Slashdot Mirror

juan_buhler writes "SIGGRAPH 2004 started Sunday in the Los Angeles Convention Center. I am chairing the Sketches program for 2005, and along with Nishant Kothary, who is chairing the Web program in 2005, Danah Boyd and others, we are running a pilot with a blog and a wiki. Check them out. The blog has almost real time posting of what's going on at SIGGRAPH, so it's a great way to see it if you couldn't make it this year" Read on for a few more notes from Siggraph.

First, steveha writes "As noted on LWN, SGI has announced the OpenGL 2.0 specification, which includes support for programmable shaders. How long will it be before we get native Linux applications using this?"

protohiro1 writes "I just saw this HDR display and it blew me away, it was like looking at a slide on a light table. Is this the future of display tech?"

abacsalmasi wrote about a "nifty little thing called Echo. I, along with two other chaps, have started a company called Stable Research Inc. and we'll be showing our Echo prototype at the Siggraph show. It is essentially live DVD recordings at concert venues where we can have burned DVDs of the concert they just saw, ready minutes after the show for people to pick up on their way out. The cool thing about it is the ability to switch camera angles on the fly, without any lag or stuttering, plus we include another composite ganged feed so you can watch all the cameras simultaneously. A demo will be showing at The Canadian Film Centre's Habitat New Media booth so stop by and check it out. Web Demo coming soon."

TekZen asks: "LWN posted a reference to an ABC News article that claims 'Other than Linux, all the other open-source projects move along at a rate best described as glacial.' The reason? 'This probably is a function of how motivation and lack of fear work among open-source developers.' Are you motivated by fear to develop at work? What motivates you as an Open Source software developer?"

TekZen asks: "LWN posted a reference to an ABC News article that claims 'Other than Linux, all the other open-source projects move along at a rate best described as glacial.' The reason? 'This probably is a function of how motivation and lack of fear work among open-source developers.' Are you motivated by fear to develop at work? What motivates you as an Open Source software developer?"

An anonymous reader writes "Linux Weekly News has a now free review of terminal emulators. It might be old but still remains an important tool to many of the regulars here." If you're checking that out, it's also worth checking out Joe Barr's CLI series on Linux.com (also owned by OSDN)

bakwas_internet writes "Konstantin Ryabitsev sent a funny message in form of a irc chat log, revealing how Fedora and the Community Interact, to the development discussions mailing list related to Fedora Core.The story also appeared at lwn.net and OSnews."

An anonymous reader writes "Seems that last fall's victory over EU patent regulations was just round one. The current draft rejects all clarifying amendments made by the European Parliament, allowing direct patentability of computer programs. A net-wide protest is being organized on April 14."

Elektroschock writes "LWN has coverage of a GPL dispute settled in a constructive manner. Allnet GmbH, German manufacturer and distributor of networking equipment, including switches, routers, NICs and wireless adapters, infringed the GNU Public License of netfilter/iptables. As part of the settlement Allnet GmbH will donate money to tax-exempt not-for-profit organizations, i.e. FSF Europe and FFII. Both organisations lobby for better copyright and patent legislation in Europe."

Ridgelift writes "Linux Weekly News have released Linux Timeline 2003, their annual year in review of the top stories around Linux and the Open Source Community. Their list has been available to subscribers for the last two weeks, but is now available for free. What a nice Christmas present, and what a year it's been."

Sparky writes "We've already heard that SCO have invoked the DMCA via 'letters sent to select Fortune 1000 Linux end users.' The specifics come via a copy of the letter reprinted at LWN.net - they've decided that they own the copyright to about 65 header files contained in Linux - largely errno.h, signal.h and ioctl.h." balloonpup also notes "CNet News has reported that SCO has reported a fourth quarter loss of $1.6 million, owing mostly to hefty legal fees in its war against Linux. SCO said they would have reported $7.4 million in earnings, if not for the $9 million payout to their lawyers. Way to go, SCO!" Many readers also point out a Groklaw article indicating Novell has registered for the copyrights on multiple versions of Unix with the U.S. Copyright Office, so that "both the SCO Group and Novell have registered for UNIX System V copyrights for the same code."

costela writes "LWN points out that the Gentoo project fired out an alert about one compromised rsync server." From the message itself: "However, the compromised system had both an IDS and a file integrity checker installed and we have a very detailed forensic trail of what happened once the box was breached, so we are reasonably confident that the portage tree stored on that box was unaffected." Update: 12/03 22:54 GMT by T : One more damage report: gibson writes "The Free Software Foundation recently discovered that its software host site was compromised a month ago. The compromise appears to be the same as the recent attacks on the Debian servers. The site is shut down until Friday while they install replacement hardware and verify the authenticity of the hosted source code."

