Slashdot Mirror

Elyscape writes "The Google Blog announced today the release of an API for Google Maps. While the use of the API requires a key that limits the owner to 50K pageviews a day, which is similar to but far more generous than Google's Web Search API, Google notes that they are willing to work something out with website owners who expect to breach that large barrier. This release definitely opens the door for (or, at least, eases the creation of) more advanced Google-Maps-based applications. On the negative side, it broke several current Google-Maps-based sites, such as ChicagoCrime.org. So get started! Go to the Google Maps API home, sign up for a key, and go wild! (Note: going wild may entail fixing broken sites. It does not necessarily entail actually visiting the wild.)

GregThePaladin writes "A 7-year-old flaw that could let an attacker place malicious content on trusted Web sites has resurfaced in the most recent Firefox browser, Secunia has warned. The flaw, which also affects some other Mozilla Foundation programs, lies in the way the software handles frames. The applications don't check whether the frames displayed in a single window all originate from the same Web site." Commentary on this at whitedust as well.

Slashback tonight with several updates, ranging from patent encumbrances to SOAP 1.2 to the transcript for Eldred v. Ashcroft, with more bits in the middle on the recent Geek Cruise in the Caribbean, the all-important cable TV lineups, and more. Read on below for the details! A little light reading. hayek writes "The transcript of oral argument at the Supreme Court in Eldred v. Ashcroft is now available online."

And then we saw the sharks. a9db0 writes "Part II of Doc Searl's travelogue recounting his experiences on the Geek Cruise has been posted here by the fine folks over at the Linux Journal"

In an earlier report from Geek Cruise, Linus predicted 2.6 by June 2003. If you liked the list of features being considered for 2.6, you can thank puriots0 for "the list of what's been included in time for the feature freeze for Linux 2.6", as found at kernelnewbies.org.

Peel back your eyelids and let these images flood your brain. strredwolf writes "I think we had half the story when Cartoon Network said they were going to remove Zoids and G Gundam in their Toonami block. It was more like remove Zoids, move G Gundam to Midnight Run with GI Joe, put HeMan and Transformers on full weekdays, and double up on DB and DBZ. The website and broadcast prove it now. (This report was done while watching to Toonami live.)"

And Stalke writes "Recently, rumours about Stargate SG1 7th season included it both being renewed as well as speculation that it might be cancelled. MGM and Scifi put those rumours to rest today by officially announcing a 7th season. It will begin filming next year with a full 22 episodes ordered. No word about Daniel Jackson returning though :("

Cracking down on alien fraudsters. yep writes "Administrators of the alien-hunting distributed computing experiment SETI@home have announced they will crack down on cheats who rort statistics on computing power lent to the project. The announcement follows a united protest from the chief contributors. SETI@home director David Anderson announced SETI@home would do its best to investigate users returning suspiciously high amounts of work and delete their accounts if it uncovered solid evidence of cheating."

Sure they're not. tiltowait writes "The Hartford Courant article "The FBI Has Bugged Our Public Libraries" has been retracted (this was mentioned here - but the older article has been removed). Even if the retraction can be trusted, this doesn't change the fact that the FBI can still bug libraries as freely as the CIA can assasinate with impunity, or that more McCarthyism is on the way."

This story retracts the claims of bugging made in the previous one. Since the FBI has little incentive to tell the truth on this count, I don't see what incentive anyone has to believe their denial.

Cleaning up the future for SOAP. Makarand writes "A major hurdle in finalizing the SOAP 1.2 specification has been removed. Both Epicentric, a subsidiary of Vignette, and WebMethods, which makes integration software, had said in earlier statements that they may have patents that cover the technology used in the SOAP 1.2 specification which would have made SOAP 1.2 non royalty-free hindering approval by W3C. Epicentric has now amended its earlier statement saying they no longer believe they hold any such patents, and even if they did, they are interested in making them available on a royalty-free basis. WebMethods has made no comments yet."

strredwolf asks: "After upgrading my Zaurus SL-5500 to the much-better OpenZaurus 3.0 ROM, I'm left with a lack of an e-mail application that does POP. Short of compiling one up, what would folks there use with the OZ-bearing PDA? Ether a POP-capable mail app, or even a webmail system I can use Konqueror on? (And no, Yahoo! Mail doesn't work on it, even though Opera on the Sharp ROM worked well with that site)"

strredwolf writes "Mastercard has cut out third parties from charging on behalf of merchants. This affects folks paying their auctions and goods via Paypal, Yahoo! Paydirect, and potentially ebay's Billpoint. It may also affect Paypal's Mastercard-backed Debit Card, but there's no word from Paypal as far as I can tell." Word has it paypal is trying to negotiate a side deal with Mastercard.

oddjobs writes "It's not the most groundbreaking article, but the Chicago Tribune does a pretty good job of looking at the state of webcomics-as-business-model. They mention the usual suspects (Marvel, McCloud) but most hopeful is Unbound Comics, which is selling comics collected in Adobe's e-book format. Fans of the 80s book Dalgoda take note."

waveclaw asks: "A Catch-22: how to initially draw people to a community when the a community itself is the selling point and your being drowned in information sea that the web has become? Many people take the popularity of Slashdot and other 'people concentrators' for granted. Whole communities are developing, as they have done for thousands of years, on web logs and news sites via reader feedback. Unfortunately, not all sites are well traveled. (Side note: a lot of reseach has apperantly gone into this.) For instance, the special interst publication Dragon Spirit Magazine is closing their doors due to a lack rather than surfiet of viewers. Belfy Comics lists an entire section of online-only comics which are (for lack of a better term) abandoned by both viewer and creator. Porbably the most powerful force obliterating free communication is neither fundamentalist nor jack-booted: it's obscurity."

"While network outages are easy to diagnose by comparison, what does a site do when it's dying? Sites like Keenspace and Webring and wiki try to build self-referential collections of sites and pages that sometimes work and sometimes don't Has anyone out had their back to this wall a lot and come out winning? Short of a listing on Slashdot, how?"

strredwolf writes: "Scott McCloud, author of Understanding Comics and Reinventing Comics, posted up his latest I Can't Stop Thinking comic essay. In it, he continues on his "Coins of the Realm" series on Micropayments, citing the RIAA in price gouging (records costing $15, but tapes $2 a pop), and using Napster as an example on how to "put it to the man" by charging only 15 cents/song, and sending all the money over to the artists themselves. He also points to Scott Kurtz PvP, and how if every viewer chipped in 25 cents, and accounting for hosting and handling costs, Kurtz would be on a $73,000/year payrole! Interesting arguments. Saw on the PvP site." We linked to the prior essay as well, if you missed it.

strredwolf writes: "Research is being done to replace standard solar cell pannels commonly used in satelites with one's made with diamonds. Supposedly, they would be more durable to conditions in space, as well as generate more power at the same cost. Same cost? The kicker is that they're not using gem-quality diamonds. Article on Beyond 2000, which amazingly is still around." Note: this is still a work in progress, not a finished technology, but if it pans out, this offers several benefits over traditional solar cells.

strredwolf points out that we have winners of the Fifth Annual Obfuscated Perl Contest, noting, "Unfortunately, my virtual machine didn't win." (Insert loser-condolences here.) BTW, I noticed problems with the code as printed: the winner of category 2 lacks a terminal quote, and I couldn't get the category 3 winner to compile even after fiddling with whitespace. Put up a webpage with code I can copy-paste-and-run, email me, and I'll update this story with your link.