Slashdot Mirror

bloodline555 writes "What do you get when you cross a Saab 95 with an iBook? You get the iCar. It's my latest project in a series of ways to void your AppleCare warranty. I have totally torn apart my iBook, folded it in half and mounted it inside of my car. It makes a great mp3 jukebox and DVD player. Any comments/ suggestions would be wonderful."

cpk0 writes "ABCNews is reporting on a small, New York based company that is now using and creating a technique of printing circuits directly onto paper with conductive inks. The uses up to this point are somewhat trivial, but the idea is undeniably exciting, and the article outlines some of the future ideas T-Ink Inc. has for this technology." Including electronic candy, oddly enough. Update: 10/27 17:24 GMT by T : Associated Press Technology Editor Frank Bajak points out that this story comes from The Associated Press, which deserves the credit.

critterboy writes "Apple today posted copies of the Mac OS X Server version 10.3 Command-Line Administration and Java Application Server documentation for both JBoss, Tomcat and WebObjects."

reiggin writes "According to Cnet News.com, radio stations must pay copyright fees for the songs played over the internet. This upholds a previous decision of a lower court and the U.S. Copyright Office. Cary Sherman, the new RIAA president, is gleeful. Guess how the rest of us feel?"

jmhowitt writes "Tests by IT Week Labs show the latest version of the open-source Samba file and print server software is 2.5 times faster than Windows Server 2003 in the same role. The news comes as many firms are grappling with the consequences of Microsoft ending support for NT4, coupled with uncertainty about when Microsoft will next update Windows. The performance difference between Windows Server 2003 and Samba 3 has increased dramatically compared with Samba 2 and Windows 2000 Server."

cmdr_forge writes "The BBC is reporting that Former Doctor Who Tom Baker says that Eddie Izzard is to be the next doctor for the TV show that starts 2005. How awesome is that!"

Justen writes "Following this article from last month, Senator Norm Coleman (R.-Minn.) has announced that he will seek to limit federal penalties for copyright downloads and seek to restrict the subpoena power essentially granted to the industry through the DMCA. The RIAA responded by calling the current situation an 'epidemic.'" Sadly, there's no quantitative values for proposed reduced measures yet, but given the speed at which government moves it's reassuring to know the issue is this far along already.

ComaVN writes "Not a big surprise for those who have followed the recent SCO misery, but SCO is going after SGI. According to SGI, SCO intends to terminate their Unix System V license, much like they did with IBM earlier. I guess it's hard to stop once you've chosen a certain direction for your company." sheddd writes "Does this case have any merit? Joe Formage has written a good article on SCO's strange behavior." Read on below for SCO's odd tactic of attacking the GPL by belittling IBM's legal diligence in not avoiding GPL'd software, and word on why Linux users aren't being served SCO invoices.

larry2k writes "PR newswire has an open letter from SCO to IBM.

From the letter: 'SCO believes that the GPL -- created by the Free Software Foundation to supplant current U.S. copyright laws -- is a shaky foundation on which to build a legal case.'" The release is also carried by NewsForge. Among other things, SCO says "By so strongly defending the controversial GPL, IBM is also defending a questionable licensing scheme through which it can avoid providing software indemnification for its customers."

Doesn't supplant mean "replace"? That's not what the GPL does.

And if you're wondering why you have not received an invoice from SCO for any Linux-based OS you may be running, benploni writes "From Groklaw: In this Detroit News story Blake Stowell explains why no one has received an invoice: 'SCO in August said Linux users could avoid lawsuits by paying a one-time fee of $699. The fee will rise to $1,399 on Oct. 15. Since the response to its appeal was adequate, SCO didn't send bills to thousands of Linux users, company spokesman Blake Stowell said.' [emphasis added]. We all knew there was no way they'd risk actually sending out invoices, and here's the proof."

TekkaDon writes "At least 1,150 desktop and server PCs running Linux will be replaced with Mac OS X computers at the University of Tokyo next year, as reported by Asahi (Japanese), and echoed by MacRumors.com. 'Ease of maintenance and software installation were cited among the reasons for the switch.' I wonder if Keitaro and Naru will get iMacs at Hinata as well."