DeckerEgo writes "InfoWorld reports on the Linux desktop and how Novell, Sun and RedHat (wha?) are working on making 2004 the year corporations start adopting open desktops. But which desktop? Most interesting to note is how Novell is planning to beef up the number of Ximian, Gnome, Mozilla and OpenOffice developers after its SuSE aquisition is complete. Does this mean that SuSE will stop being one of the best KDE distros out there and follow the way of the Gnome?"

Midnight Warrior asks: "I am one system administrator for what is an organization of dozens of LANs. Together, we all must keep our machines patched. Now we can all watch CVE, frequent securityfocus.com, or let LWN [Updated vulnerabilities section] bring things together. LWN does a fabulous job, but I'm looking for something bigger and more personalized that doesn't require the system be on the internet. Freshmeat, SourceForge, and Google are all NULL on this question: is there a database, and scraping agents in existence that will let one person oversee dozens of OS installations, a mish-mash of software packages, and an even worse level of up-to-date patching exist so that when a new vulnerability against, say, OpenSSH comes out, I can look up which systems need to be tested and patched? My work should be limited to maintaining OS (not just Linux distros), software versions, and current patch lists. This is a classic database problem, but has someone already solved it?"

yeremein writes "According to this vnunet.com article, SCO's code changes Update: 10/04 20:51 GMT by T : (This should read "SGI's" rather than "SCO's.") removing arguably System-V-related code from SGI's Linux submissions is 'not enough.' According to Blake Stowell of SCO, 'Making minor amendments to its XFS file system doesn't cure the breach. SGI must do more as outlined [in the August letter] to cure all of their breaches.' But later on in the article, we learn what was outlined in the August letter: 'We don't believe that SGI has taken all of the steps necessary to cure all of the breaches, and in fact in our letter to them, we state "SGI's breaches of these agreements cannot be cured."' So SCO essentially told SGI, 'You're in violation of our contract and unless you remedy the violations, we'll pull your UNIX license. Oh, BTW, you can't remedy the violations.' This looks to me like the clearest example yet of how SCO is acting in bad faith." Read on below for another snippet of SCO strangeness.

An anonymous reader writes "As many are aware, SCO has sought (and got) a 4 month extension to its IBM lawsuit. According to the Salt Lake Tribune: 'SCO spokesman Blake Stowell said Tuesday that he understood the extension is being sought "for the purpose of gaining documents from IBM related to the patents they claim. . . . Some of the patents aren't even filed with the U.S. Patent Office, as far as we can learn."' I thought this was worth looking at, and quickly found that the patents in question are 4,814,746, 4,821,211, 4,953,209, and 5,805,785 - which can be found by typing in their numbers in this USPTO form."

lamont116 writes "The latest in the series of beta kernels was just released by the fine folks who have given us Linux. Enjoy!" The Changelog has a hefty 240K of miscellaneous changes... LWN has an overview of the updates.

Martin Marvinski writes "PostgreSQL Inc, the commercial company providing replication software and support for PostgreSQL, open sourced their eRServer replication product. This makes PostgreSQL one step closer to being able to replace Oracle as the de facto RDBMS standard. More information can be found on PostgreSQL's website."

stere0 writes "An article (in German) published on the German IT news site Heise includes two pictures (1, 2) of the "stolen" source code SCO claims to be theirs. Part of the first screenshot has been scrambled, the font has probably just been changed to Symbol; can anybody decipher it? I searched for the code snippets on Google. The code does indeed come from the kernel; the photographs show what seems to be lines 88-102 and 109-123 of /arch/ia64/sn/io/ate_utils.c from the 2.4 kernel tree. " Update: 08/19 16:39 GMT by M : LWN has a nice piece tracing the origins of the disputed code, and showing that SCO is simply lying.

