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blakestah writes: "Well, it looks like someone on the LKML has taken upon himself to do some benchmarking of ReiserFS, ext2, and XFS using the 2.4 kernel series. It is not a real benchmark test, but kind of interesting nonetheless. See the results (in Spanish) at this LUG in Mallorca. Simple runs of dd, tar, and rm are shown, and for most of the tests XFS is pretty dern fast, beating all the others. The exception is removal of a large source tree (the kernel source), for which XFS is the slowest by a fair amount. See this kernel post for the translations of important words. It will be nice to see more such open benchmarking posted, because benchmarks provide developers goals." The contrast between FAT32 and XFS is particularly interesting to see.

blakestah writes: "Well, it looks like someone on the LKML has taken upon himself to do some benchmarking of ReiserFS, ext2, and XFS using the 2.4 kernel series. It is not a real benchmark test, but kind of interesting nonetheless. See the results (in Spanish) at this LUG in Mallorca. Simple runs of dd, tar, and rm are shown, and for most of the tests XFS is pretty dern fast, beating all the others. The exception is removal of a large source tree (the kernel source), for which XFS is the slowest by a fair amount. See this kernel post for the translations of important words. It will be nice to see more such open benchmarking posted, because benchmarks provide developers goals." The contrast between FAT32 and XFS is particularly interesting to see.

Rob Riggs writes "As seen on this SlashCode using site, scientists at the University of Rochester are working on a project to bring adaptive optics, technology used in ground-based astronomy, to the human eye. They expect to achieve 20/10 vision and enhanced contrast for everyone, but this article claims 20/2.5 is ultimately possible." The best thing about this story is that the submitter picked the rarely-used "Upgrades" category for it.

ksquire writes "Joystick101.org has a feature on the release of the Playstation II, detailing how the launch was experienced in one sleepy midwestern town and exploring what all of this craziness really means."

Skwirl asks: "I'm a journalism and computer science double major at Indiana University and I'm just about to finish my undergraduate career. If I go to grad school, I want to find a program that will accommodate someone with both writing and coding skills. At IU there's the new School of Informatics, as well as, the Masters in Immersive Mediated Environments programs. Both of these programs are intriguing, but I'm wondering what other schools have graduate programs focusing in New Media."

Skwirl asks: "I'm a journalism and computer science double major at Indiana University and I'm just about to finish my undergraduate career. If I go to grad school, I want to find a program that will accommodate someone with both writing and coding skills. At IU there's the new School of Informatics, as well as, the Masters in Immersive Mediated Environments programs. Both of these programs are intriguing, but I'm wondering what other schools have graduate programs focusing in New Media."

Skwirl asks: "I'm a journalism and computer science double major at Indiana University and I'm just about to finish my undergraduate career. If I go to grad school, I want to find a program that will accommodate someone with both writing and coding skills. At IU there's the new School of Informatics, as well as, the Masters in Immersive Mediated Environments programs. Both of these programs are intriguing, but I'm wondering what other schools have graduate programs focusing in New Media."

Skwirl asks: "I'm a journalism and computer science double major at Indiana University and I'm just about to finish my undergraduate career. If I go to grad school, I want to find a program that will accommodate someone with both writing and coding skills. At IU there's the new School of Informatics, as well as, the Masters in Immersive Mediated Environments programs. Both of these programs are intriguing, but I'm wondering what other schools have graduate programs focusing in New Media."

mjgamble writes: "PHP 4.0 Release Candidate 2 is out. Check it out here. From the site: Highlights of this release include support for new Web servers (Zeus, Netscape Enterprise, Apache Win32 module), improved portability of the Unix build framework and tons of bug fixes. We expect this to be the final release candidate before PHP 4.0. " I've found the PHP4 RCs to be extremely stable. If you are only familiar with PHP3, take a look. You should also look at the Zend site, to read more about the engine behind PHP4.

Matt writes "Saw over at Ars Technica that Loki Games has announced that Quake 3 Arena for Linux is hitting stores like EB and Fry's today! I will certainly have to run by EB after work to see if this is true. Man, screw the egg-nog action - I'm gonna need some fraggin' if I'm going to survive a day with the in-laws."