MacMerc.com writes "Today, .Mac users will see that a free VersionTracker Plus subscription, a discount of half off VersionTracker Pro subscription and software, free iBlog Blogging Software, and a discount on SmartDisk FireWire Drives have been added to their Member Benefits."

MacMerc.com writes "Today, .Mac users will see that a free VersionTracker Plus subscription, a discount of half off VersionTracker Pro subscription and software, free iBlog Blogging Software, and a discount on SmartDisk FireWire Drives have been added to their Member Benefits."

bcapps2012 writes "I just saw this on Slashcode.com and thought it would be of interest to many apple.slashdot.org readers. Pudge has gotten Slashcode installed on Mac OS X. As jwachter notes: 'For those of you who haven't been following the issue of how to get slash running on OS X, various Slashcode posters have been asking how to get it done for roughly 2 or 3 years now (essentially since the first preview of OS X was released).' Finally Mac OS X has joined the family."

Huxley_Dunsany asks: "Yesterday, while attending the (super-duper cool and fun) Classic Game Expo here in Las Vegas, I was lucky enough to trade some old game stuff (Intelivision II, ZX-Spectrum, some Neo-Geo Pocket games) for a really neato black Sony Playstation 'Net Yaroze' edition. For those that don't know what I'm talking about, back in '97, Sony came out with a (very) limited edition of the plain old Playstation. Back in the day, the 'Yaroze' PSX ('Yaroze' supposedly means 'Lets do it together') came with some special cables and software for PC/Mac, and, given enough time and effort and programming talent, you too could create your own Playstation games! Unfortunately, the Yaroze I got yesterday came with nothing but the main CPU - no software, and none of the special PSX-to-PC/Mac serial cables. This morning, I hooked it up and hit the power button, and it fired right up with no problems! So, I'm just wondering if any of you have ever used this seemingly rare dev system, and if you could pass along any good ideas or advice. It seems that Sony has long since discontinued this program (and then recently started it again with the PS2 Linux kit), so I'm not sure where to turn for help if I actually wanted to use this thing to make some games, let alone finding/creating the cables and software."

Slashback tonight brings you updates on low-power hardware, unauthorized music distribution by buymusic.com, and more, including a reminder of the upcoming (now annual) Linux picnic at the conclusion of LWCE. (If you're not there, start your own local chapter ;)) Read on for more!

MenuetOS progresses. For those with a taste for esoteric tiny operating systems for low-power systems, the x86 release of Contiki wasn't the only news this week. Lgd writes "Menuet, the 100 % assembly OS, has made quite a few improvements since it was last reported at Slashdot. Menuet has now a simple tcp/ip stack with tiny http, mp3 and email servers, FASM 1.48 assembler and demo applications like the 3d maze."

Perhaps this will lead to a finer toothed comb overall. Jody Whitesides writes "Hello, I want to take a moment to update you about my situation that you posted recently... As of right now, I won my fight with BuyMusic and the Orchard. I have been promptly let out of a contract that was already terminated February 1st of 2001. It seems they had kept me in their catalog on a contract clause that had been overlooked when the contract was signed back in 1999.

As of 5 p.m. pst 07/31/2003 I was given notice that I was removed from the Orchard's distribution. In turn I have since checked with BuyMusic's website and have been swiftly removed from the website and now all has been set right in the world. It seems that even the big corporations don't wish to face copyright infringement.

I want to thank you for running the story as I have no doubt that it helped bring a swift decision in getting my music under my control so that I can best determine how fans will get it into their hands.

I harbor no ill will towards BuyMusic or the Orchard."

MandrakeSoft still not dead (wants to go for a walk). LinuxGeek8 writes "In their latest shareholder newsletter MandrakeSoft made a few statements about their financial position. Their retail sales decreased, while their high-margin sales (oem, club, online sales, etc.) increased. In total their revenue decreased somewhat, while the operating loss decreased. Since January they have been cash-flow positive.

Quoting about their "Chapter 11": "On January 27th, 2003, the Commercial Court granted MandrakeSoft a six month observation and protection period (similar to a U.S. Chapter 11 procedure). This period will end on July 27th, 2003. The company is pursuing an opportunity to be granted an additional six month observation and protection period. In the upcoming months, the company's objective is to exit the Observation Period with a 'Continuation Plan'."
Things seem to be looking good on the radar."