An anonymous reader writes "SCO announced today that an undisclosed Fortune 500 company purchased Linux licenses for each of their servers running in their business. SCO: 'This Fortune 500 company recognizes the importance of paying for SCO's intellectual property that is found in Linux and can now run Linux in their environment under a legitimate license from SCO. We anticipate this being the first of many licensees that will properly compensate SCO for our intellectual property.'" kanly writes "The full text of IBM's countersuit against SCO is now online at LWN." M : Our own Roblimo has a pretty good take on it. Keep in mind that SCO could sell a blanket license for $1, for the publicity value.

mr.crutch writes "Few details are available, but CNet is reporting that IBM has filed counterclaims against SCO. CNet also has an interview with Red Hat CEO Matthew Szulik..." Jizzbug writes "Thanks to the folks of K5, we can all obtain our rights to use the Linux kernel from SCO, and without paying up to SCO's extortion. If kernel.org kernels aren't safe, sco.com kernels certainly ought to be." LWN has a copy of SCO's Linux License for your perusal. Bruce Perens is speaking of the dangers of patent portfolios to open source software, notable because IBM's counterclaims include patent infringement. And finally, a company is selling SCO Check, a tool to de-SCOify your Linux system, if SCO ever presents any evidence whatsoever of infringing code in Linux. Update: 08/08 00:16 GMT by T : SCO's public response to IBM's counterclaim is short and to the point. Among other things, it says "If IBM were serious about addressing the real problems with Linux, it would offer full customer indemnification and move away from the GPL license." Given the other links in this story, perhaps SCO should go first on that count.

The SCO must go on. Informationweek has a roundup. News.com has some analysis of the legal case. SCO reiterates their threat to revoke IBM's license. Reader hobsonchoice sends a blurb: "Also more from analysts who saw SCO/Linux code comparisons under NDA. Bill Claybrook, of Aberdeen Group Inc., says SCO changed their story to him about whether they had any "direct evidence" that IBM copied any System V code into Linux. Laura Didio of Yankee Group has answered some detailed questions about her code review process. Lastly Fujitsu Siemens have joined in the debate: they don't think SCO's case is going anywhere." One observer of the SCO case has compiled some notes about Caldera's active participation in the IA-64 project. And look on the bright side: if you follow the school of thought that all publicity is good publicity, at least this suit has gotten Linux mentioned in many places where it normally wouldn't be.

Reivec writes "I was having a discussion with Keith Packard on IRC about the current developments in the XFree86 Saga and politics already discussed here earlier, and I learned many interesting things. The project has a new website, xwin, and things are getting underway. 'We're in the process of building community, from that we can construct a government. It's a hard process to construct a representative system from what we have now, so it will take a bit of time. Weeks, not months. --Keith'" Read on for some more details. Update: 04/13 03:30 GMT by T : Reader Khalid points to this informative interview with Packard at Linux Weekly News, too. " The site is has only been up a day or so and there isn't a lot on it right now, but he would like to see a lot of community involvement on the site and many user submitted stories to get conversation rolling. A french site has already taken notice and posted some information on xwin as well. Since such a fork could make a large impact on many *NIX users, I felt the need to ask, 'assuming you had an active fork under development, how interchangable would you expect it to be with Xfree (assuming release builds). Do you think distros would be quick to change if it offered improvements? Or could they provide both and have the user choose upon installation?' Keith replied, 'Given that distros will have input into how it gets built, I expect they'd be interested in a version closer to what they need. And, given that RH and Debian maintainers are both actively encouraging changes, it's hard to see how they wouldn't want to follow. (or lead).' So if you have had any interest at all in the XFree86 development, this is definitely a community site you should take advantage of."

