Slashdot Mirror

Jkior asks: "I've been using a local ISP - no problems for over a year and excellent service. Recently, however, they were bought out by a regional electric company. Which started me wondering - considering the GB/S or so bandwidth planned by MediaFusion, using the power lines. Is this happening anywhere else? Could power companies be seeing the possibilities in this?" MediaFusion's basic plan is to use the magnetic field surrounding the powerline as a communications medium as opposed to voltage or amplitude modulation. Since power lines connect more people than even phone and cable, might the beginnings of a true broadband global network be right around the corner?

halfelven writes: "Sugarplum, the anti-spambot fighting machine, is out! Quoting from their website: Sugarplum is an automated spam-poisoner. Its purpose is to feed realistic and enticing, but totally useless data to wandering spam-bots such as EmailSiphon, Cherry Picker, etc. The idea is to so contaminate spammers' databases as to require that they be discarded, or at least that all data retrieved from your site (including actual email addresses) be removed." I've seen this sort of thing before, but I just figured it's a fun thing to chat about on a holiday. It would be cool to put this on Slashdot some time: I bet I'm not the only Slashdot reader whose email address has been slurped.

Erik Anderson asks: "I am a senior in the Computer Science program at a relatively small (2500 students) liberal arts college. Finally, after much pushing, we (the students) are going to be allowed to install Linux on one of the workstations in the advanced computing lab, and I have been chosen to install/maintain/admin/etc the box. What suggestions or advice would you have for distributions and/or software? This workstation will have some flavor of X installed, and will be used by many students. Disk quotas will need to be enforced and system security and data protection will be of utmost importance. This computer will be primarily used for network experimentation by the students and software development."

bad$eed asks: "I have been in software and Internet development for 6 years. However, I have never used or seen 'Interactive TV'. It seems to be that there are a few standards around (MS WebTV, Open Digital TV, etc). Is this going to take off? I see that my bank (HSBC) now has banking through Open Digital. Who are the developers out there in the field and what tools are they using and how is it different to regular HTML content delivery? Is there a standards war going on in Interactive TV? Where does one start?"

Wigs writes: "There's a nice article on spaceprojects.com about NASA's current competition, or rather the lack of it. From the article: 'The Microsoft antitrust litigation, as well as the consumer benifits resulting from AT&T's break-up, have substantially raised public awareness about the negative impact that monopolies can have on society. Many people who know much about NASA distrust it as well ... It seems NASA would benefit from having publicly funded competition, resembling what Japan's two competing civilian space agencies have.' I've heard that companies like United Space Alliance have looked into the possiblity of purchasing a shuttle, but have been shot down by NASA officials. Other companies looking to get into the single stage to orbit competition are Rotary Rocket, Kelly Space, and Pegasus (actually 3-stage). However, these are all private companies. This article discussing public funding, namely the National Science Foundation."

denisbergeron writes: "According to Netcraft, 10,704,306 Web site[s were] running Apache in June. That represents 62.53% of all the Web sites in the world. It's an augmentation of 1,609,166 or 2.09%. " The graph is pretty cute, too.

blaine writes: "There is an interesting article at CNN regarding the differing policies towards privacy that the United States and most of Europe have. It details some of the disputes between the United States and Europe with respects to the United States not being as strict in enforcing online privacy."

faqBastard writes: "NASA's been working on some pretty cool snake-bots for exploring outer space. All kinds of neat features and capabilities ... " Robotic snakes certainly seem to be slithering into our future. OK, they look practical and intriguing -- but they give me the willies.

Viking Coder and Rares Marian sent in submissions asking about recommendations on systems for high quality video editing. They have concerns about the hardware and the software necessary for such tasks. I figure all of you folks out there who have some experience in this area should be able to help them out. (Read More)

Viking Coder asks: "Hello, I'd like to get involved with Digital Video recording and editing, and I was wondering what other people were using. The iMac at first seems a good option, until you see the limited hard drive and editing capabilities. Are there any pre-packaged solutions that would make for a better system? How about Linux or W2K compatibility / support? Any Open Source solutions to what would be obvious roadblocks?"