This is good news for those of us who like all the work that Mandrake has put into making Free software easy to install.

Video Capturing Part 2 at Ars Technica miskatonic alumnus writes "Recently, slashdot reported on an excellent article -- Part I: Video Capture -- of the 3-part series 'Guide to Capturing, Cleaning & Compressing Video' at Ars Technica. At last, Part II: Video Cleaning is now available."

The largest gathering, of a sort. Linda Denison links to these "several articles about GenCon, handily linked to one place!"

From the article: 'GenCon: Freaks & Geeks,' she excerpts: 'My wife wrinkled her nose in response. Computer geeks tend to be clean. They wear clean clothes, and bathe regularly. Usually this is because they live in their mother's house. Probably in their old room. Tabletop geeks tend to wear the same clothes they bought in their early twenties, roughly three belt sizes ago, and aren't well versed in the bathing arts. This is because they live in their mother's basement. The heat sort of exacerbated this problem.'

(We've run a couple of articles originating at this year's GenCon already.)

Sci-Fi Auction Followup... cjustus writes "The live auction mentioned earlier in the week is over... Here are the prices that items went for. The big item? Original George Reeves Superman Costume for $110K ... Harrison Ford's pistol from Blade Runner went for $17K... Any slashdotters bid / win?"

Matching hardware to actual needs is not crazytalk. Michael C. Barnes writes with a followup to the recent mention of his company's low-power MicroServer, which, it turns out, has a larger sibling. "One of the people reading your post did a review of the Microserver HP. ... The person doing the review benchmarked our Microserver High Performance and thought it did a reasonably good job with My SQL."

"Penguin dip" is just an expression. Bill Kendrick writes "This Saturday, August 9th (after the Linux World Expo) San Francisco Bay Area Linux lovers and the people who love them will be gathering at the Baylands Park in Sunnyvale for Picn*x12, the third annual Linux anniversary picnic. Organized by several local LUGs and sponsored by Oracle, this barbecue is a free event for the entire family."

Whether or not you can get to the picnic, FeeDBaCK writes "It has been almost 2 years since the Linux Counter has been mentioned on Slashdot. It was last mentioned in October of 2001 and brought on an impressive number of registrations. Accounts are deleted after 2 years of inactivity, so now is a good time for everyone to freshen up their account, or create a new one if they don't have one already."

MoNickels writes "I've posted part two of the article series encouraging the unemployed to take up freelance technical support, including advice on knowing if this work is right for you, marketing yourself, learning on the job, handling and educating clients, managing the business, the temperament required, and the negative aspects of the work." See part one if you missed it.

sasha328 writes "Original developer of Glider PRO releases the game as freeware. This has come about from the collapse of Cassady & Greene. I wonder if he'll consider releasing the code for the games." Ah, I used to love this game. It's still good.

An anonymous reader wrotes: "Over at World New York, they've posted excellent advice to the geek masses: If you're out of work and know how to use a computer, you can make a killing doing freelance technical support." Update: 07/25 20:00 GMT by M : The author has asked that we link to the article on homepage.mac.com due to server overload. :)

Michael McCracken writes "Finally, a new OS X programming book that isn't just another introduction to Cocoa. This book adds a lot to the available references by covering the system as a flavor of Unix, presenting information on important topics like sockets, multithreading and pipes, which other OS X books leave out. It also includes coverage and sample code for some of the unfamiliar new technologies that have been introduced recently, such as the Keychain, Rendezvous (aka Zeroconf), and using the Security framework to authorize users." Read on for the rest of his review. Core Mac OS X and Unix Programming author Mark Dalrymple and Aaron Hillegass pages 541 publisher Big Nerd Ranch rating 9 reviewer Michael McCracken ISBN 0974078506 summary A developer's guide to the Unix foundations of Mac OS X, including coverage of recently added technologies. Includes complete source code and online companion material.