X-Nc asks: "I have an old 486 Laptop that does not have a CD drive and , if I remember right, a very small hard disk (a few megs), and maybe 4 megs of RAM. I would like to let my 6 year old son use this for him to play and learn on. What I'd -really- like to do is install Linux or one of the BSD's on it with enough apps to run a simple editor and a few other things. I have other systems that are able to run learning software and games. This would be for him to learn computer fundimentals. I remember in the old days that you could run X11 on this kind of system (my first Linux box was a 386DX-30 with 2meg RAM and a 20 meg HD). I have been digging around in some of the lists of distros to try and find something to load on the system but I can't seem to find one that's right. So, does anyone know of a Free Software (or even commercial) OS that can be installed on such a system that can do more than be just a terminal?"

Cpyder writes "The fine folks over at Linux Weekly News have just released their 2002 Linux Timeline. It's nice to see what good things have happened to the community this year."

Cpyder writes "The fine folks over at Linux Weekly News have just released their 2002 Linux Timeline. It's nice to see what good things have happened to the community this year."

Corbet writes "Linus has just merged the new crypto API and IPSec implementation into his 2.5 BitKeeper tree. This is the first time that serious cryptographic code has made an appearance in the mainline kernel, and it will hopefully lead to more secure communications for all Linux users in the future."

Corbet writes "Linus has just merged the new crypto API and IPSec implementation into his 2.5 BitKeeper tree. This is the first time that serious cryptographic code has made an appearance in the mainline kernel, and it will hopefully lead to more secure communications for all Linux users in the future."

Orm asks: "As we all know, Linux version 3.0 (or 2.6) is about to get a feature freeze, meaning that it is bug hunting time. And as we saw on the kernel-summit, some people are afraid that not enough people are willing to try this new kernel, to help get those bugs smashed. My idea to get more people into this hunting, is to write a good paper on how to do it. Not a standard 'how to locate and fix bugs' but a document targeted towards people using 2.4.x today, who will want to help out. So what things should one need to know when testing a new kernel?"

"First: What is new? When I am running menuconfig/xconfig, is there something new I should look into? Will the old /dev directory be replaced with the new devfs-magic?

Second: What needs testing? I guess this is hand in hand with what is new, but you never know. The non-kernel-dev people may not know everything that has happened since 2.4.x., and there may be particular features that should be focused on more than others.

Finally: How do we do it? How should we test? What are the best ways to localize the bugs? How should we write a bug report? Whom should we send it to?

You do want our help, don't you?

I do hope to see this document at the same time as the feature-freeze. I also hope it will be a well-written piece, so many will feel the 'urge' to test the new kernel and give good feedback."

joib writes "According to this notice, the XFS journaling file system has been merged into Linus bitkeeper tree, to show up in 2.5.36." Ya just know someone out there wants to have every journaling file system on one drive just 'cuz.

UnidentifiedCoward writes "LWN.net has a link to a blurb at KTVA, "Alaska State Troopers have recovered the bodies and released the names of two men killed late last week in a helicopter crash in Southeast. They are 38-year-old David Zampino of Fairbanks and 45-year-old Leonard Zubkoff of Crystal Bay, Nevada." Mr. Zubkoff was a linux kernel developer and the maintainer of BusLogic and DAC960 projects." Leonard was a hell of a nice guy and will be missed.

batsman writes "The Linux VM system programmers are discussing the software patents that could block further development of important features. Alan Cox brings up several SGI patents covering the techniques they were considering, and Daniel Phillips has found some patents that affect features already present in Linux. Linus Torvalds thinks they should ignore these patents and pretend they don't exist until they cause troubles. How long before kernel developers are sued for patent infringement?"

batsman writes "The Linux VM system programmers are discussing the software patents that could block further development of important features. Alan Cox brings up several SGI patents covering the techniques they were considering, and Daniel Phillips has found some patents that affect features already present in Linux. Linus Torvalds thinks they should ignore these patents and pretend they don't exist until they cause troubles. How long before kernel developers are sued for patent infringement?"

batsman writes "The Linux VM system programmers are discussing the software patents that could block further development of important features. Alan Cox brings up several SGI patents covering the techniques they were considering, and Daniel Phillips has found some patents that affect features already present in Linux. Linus Torvalds thinks they should ignore these patents and pretend they don't exist until they cause troubles. How long before kernel developers are sued for patent infringement?"

batsman writes "The Linux VM system programmers are discussing the software patents that could block further development of important features. Alan Cox brings up several SGI patents covering the techniques they were considering, and Daniel Phillips has found some patents that affect features already present in Linux. Linus Torvalds thinks they should ignore these patents and pretend they don't exist until they cause troubles. How long before kernel developers are sued for patent infringement?"