"So, I've been looking to build an eMonster 550R from eMachines, with a $500 DVRaptor from Canopus, also loading in a 30G EIDE (UDMA) HD, and Adobe Premiere 5.1, running everything from my (company's) Sony DCR-TRV103.

Am I in for a rude shock, or am I going to love what I can do? Are there other options I should be aware of? Will uLead's Media Builder (?) blow me away, or is Adobe the way to go? Is there an obvious winner card that makes the DVRaptor look silly? Is a 30G UDMA enough? Any caveats? (Like, 7,200 RPM for instance?)"

And from Rares Marian: "What tools, OSes, platforms, and hardware do I need to put a good machine together? I'm currently considering the following:

• Platform: Athlon 700, Alpha, G4, SGI
• OSes: Linux, Windows, AmigaOS, BSD (are they there yet?)
• Tools: Broadcast 2000, Premiere
• Systems: PC, Amiga, Mac, Alpha, SGI
• Hardware: Linux Multimedia Labs LML33, VideoToaster

I've had some quotes from $2000 for an Amiga3K setup (hey they used it on Babylon 5, Jurassic Park, and many TV stations still use it) to an $8000 Windows Athlon based machine. Any ideas? Hint: Small Budget No Limits. (From home video to full blown Internet based publishing)"

Viking Coder and Rares Marian sent in submissions asking about recommendations on systems for high quality video editing. They have concerns about the hardware and the software necessary for such tasks. I figure all of you folks out there who have some experience in this area should be able to help them out. (Read More)

Viking Coder asks: "Hello, I'd like to get involved with Digital Video recording and editing, and I was wondering what other people were using. The iMac at first seems a good option, until you see the limited hard drive and editing capabilities. Are there any pre-packaged solutions that would make for a better system? How about Linux or W2K compatibility / support? Any Open Source solutions to what would be obvious roadblocks?"

"So, I've been looking to build an eMonster 550R from eMachines, with a $500 DVRaptor from Canopus, also loading in a 30G EIDE (UDMA) HD, and Adobe Premiere 5.1, running everything from my (company's) Sony DCR-TRV103.

Am I in for a rude shock, or am I going to love what I can do? Are there other options I should be aware of? Will uLead's Media Builder (?) blow me away, or is Adobe the way to go? Is there an obvious winner card that makes the DVRaptor look silly? Is a 30G UDMA enough? Any caveats? (Like, 7,200 RPM for instance?)"

And from Rares Marian: "What tools, OSes, platforms, and hardware do I need to put a good machine together? I'm currently considering the following:

• Platform: Athlon 700, Alpha, G4, SGI
• OSes: Linux, Windows, AmigaOS, BSD (are they there yet?)
• Tools: Broadcast 2000, Premiere
• Systems: PC, Amiga, Mac, Alpha, SGI
• Hardware: Linux Multimedia Labs LML33, VideoToaster

I've had some quotes from $2000 for an Amiga3K setup (hey they used it on Babylon 5, Jurassic Park, and many TV stations still use it) to an $8000 Windows Athlon based machine. Any ideas? Hint: Small Budget No Limits. (From home video to full blown Internet based publishing)"

ken_i_m writes "VMware has signed an OEM deal with Microsoft to offer various flavors of Windows pre-installed with their product. Here is VMware's news release." Don't get too angry about this; if you're using VMware, you're probably loading up a version of Windows anyway.