In the last week I have read (literally) over 1000 online attacks aimed at an alleged attempt by Unisys to make everyone who uses GIFs on a Web site pay $5000 in royalties. A story posted here on Slashdot Sunday helped fan those flames. But nowhere, in any of the many "Unisys is evil" posts I read, here or elsewhere, did I see a single official statement from anyone at Unisys, so I decided to call Unisys and get their take on the matter. (More below)

The Real Unisys GIF Deal
According to Mark Starr, General Patent and Technology Counsel for Unisys, if the GIFs on your Web site were created with software that is licensed by Unisys, you are fine. Nobody at Unisys is going to try to get $5000 or even $0.50 out of you. Period.

And, Starr added, virtually all of the major, heavily-used, commercial graphics programs from what he calls "reputable companies" (e.g. Adobe, Corel, JASC, Macromedia, Microsoft, AOL/Netscape, etc.) are licensed by Unisys. He said that even the "included" software packaged with most scanners and digital cameras is licensed. Use it, create all the GIFs you want with it, post those GIFs to your heart's content, and relax. Unisys will not come after you.

But...
And it's a big but, too. If you use GIF graphics created with certain freeware programs, and your chosen program uses LZW compression to create GIFs without a license to use it, you may be violating a Unisys patent. How would Unisys know what software you used to create a particular GIF? Starr says they'll ask you, and, he says, "...assuming we made an inquiry, we would expect a Web site operator to tell us what he used." I did not ask, "What if someone creates a GIF using licensed software that came with a scanner, then modifies that image with the GIMP or another freeware program?" I really didn't want to know the answer to this question; all of my GIFs have passed through at least one Unisys-licensed program at some point, so if I am asked I can honestly say that they were created (at least partially) in accordance with the Unisys patent.

I specifically asked Starr about the GIMP. He had not heard of it, but said, "We give hundreds of licenses away to non-commercial, non-profit entities. We do not give our technology away to for-profit entities." The rub here is that if you use the GIMP - which was created by a non-profit group - to create GIF graphics for a non-commercial site, you're probably fine, but if you use it to create GIF graphics for a Web site that is intended to make a profit, Unisys wants a cut of the action. How much? E-mail them and ask. And if you want to write a program that incorporates LZW compression technology in its code base, you'd better ask, because you'll be in trouble if you don't - and you may be in trouble even if you do, according to these folks, but that's a whole 'nother kettle of fish we won't get into today.

Do not expect Unisys to release LZW technology under the GPL anytime soon. Unisys is not a free software booster. Starr said, "We do not use freeware in our own products as a matter of policy. It could violate someone's license, it could be trash. Anyone who uses freeware does so at their own risk."

Starr also said, "We have thought of a [GIF patent] giveway, but it's not in the best interests of our shareholders..." He does not believe the potential PR value involved in giving LZW technology away is worth much, either. He said, "We've [given free licenses to] hundreds of non-profit organizations, schools, and governments, but we haven't gotten much good publicity over it."

And, according to Starr, there are plenty of good reasons a company like Unisys should not allow its patented technology to be used for free, even in free software. He specifically described two common situations:

1) A company creates a $200,000 CAD package - then gives away a "free plug-in" that includes LZW. Should not Unisys charge a royalty under these circumstances? Isn't the freeness of the plug-in package that includes LZW somewhat of a sham, possibly made that way specifically to avoid paying royalties to Unisys?

2) A company that sells hardware of some sort (Starr mentioned "Japanese digital camera manufacturers" here) but includes accompanying software "free." Again, to Unisys this freeness is strictly bogus, and they want royalties on the "free" software that comes with the non-free hardware if that software uses LZW technology in any way.

That's Their Story and They're Sticking to It
The stack of e-mails Unisys has gotten this week from Slashdot readers and other free software boosters who disagree with the Unisys GIF patent policy hasn't done much to change Starr's mind. He and Unisys PR dude Oliver Picher both described the e-mail tirades with words like vile, vulgar, obscene, disgusting, and distasteful. Apparently, the dregs of the Open Source Community came out of the woodwork in full force, and, as usual, pissed off the people whose minds they might have had a chance to change if they had exercised a little courtesy.

Those of you who sent those e-mails don't need to apologize. I already did, profusely, on your behalf. And the person to whom I apologized most humbly was not Starr, but Cheryl, the low-paid secretary who had to read all the filth.

Cheryl does not set Unisys policy, and she does not own stock in the company, but she is the person whose job it is to read all the abusive e-mail sent to Unisys via the e-mail address on the relevant corporate Web page. All you do when you send her obscenities is make her - and by extension, her boss, Mark Starr - think that Open Source advocates are crackpots and idiots. But I am going to cut this potential tirade short, because Rob Malda has already given you a similar lecture, Eric S. Raymond has given it, Bruce Perens has given it, and Richard M. Stallman has given it so many times that he probably mumbles it in his sleep.