Slashback tonight with some good news about Linux Weekly News, an annual update for interested picnic-goers, a followup on Neonapster, and a few words of caution on Microsoft's approach to code disclosure. Read on below for the details.

Look at the nice horse they left. babbage writes "As part of ongoing antitrust settlement arrangements, Microsoft has 'opened' the source code to some of their protocol implementation source code. Go ahead and read the license -- but do keep an eye on the NDA you have to agree to first. If you find an NDA to be an objectionable first step -- and I'll admit, I haven't read the license because I don't agree to the NDA terms -- then speak up about it. The Department of Justice is accepting public comments from industry professionals about the new licensing terms. There is a real concern that such pseudo-open licensing could effectively scuttle development efforts on projects like Samba & Mono, but we need to get open access to the license in order to figure out what the risks are. If you have anything to contribute, now is the time to speak up to the DOJ."

Bring your own herring. Bill Kendrick writes: "From the folks who brought you the immensely popular "Linux10" event, comes Picn*x11, a picnic/barbecue celebrating 11 years of the Linux operating system. It's going to be held in Sunnyvale again, the Saturday after LinuxWorld Expo. So go RSVP now, and get your Picn*x11 t-shirt! (Proceeds go to EFF)"

With enough eyeballs many programs seem shallow, too. TheMMaster writes "Neonapster seems to have GPL'd their software, you can download the source here, not that I am terribly happy with what happened, but at least this seems to have been settled out of court ;) of course... it is still a cheap cdex rip off ;)"

LWN is good reading. Keck writes "We all shed a tear for Linux Weekly News a little too soon maybe?

Yes, we know we said there would be no LWN.net Weekly Edition this time around, but, in the end, it was worth the trouble to put together a mini version. So here it is; with luck, the full Weekly will be back on August 15. "

Slashback tonight with some good news about Linux Weekly News, an annual update for interested picnic-goers, a followup on Neonapster, and a few words of caution on Microsoft's approach to code disclosure. Read on below for the details.

Look at the nice horse they left. babbage writes "As part of ongoing antitrust settlement arrangements, Microsoft has 'opened' the source code to some of their protocol implementation source code. Go ahead and read the license -- but do keep an eye on the NDA you have to agree to first. If you find an NDA to be an objectionable first step -- and I'll admit, I haven't read the license because I don't agree to the NDA terms -- then speak up about it. The Department of Justice is accepting public comments from industry professionals about the new licensing terms. There is a real concern that such pseudo-open licensing could effectively scuttle development efforts on projects like Samba & Mono, but we need to get open access to the license in order to figure out what the risks are. If you have anything to contribute, now is the time to speak up to the DOJ."

Bring your own herring. Bill Kendrick writes: "From the folks who brought you the immensely popular "Linux10" event, comes Picn*x11, a picnic/barbecue celebrating 11 years of the Linux operating system. It's going to be held in Sunnyvale again, the Saturday after LinuxWorld Expo. So go RSVP now, and get your Picn*x11 t-shirt! (Proceeds go to EFF)"

With enough eyeballs many programs seem shallow, too. TheMMaster writes "Neonapster seems to have GPL'd their software, you can download the source here, not that I am terribly happy with what happened, but at least this seems to have been settled out of court ;) of course... it is still a cheap cdex rip off ;)"

LWN is good reading. Keck writes "We all shed a tear for Linux Weekly News a little too soon maybe?

Yes, we know we said there would be no LWN.net Weekly Edition this time around, but, in the end, it was worth the trouble to put together a mini version. So here it is; with luck, the full Weekly will be back on August 15. "

Trevelyan writes "This article on LWN shows they are not alone, it seems that since they announced they will finish 1 August, loads of people have been emailing their support, and donating money, $12,000 as of this writing."

Anonymous Coward writes "The best Linux news site is calling it a day. Citing money problems, they are saying next weeks issue will be the last. I've been reading LWN.net since the very beginning. They have always demonstrated sanity, restraint and professionalism along with thoughtful commentary - unlike certain other well known Linux news sites. Very sad." They've had problems since last fall. It's been a good four year run for them.