If you've been learning Mac OS X Cocoa programming, you might already know Aaron Hillegass through his excellent book Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X, which was one of the first good introductory books on the topic, and is still one of the best available. Information about this earlier book can be found at bignerdranch.com/Book/. Both Aaron and Mark are instructors at the Big Nerd Ranch, which offers courses in Mac OS X programming. More information about them and the courses can be found at http://www.bignerdranch.com/Company/Who.html. This book is based on the course with the same name at the Big Nerd Ranch. The book's website and a link to order it online can be found at borkware.com/corebook/ . Discussion and further information for both books can be found at cocoadev.com/index.pl?CocoaBooks.

Audience and Writing Style This book is not an introduction to programming on OS X. It doesn't explicitly cover how to use Apple's Project Builder or Interface Builder, or much of the Cocoa or Carbon APIs, except during discussion of code examples. So if you're entirely new to programming or to using Mac OS X, start with a different book such as Hillegass' earlier Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X to get up to speed with using the development environment. This book will leave you behind at times if you are unfamiliar with using the command line, however, the examples are complete enough to follow along by just typing in what's in the book.

Core Mac OS X and Unix Programming does have some very basic material in its first few chapters. They focus on the details of C programming, using the compiler, memory management, and debugging. These chapters will be mostly review for anyone who's developed in C on Unix before, but will be invaluable for programmers who learned to program using Java, for instance. They should also be required reading for programmers who started programming with Objective-C and Cocoa and are still unsure about using "plain" C. If you've ever complained about having to use a C API from CoreFoundation in your nice pure Cocoa application, don't avoid this book -- you need to read it even more.

The book is clearly written and easily understood. The writing is occasionally conversational, in keeping with its history as a course textbook. In the grand history of well-written technical books, it is also occasionally funny. The authors don't try to sell the technologies they discuss, instead giving practical advice that's useful to a programmer who is trying to actually build something. For example, the authors discuss bugs and inconsistencies in the system, clumsy API design and other problems that aren't great ad copy but you will need to know to develop robust applications.

I found this aspect of the book one of the most appealing, that it felt as though I was actually getting down to business. Gems of practical advice that can cut short frustrating problems appear throughout the book, so be sure to read carefully, don't just skim.

Hits Here I'll discuss a few examples of where I think this book really shines. First, the level of detail of the standard Unix APIs and the development tools is excellent -- I learned many immediately useful things in the first 13 chapters. For example, chapter 8, "Debugging With GDB," was not simply a repeat of the online help, but also contained useful tips about how to use GDB more effectively, from using Objective-C specific features to tracking subtle memory errors. Programmers who had only used Project Builder's interface to GDB will benefit greatly from this chapter.

Next, there is pervasive sample code. Each chapter had a complete sample program demonstrating the topic at hand. Much of this code is also available online: see "Online Supplements" below.

Finally, as I mentioned before, the text contains tips and reminders throughout about potential mistakes, tricky problems, and differences between Mac OS X, OS 9, and other Unix flavors. A particularly useful example of this is in chapter 24, "CVS." There is a small but important paragraph that discusses using CVS 1.11 (as used in Sourceforge) with Interface Builder .nib files that can really save some grief. In other chapters, they even include workarounds for system bugs in some of the sample code. This pragmatic approach is really appealing.

Misses In this section I'll mention a couple potential disappointments. You will have to be willing to learn by just reading code at times. Most of the code examples are not explained line-by-line as is the custom in tutorial books. Comments explain tricky code, and the text covers the areas most relevant to the chapter topic, but for other sections, understanding is up to you. I mentioned this because although I feel the code is clear and a fair trade-off was made to fit in a lot of information, the amount of explanation you like is a matter of personal preference, and so you should know what to expect.

Pointers to further reading is another problem. Aside from referring to man pages, there is little attempt to point to good external documentation on any of the more complicated topics. One chapter is not enough to completely cover BSD Sockets, for example, and so a reference to a Unix network programming book would be useful. In fact, every chapter could be improved by a references section, even if it only collected links to Apple online documentation or Unix community websites. With all the practical knowledge in this book, the lack of clues on where to look to answer your own questions was disappointing.