The Bottom Line
Unisys is unlikely to change its corporate position regarding free software in the near future (especially if they get attacked instead of asked politely) and they have the patent on LZW-compressed GIFs and you don't, so if you're going to use their technology you must play by their rules until or unless software patent laws in the U.S. get a radical makeover. Meanwhile, if you want to use LZW-compressed GIFs on your Intranet or public Web site, and you created them with a Unisys-licensed piece of software, no one from Unisys is going to come around and demand money from you.

And if you plan to create - or have already created - free image-processing software that uses Unisys-patented LZW technology, you might want to ask the company, very politely, for a giveaway license that would cover non-commercial use of your product. I suspect that Mr. Starr (who has final judgement in such matters) might just give you one if you approach him correctly and you manage to convince him that you aren't trying to burn Unisys with some sort of bogus giveaway deal that is really meant to make you or your program's users rich while denying Unisys shareholders the licensing fees that - like it or not - they are legally entitled to collect if you try to earn a profit from your use of their intellectual property.

Matt writes "Much hype has followed the release of latest version of SuSE (6.0), and judging by the review over at Ars Technica of this hot distribution the hype is well justified. While packing a big bang, SuSE incorporates tools like YaST, SaX, KDE, StarOffice 5.0, and so forth to get users of any experience level up on their feet and running productively. As a long time user of RedHat I find SuSE to be a worthy competitor, as well as a strong indication that distributions as a whole are continuing to do positive things to stimulate the growth of the desktop OS user base for Linux. Definitely a worthy read, check it out!" CowboyNeal swears by SuSE. I'm itching for a new Debian CD.

Amoeba Protozoa has the first Quickie for the day: The Linux Image Montage Project needs logos to create a montage poster. If you have a Linux related logo, send it to them. mazeone sent us a link to the always excellent NTK which has a great note about Bruce Perens at the start, (And yes, I read NTK too ;) And now a whole bunch of fun little links that have been building up: PopeClayton sent us a link to a Homer Simpson Fortune File. cpfeifer sent us a link to another O'Reily Book Parody. Zibalatz sent us a link to a MacBeth Star Wars Parody. rpm sent us a link to the Magic Nipple. It predicts the future. Sorta. Now we have a few more Porn Parody sites: desertAngel sent us Amish Porn and Gambit32 sent us telephone sex. Both are hilarious. The Only Anonymous Coward sent us a link to an emergency Security Alert: apparently a dangerous bug was found in GNU acronym. An anonymous reader sent us an important page: a Guide to Babes for Geeks. Follow these to the letter. Oh wait, most of us probably already do. That might explain my social life anyway.

Amoeba Protozoa has the first Quickie for the day: The Linux Image Montage Project needs logos to create a montage poster. If you have a Linux related logo, send it to them. mazeone sent us a link to the always excellent NTK which has a great note about Bruce Perens at the start, (And yes, I read NTK too ;) And now a whole bunch of fun little links that have been building up: PopeClayton sent us a link to a Homer Simpson Fortune File. cpfeifer sent us a link to another O'Reily Book Parody. Zibalatz sent us a link to a MacBeth Star Wars Parody. rpm sent us a link to the Magic Nipple. It predicts the future. Sorta. Now we have a few more Porn Parody sites: desertAngel sent us Amish Porn and Gambit32 sent us telephone sex. Both are hilarious. The Only Anonymous Coward sent us a link to an emergency Security Alert: apparently a dangerous bug was found in GNU acronym. An anonymous reader sent us an important page: a Guide to Babes for Geeks. Follow these to the letter. Oh wait, most of us probably already do. That might explain my social life anyway.

desslok writes "The USDA is going to license a patent to Monsanto for genetically altering plants so they cannot reproduce (so-called "Terminator Technology"). The end result is that Monsanto will be able to market genetically altered seeds that have a superior crop yield but cannot be copied. But there are dangers that these "sterile" plants could in fact pollinate neighboring crops." To bad nature isn't under the GPL.