An anonymous person writes "The current development version of the Linux kernel is 2.5. At the recent Linux kernel summit, it was agreed to have a "feature freeze" on this kernel by October 31, 2002. Here's a story looking at what's left to be merged before the freeze. Projects most likely to make it into 2.5 (and thus be a part of the next stable kernel, 2.6), include: the reverse mapping VM, the Linux Security Module framework, User Mode Linux and support for filesystems greater than 2TB."

Jonathan Corbet at LWN has posted a terrific summary of the first Day of the Ottawa Kernel Summit, and you should expect the second day soon. In it he relates the greatest hits of the first day's talks, including the AMD Hammer Port, Block I/O, Modules, and more. For mp3s or oggs of this event, check out the Kernel Summit MP3 Repository on SourceForge. The big news is the desire to feature freeze 2.5 within 4 or 5 months. Halloween. I've posted a very small gallery of the group pictures from the summit on my site.

Jonathan Corbet at LWN has posted a terrific summary of the first Day of the Ottawa Kernel Summit, and you should expect the second day soon. In it he relates the greatest hits of the first day's talks, including the AMD Hammer Port, Block I/O, Modules, and more. For mp3s or oggs of this event, check out the Kernel Summit MP3 Repository on SourceForge. The big news is the desire to feature freeze 2.5 within 4 or 5 months. Halloween. I've posted a very small gallery of the group pictures from the summit on my site.

Anonymous Coward writes "LWN has a story about patents in SELinux. The article says: "Much of the actual work in the implementation of SELinux was done by Secure Computing Corporation (SCC). SCC, in its implementation of SELinux, used a technology that it calls type enforcement. As it turns out, SCC has a patent on this technology." Sigh.

James Morris writes: "Here's an update on the Linux Security Modules project (LSM). In April last year, the NSA proposed SELinux at the first Linux Kernel Summit. Following feedback from Linus, the LSM project was initiated by Crispin Cowan to develop a generic access control framework for Linux which would allow different types of security policies to be implemented as loadable kernel modules. Rather than having to choose one security model, LSM aims to provide a framework for incorporating a variety of advanced security mechanisms into Linux with a minimal effect on the base kernel. This week, Chris Wright (the principal maintainer) formally announced patches for the 2.4 and 2.5 kernels. Chris will be presenting LSM at this year's Kernel Summit and giving a talk at OLS, hopefully kicking off discussion on acceptance of LSM into the main kernel. Projects which have already been ported to LSM include SELinux, LIDS, DTE, Openwall and Posix.1e Capabilities. Check out the newly re-vamped web site for downloads, documentation and general information."

Slashback (below) is chock full of updates to recent (and not recent) Slashdot stories, including some good news for AMD fans, and a last drizzle of news from E3.

Making your computer worth even less. Acid-F1ux writes: "Advanced Micro Devices has slashed prices of its desktop and mobile Athlon processors just days after a similar move by rival Intel. The cuts range from 17 percent to 52 percent for mobile Athlon XP chips and between 11 percent and 32 percent for desktop Athlon XP chips. On Sunday, Intel dropped prices of its Pentium 4 processors by as much as 53 percent."

Progressive Education strikes a blow. darnellmc writes: "According to this Atlanta Journal-Constitution news article GA Tech had so many students violate the school's "honor code" that they have decided to change it.

"In the wake of the investigation, Tech officials have decided to allow students in introductory computer science courses to share information and collaborate on homework, previously prohibited under the school's academic honor code."

Of course code sharing also teaches the value of Open Source ;o) . Maybe now some young Computer Science student can spend more time on developing a good overall program, instead of spending a bunch of time writing simple things like their own sorting routine."

How many letters will the next big threat have? matthew writes: "LWN is carrying the notes from the Broadcast Protection Discussion Group (BPDG) conference (more info at the EFF). The BPDG is the body that will be suggesting future technological control measures; they make the DMCA and CBDTPA seem like trivial problems. The BPDG conference was last week and it was open to the public so anyone could call in. You can read about what the FSF's Bradley M. Kuhn digitalspeech.org's Jonathan Watterson thought of the conference. The basic summary is that we're screwed if people don't start fighting against this kind of injustice."