Finally, the cost of the book, at $97.95, is higher than you might expect. I admit that as a student, I would have to think twice about paying this price, although I am sure it would be easily justifiable for professional programmers. I believe that it is worth the price, however, because you would have to buy several other books to cover the same range of topics, and you still wouldn't get the Mac OS X specific information.

Online Supplements

The authors have set up a promising resource for the book at http://borkware.com/corebook/ . The site includes the sample code, errata, reader comments indexed by the chapter and topic they refer to, and a general discussion board. There are already some errors listed, and a few pointers to useful documentation and interesting external discussions on mailing lists. The sample code is not complete at the time of this review, but more is being added. This site looks like it will be a useful addition to the book, especially if many good chapter-indexed comments are added. The site could be kept open as a reading companion while going over a chapter in the book. This site's organization is, in my opinion, much more useful and usable than other books' companion websites, including the site for "Cocoa Progamming," which hid its information from you unless you knew which page number was relevant to your topic.

Conclusion Core Mac OS X and Unix Programming is a very useful book, and even if you've been developing on Unix systems for years, you can probably learn a few immediately useful things by reading it. I recommend it for any serious Mac OS X programmer who wants to know what to read next after all the tutorials that have come out in the last year or so. I suspect it'll become a canonical reference, and may even be in need of a clever nickname. Congratulations to Mark and Aaron on a job well done.

Michael McCracken is a grad student and Mac OS X developer; he says "I have not attended any Big Nerd Ranch courses, nor have I met either author, although I did see Aaron Hillegass in a crowd once." Update: 07/02 17:36 GMT by T : According to publisher AtlasBooks, bn.com won't actually be carrying this book, but you can get it right now from Atlas. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Schart writes "I can't seem to find any pictures of exactly what they mean by 'collapsible LCD,' but NEC today announced a new line of low(ish) priced LCD screens that 'fold up for easy portability.'" Anyone out there who can supply visual documentation?

jonknee writes "Apple fans are diehard... MacMerc is covering the WWDC keynote in real time. The show starts at 1 p.m. EST and should last a few hours." rfernand79 writes "Still some time to go to WWDC, and mac.com has iDisk for Panther preview specifications. Offline access to iDisk sounds really cool." Oculus Habent writes "For those of us who didn't have the money or time to make it to WWDC today, we can catch the keynote. Don't for get to upgrade to QuickTime 6.3 for best performance. I wonder if you can watch it on cell phones, now." The keynote stream is delayed; it begins after the keynote ends.

jonknee writes "Apple fans are diehard... MacMerc is covering the WWDC keynote in real time. The show starts at 1 p.m. EST and should last a few hours." rfernand79 writes "Still some time to go to WWDC, and mac.com has iDisk for Panther preview specifications. Offline access to iDisk sounds really cool." Oculus Habent writes "For those of us who didn't have the money or time to make it to WWDC today, we can catch the keynote. Don't for get to upgrade to QuickTime 6.3 for best performance. I wonder if you can watch it on cell phones, now." The keynote stream is delayed; it begins after the keynote ends.

ghopson asks: "Many years ago in the early nineties I became aware of a software definition language called Z, which was based on set theory. The idea was that a software system could be defined in 'Z', and then that system could be mathematically proven to be 100% correct (in other words, zero defects).What is the current state of play with 'zero defect' software development? I know Z still exists, that there is a software development method (the B-method) associated with it. Have techniques and advances such as MDA advanced zero-defect software development? Or would a set of robust unit tests suffice?"

Thanks to an anonymous reader for pointing to a press release and downloadable trailer (BitTorrent link courtesy Gametab) for the forthcoming Discovery Channel documentary, The X Factor - Inside Microsoft's Xbox. The program premieres on June 20th at 8pm ET/PT in the US, and "reveals never-before-seen footage of Microsoft and three game studios all racing to complete the next big Xbox blockbuster game. Will the next Xbox superstar be Microsoftâ(TM)s Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge, Oddworld Inhabitantsâ(TM) tightly held secret (the fourth game in their ongoing series), or Bungieâ(TM)s Halo 2?" Some healthy scepticism is also shown, since the doc "..also explores whether the software giant has the mettle to make it in the exploding video game business." This doc could be particularly interesting because of interviews/footage from the next in the Oddworld series.

pixelgeek asks: "Security has not only become an important topic but also a critical issue for admins and even the average user in their home. To someone new to the topic the wealth of material can be a bit daunting and, you can imagine, a little confusing. Does anyone have any suggestions on where to start getting a handle on the concept of network/computer security and what are the most important and useful applications (CLI primarily) that a person should examine and learn?" We've touched on these issues before, but it was a while ago. Taking a network security class, could help, but which classes are really worth the money and might there be enough information on the web to make such a choice, unnecessary?