Two stories have cropped up this week about IBM and patent-issues. The first is from Greg Aharonian of the Internet Patent News Service who discusses the implications of using a Open Source product which includes IBM patents given IBM's history of vigorously defending its patents even when they are included in open protocols. The second is from ZD Net which claims IBM would like to see the Linux license changed to take more patent issues into account, so that it feels legally protected if it provides 24x7 support and tweaks the code. The article concludes by listing potential new Linux ports. The GPL does discuss patents (see the GPL preamble for explanation). somebody else and Linux Weekly News contributed links. update The Kernel mailing list has some debate on this, ranging from people who would like to work something out with IBM (so that the free software community can use arithmetic compression, and other IBM patents for free), to people who argue that if IBM does not want to play by our rules (freedom), it should go make its money somewhere else. A list of patents currently restricting us as well as a prediction of the demise of the patent system were posted.

Two stories have cropped up this week about IBM and patent-issues. The first is from Greg Aharonian of the Internet Patent News Service who discusses the implications of using a Open Source product which includes IBM patents given IBM's history of vigorously defending its patents even when they are included in open protocols. The second is from ZD Net which claims IBM would like to see the Linux license changed to take more patent issues into account, so that it feels legally protected if it provides 24x7 support and tweaks the code. The article concludes by listing potential new Linux ports. The GPL does discuss patents (see the GPL preamble for explanation). somebody else and Linux Weekly News contributed links. update The Kernel mailing list has some debate on this, ranging from people who would like to work something out with IBM (so that the free software community can use arithmetic compression, and other IBM patents for free), to people who argue that if IBM does not want to play by our rules (freedom), it should go make its money somewhere else. A list of patents currently restricting us as well as a prediction of the demise of the patent system were posted.

Two stories have cropped up this week about IBM and patent-issues. The first is from Greg Aharonian of the Internet Patent News Service who discusses the implications of using a Open Source product which includes IBM patents given IBM's history of vigorously defending its patents even when they are included in open protocols. The second is from ZD Net which claims IBM would like to see the Linux license changed to take more patent issues into account, so that it feels legally protected if it provides 24x7 support and tweaks the code. The article concludes by listing potential new Linux ports. The GPL does discuss patents (see the GPL preamble for explanation). somebody else and Linux Weekly News contributed links. update The Kernel mailing list has some debate on this, ranging from people who would like to work something out with IBM (so that the free software community can use arithmetic compression, and other IBM patents for free), to people who argue that if IBM does not want to play by our rules (freedom), it should go make its money somewhere else. A list of patents currently restricting us as well as a prediction of the demise of the patent system were posted.

Quinn Weaver writes "Where can I find a book on the fundamental, generic algorithms that programmers often need? I'm not talking about something quite as low-level as routines for manipulating data structures, but rather about solutions to common problems you run into while writing a program: randomizing an array, for instance. I am a fairly young programmer, and I often find myself faced with a problem like this one, where I know what I want to do and can think of some stupid ways and a few clever ways to go about, but I always wonder if there's a better solution out there. I don't want to re-invent the wheel, especially if I end up leaving some spokes off.

What I'm seeking, therefore, is a sort of "recipe book" mapping common problems to tried-and-true solutions. I would like it to be as general as possible, striving for breadth instead of depth; I don't want a giant, exhaustive tome on random number generation or synchronous I/O or sorting, but rather a big reference full of the high points of several such tomes. Also for the sake of generality, I would prefer that it be written on the algorithmic level. I understand O'Reilly is coming out with a _Perl Cookbook_ that tries to provide such a resource for Perl. I'll probably buy it, but I suspect it won't be of much use for strongly typed languages with highly hierarchical class libraries instead of handfuls of functions. (C++ and Java come to mind.) While it's easy enough to translate syntax from one language to another, fancy built-in functions like Perl's _split_ take more effort to implement than my small subproblems should take to solve. "

DuckIE writes "according to pcgamer, the next installment of Origin's Wing Commander series will be released free, in its entirity, for download from the internet." No source obviously, but they are releasing 56 missions, in groups that will be released each week. And you don't even need to own WC to play. Fascinating twist in game distribution...

Scott Miller (who obviously has to much spare time) has written 'SlashHOT' a java application that monitors Slashdot headlines, tracks them, and saves you the time of pressing reload only to find that nothing has changed. Grab it here. Please direct questions about the app to Scott.

Scott Miller (who obviously has to much spare time) has written 'SlashHOT' a java application that monitors Slashdot headlines, tracks them, and saves you the time of pressing reload only to find that nothing has changed. Grab it here. Please direct questions about the app to Scott.