This is what's called taking license. infochuck writes "Back in January, this story on Slashdot focused on Borland's licensing PR fiasco, and how they promised to remedy the situation (in short, their license permitted them to search at any time any of your computers looking for stolen software). Well, here we are, five months later, and their license hasn't changed one bit - at least not the two most unreasonable clauses, 12 and 14.4, and not in the license included with the Windows version of the Personal Edition. Download for yourself to see, but be warned, you'll have to register, which involves many questions and no less than 5 checkboxes to uncheck, as well as at least a 25MB DL. I believe pr@borland.com is still the place to write..."

Playful is good. If the last month of pre-hype hype, pre-hype, actual hype and post-hype weren't enough, you'll be pleased to read that E3 coverage continues, at Gamespy (some cool reviews), Gamegal (good photos) and other sites beginning with "Game."

Slashback (below) is chock full of updates to recent (and not recent) Slashdot stories, including some good news for AMD fans, and a last drizzle of news from E3.

Making your computer worth even less. Acid-F1ux writes: "Advanced Micro Devices has slashed prices of its desktop and mobile Athlon processors just days after a similar move by rival Intel. The cuts range from 17 percent to 52 percent for mobile Athlon XP chips and between 11 percent and 32 percent for desktop Athlon XP chips. On Sunday, Intel dropped prices of its Pentium 4 processors by as much as 53 percent."

Progressive Education strikes a blow. darnellmc writes: "According to this Atlanta Journal-Constitution news article GA Tech had so many students violate the school's "honor code" that they have decided to change it.

"In the wake of the investigation, Tech officials have decided to allow students in introductory computer science courses to share information and collaborate on homework, previously prohibited under the school's academic honor code."

Of course code sharing also teaches the value of Open Source ;o) . Maybe now some young Computer Science student can spend more time on developing a good overall program, instead of spending a bunch of time writing simple things like their own sorting routine."

How many letters will the next big threat have? matthew writes: "LWN is carrying the notes from the Broadcast Protection Discussion Group (BPDG) conference (more info at the EFF). The BPDG is the body that will be suggesting future technological control measures; they make the DMCA and CBDTPA seem like trivial problems. The BPDG conference was last week and it was open to the public so anyone could call in. You can read about what the FSF's Bradley M. Kuhn digitalspeech.org's Jonathan Watterson thought of the conference. The basic summary is that we're screwed if people don't start fighting against this kind of injustice."

This is what's called taking license. infochuck writes "Back in January, this story on Slashdot focused on Borland's licensing PR fiasco, and how they promised to remedy the situation (in short, their license permitted them to search at any time any of your computers looking for stolen software). Well, here we are, five months later, and their license hasn't changed one bit - at least not the two most unreasonable clauses, 12 and 14.4, and not in the license included with the Windows version of the Personal Edition. Download for yourself to see, but be warned, you'll have to register, which involves many questions and no less than 5 checkboxes to uncheck, as well as at least a 25MB DL. I believe pr@borland.com is still the place to write..."

Playful is good. If the last month of pre-hype hype, pre-hype, actual hype and post-hype weren't enough, you'll be pleased to read that E3 coverage continues, at Gamespy (some cool reviews), Gamegal (good photos) and other sites beginning with "Game."

Slashback (below) is chock full of updates to recent (and not recent) Slashdot stories, including some good news for AMD fans, and a last drizzle of news from E3.

Making your computer worth even less. Acid-F1ux writes: "Advanced Micro Devices has slashed prices of its desktop and mobile Athlon processors just days after a similar move by rival Intel. The cuts range from 17 percent to 52 percent for mobile Athlon XP chips and between 11 percent and 32 percent for desktop Athlon XP chips. On Sunday, Intel dropped prices of its Pentium 4 processors by as much as 53 percent."

Progressive Education strikes a blow. darnellmc writes: "According to this Atlanta Journal-Constitution news article GA Tech had so many students violate the school's "honor code" that they have decided to change it.

