explain such shapes seen in atmospheric disturbances on Earth and other planets. One practical use: really trippy washing machines."

garfangle writes "Dell has decided to include AMD's Opteron processor in its product line of servers. This is the first time Dell has used AMD chips within its own Dell branded products (excluding the recently acquired Alienware computers)." From the News.com article: "The deal appears to be confined to servers at this point. The news came along with the release of Dell's earnings results, which were in line with the disappointing warning the company provided last week. Revenue was $14.2 billion, up 6 percent from last year, but net income slid 18 percent to $762 million. Several times during the last few years, Dell CEO Kevin Rollins has hinted that the company was right around the corner from introducing products based on AMD's chips."

DurnikBob asks: "I do a tremendous amount of development work sitting in hotel rooms while I'm on the road. While I've used Xen and VMware on my laptop, they come with limitations (memory usage, not 'real-life', interfere with my day job, and so on) that I'd like to move away from. I've looked at short depth 1U servers (the 19" wide makes it almost impossible to carry in the laptop bag), carrying a separate laptop (hate the weight penalty and cost of the not used keyboard and screen), the Mini-ITX field (each one I've looked at has the 1 DIMM, 1GB max limitation) and even the Mac-Mini (2" tall is a killer). Does anyone know if someone makes something along the lines of the following: small footprint (laptop size case 1" tall); Intel/AMD dual core capable; 2GB memory; space for 2.5" drives; on-board video (no need to fake it for headless operation); and on-board wireless?"

EconolineCrush writes "Tired of reading reviews of high-end graphics cards that cost several hundred dollars or more? The Tech Report has a round-up of three budget cards that cost $80 or less. ATI's Radeon X1300 Pro, NVIDIA's GeForce 7300 GS, and S3's Chrome S27 are compared in an array of gaming, video playback, power consumption, and noise level tests against not only each other, but also a typical integrated graphics solution. As one might expect, the budget cards offer significantly better 3D performance than integrated solutions. What's even more impressive is the fact that even with newer games, the sub-$80 cards still have enough punch to deliver respectable performance."