David. H. Sims writes "Well as it seems Telstra, Australia's telephone monopoly has finally been recognized as one, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has forced Telstra to grant full local loop access to its competitors and to bring extensive testing to a halt and begin the mainstream ADSL rollout by August at the latest. If you don't live in Australia, Telstra is the only reason we're all stuck to poor modem speeds, Telstra owns all exchanges in Australia and is privatised and thus wouldn't open them to other companies so they could install the relevant ADSL equipment. As usual the full story's at NewsWire. I think I'll have my xDSL medium rare! :) "

lf11 writes, "I have a problem, for which I have been unable to find any applicable documentation. I am trying to bind a combination of keys to produce one character in X-Windows. In this case, I'm trying to bind Alt + Shift + j/k/l/i to function as arrow keys. I don't know if it's an Enlightenment function ("__ACTION __KEY Left" segfaulted) or an X function."

Ysidoro writes "With No. 316.081 of August 30, 1999 has been filed before the Uruguayan Trademark Office a trademark application for registration of the LINUX name to International class 42 (computer related services). This application has been filed by Mr. Francisco Pereira and Mr. Enrique Place de Cuadro, of Montevideo, Uruguay. In accordance with the official publication from the Industrial Property Bulletin No. 6 of December 1999. See the open letter writed by a group of Uruguayan Linux users. "

brianm9 wrote in with this tidbit from BSDI's home page. "LAP enables a BSD/OS system to execute many dynamically linked Linux ELF binaries (both libc5 and glibc) with no significant loss of performance. This release has been tested with the following Linux applications: Adobe Acrobat, ApplixWare, Informix and Word Perfect." The beta is only available to BSDI customers with current support contracts; more information can be had from BSDI's Linux Application Platform page.

MisterFig asks: "I, like many of you, have too many remote controls to know what to do with. One for the TV, the VCR, the Receiver, the CD player, the Cable box... you get the drift. I don't mind using them all, but is there an easier way? Sure, there are so called "Universal" remotes. But I find these often provide a very limited set of functionality for usually only a subset of my devices. Each remote has it's own special buttons and features that a Universal remote doesn't know about. So I am stuck keeping all the remotes out. Can one remote do it all? I recently came across an add for the Harman Kardon "Take Control". This is a cool remote control that is software programmable, looks really easy to use and supposedly can be programmed to do everything each of your current remotes do. Could it be? A single remote control that can control everything? It's laid out in such a way that you have activities, like "watch tv", "play a cd" or "watch a video". Clicking on the activity will setup the entertainment center to a predefined state of your choosing. This sounds too good to be true! However, it's about $300. Is it worth it? Has anyone used one of these? Are there any other remotes out there that can control everything? Including all the special buttons/features that each of the individual remotes have? " Can it be? An All-In-One remote that claims it actually WORKS?

Rares Marian sent us linkage to an article running over at LinuxToday. Apparently someone else has tried to trademark Linux. This time its in Korea. Now there is no way that this can hold up, so I find this amusing, but it does actually have to be addressed. Very frusterating. It bothers me that there are so many people who are willing to pull this sort of stuff.

ectospasm writes "This article in the Los Angeles Times is a brief history of the squirt gun, with it's main focus on Super Soaker, the undisputed champion of the water arms race. Interesting because the original Super Soaker idea was the brainchild of a Jet Propulsion Laboratory engineer. I especially like what they say about a forth-coming product line aimed at college-aged children. ;-) " I need a big honkin, uber efficient squirt gun for sniping these kids that keep ringing my doorbell and running.

Jim Dabell writes "Macmillan have announced they are releasing "The Complete Linux(TM) Operating System 6.0" based on Mandrake. There are also deluxe and secure server options. " Why not. Everybody else seems to be creating their own distribution. Its fun.

Couple of new Linux Portals to mention: An anonymous reader sent us a link to LinuxStart- a yahoo-ish Linux focused site, and FaKe wrote in to send us JustLinux.com. EmilEifrem sent us Earthweb's newly announced OpenSourceIT, which isn't a portal: More like a better designed LinuxWorld, with a cheesier name. It Debuts with the standard ESR and RMS profiles. All of these sites look pretty decent- its pretty excellent that Linux can support this much content. Anyone else remember when it was just Me and Scoop? We've come a long way. Very cool.