"In the wake of the investigation, Tech officials have decided to allow students in introductory computer science courses to share information and collaborate on homework, previously prohibited under the school's academic honor code."

Of course code sharing also teaches the value of Open Source ;o) . Maybe now some young Computer Science student can spend more time on developing a good overall program, instead of spending a bunch of time writing simple things like their own sorting routine."

How many letters will the next big threat have? matthew writes: "LWN is carrying the notes from the Broadcast Protection Discussion Group (BPDG) conference (more info at the EFF). The BPDG is the body that will be suggesting future technological control measures; they make the DMCA and CBDTPA seem like trivial problems. The BPDG conference was last week and it was open to the public so anyone could call in. You can read about what the FSF's Bradley M. Kuhn digitalspeech.org's Jonathan Watterson thought of the conference. The basic summary is that we're screwed if people don't start fighting against this kind of injustice."

This is what's called taking license. infochuck writes "Back in January, this story on Slashdot focused on Borland's licensing PR fiasco, and how they promised to remedy the situation (in short, their license permitted them to search at any time any of your computers looking for stolen software). Well, here we are, five months later, and their license hasn't changed one bit - at least not the two most unreasonable clauses, 12 and 14.4, and not in the license included with the Windows version of the Personal Edition. Download for yourself to see, but be warned, you'll have to register, which involves many questions and no less than 5 checkboxes to uncheck, as well as at least a 25MB DL. I believe pr@borland.com is still the place to write..."

Playful is good. If the last month of pre-hype hype, pre-hype, actual hype and post-hype weren't enough, you'll be pleased to read that E3 coverage continues, at Gamespy (some cool reviews), Gamegal (good photos) and other sites beginning with "Game."

the_real_tigga writes: "Well, the day is almost over, and still today's release of version 2.5.18 of the Linux development kernel tree has not yet hit Slashdot. It is out, the official site is of course kernel.org, but be sure to check your local mirrors (usually www.country.kernel.org). Here is the long Changelog, major changes include suspend-to-RAM, more IDE and VFS fixes, and kbuild. Linux Weekly has the news too, and a summary of the changes."

the_real_tigga writes: "Well, the day is almost over, and still today's release of version 2.5.18 of the Linux development kernel tree has not yet hit Slashdot. It is out, the official site is of course kernel.org, but be sure to check your local mirrors (usually www.country.kernel.org). Here is the long Changelog, major changes include suspend-to-RAM, more IDE and VFS fixes, and kbuild. Linux Weekly has the news too, and a summary of the changes."

Marsala writes "Apparently Red Hat has filed two patent applications for stuff related to the TUX webserver. The patents are for Embedded Protocol Objects and Method and apparatus for atomic file look-up. One has to wonder (if their patents are granted) what their licensing terms will be.... free for open source, or a tool to try and screw other Linux distros?" As reported by Linux Weekly News.

the_1000th_Monkey writes "LWN daily pointed out this new project today. It aims to be 'a compilation of high quality open source software (OSS) [that] will be made available as a CD distribution in order to help promote OSS to users of Windows and MacOS.' There are hopes that this would make it easier to encourage universities, OEMS, and your parents/friends to take advantage of this software and eventually bring them over to a completely free system on their own time. Help for suggestions/discussion is being sought." Newsforge is carrying a slightly more in-depth look at this project. Anyone care to design some attractive, downloadable CD-graphic images?

Just saw in Red Hat's FTP's - Redhat 7.3 (codename:skipjack) is available for download. There aren't lots of changes there, but you'll find that RedHat 7.3 comes with KDE 3.0 (rc3 is on this beta), you'll need to remove the Ximian Gnome before upgrade, and in general - read the release notes before testing this release. As always, don't try it on your main Linux partition, and use the mirrors. Annoucment is here (thanks to Linux Weekly News)

Just saw in Red Hat's FTP's - Redhat 7.3 (codename:skipjack) is available for download. There aren't lots of changes there, but you'll find that RedHat 7.3 comes with KDE 3.0 (rc3 is on this beta), you'll need to remove the Ximian Gnome before upgrade, and in general - read the release notes before testing this release. As always, don't try it on your main Linux partition, and use the mirrors. Annoucment is here (thanks to Linux Weekly News)