JoeXboxer writes "I'm not sure why anyone would want to, but there's an open source driver to allow you to use your Xbox game controller on Mac OS X. In related news, McDonald's announced new Xbox-sized combos that will stretch America's bladders to the limit. One of these stories is a joke. It's hard to guess which one."

Sophrosyne writes "Microsoft Watch has presented an article on Longhorn, which is due not before 2005, and compares it with Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther), which may be released this September. The article touches on some of the areas where Windows is ahead in operating system design and technologies, as well as how Panther plans to compete. Included in Microsoft Watch's article were links to a Extreme-Tech article on Desktop compositing, and 3D User Interfaces. It also contains videos of Longhorn's 3D Quartz-like user interface in action." If processor power is so important, why are we so willing to waste it on making windows do funny things when we move them around? Just wondering.

macguys writes "My community consists of about 150 households spread out over several hundred acres in North Florida. We are far enough away from the nearest city that broadband cable and DSL services don't make it here. We're well organized, and used to working together on projects. We have a lot of home based business offices here and high speed access something that many of my neighbors are hungry for. We've looked at projects like http://www.magnoliaroad.net and know that others have addressed the issue with 802.11b/g/etc. There is no big problem getting a T-1 to the community. That part is easy. The hard part is distributing the bandwidth among those here who want to participate. Wireless works in places but in general this land is covered in hardwood and pines and the signal drops off quickly. We have a long history (community is 25 years old) of working together to solve problems. Running copper or coax is not out of the question if we can find a reasonable way of distributing the bandwidth. Any suggestions are welcome."

Vertig0gitreV writes "Over at iPodding they are reporting that in the Diagnostic Mode of the new new iPods (released on the 28th of May) there are two options for audio recording: mono through the headphone jack, and a stereo line-in through the docking port via the yet-to-be-announced line-in adaptor."

Morganic writes "After checking periodically for the past couple days, I noticed that YDL 3.0 has hit the mirrors, a day early (in fact, the page above still says it's not available, but the mirrors at the bottom are carrying it). Anyone got a BitTorrent?"

Jedi Paramedic writes "Boston.com has an interesting story about the rise and fall of everyone's favorite file-swapping service. Also the subject of a new book by Joseph Menn, the story goes into great detail about the unfortunate-but-heroic Shawn Fanning and his reluctance to admit that his uncle, who in the end masterminded little more than the lining of his own pockets, had taken advantage of him. From getting screwed in the original 70/30 split with his uncle to his uncle's refusal to loosen his iron grip on the company even at the expense of its very being, the article (and the book) go a long way in chronicling the rise and fall of Napster, and crediting Shawn for not airing the family's dirty laundry. An interesting and well-written read."

rampant mac writes "An article over at the New York Post is reporting Microsoft has expressed interest in buying Vivendi's Universal Music Group, setting up a possible bidding war between the software maker and rival Apple Computer, according to sources familiar with the matter. Microsoft's interest is said to be at the level of "poking around, kicking the tires," but it has indeed had conversations with Vivendi executives about buying the music division, sources said." Here is a story from a few days ago about Apple and Universal.

mwelty writes "OmniWeb 4.5sp1 (sneaky peek one) was announced today, and as far as I know this is the first major browser application for Mac OS X that is embedding Apple's Open Source WebCore and JavaScriptCore. As many /. readers might recall, Apple released Safari in January at MWSF, which it based on the KHTML codebase, and has since been releasing their WebCore and JavaScriptCore to developers regularly."

hype7 writes "The Daily Telegraph is running a piece on the world's temperature. Apparently, it was a lot hotter in the middle ages: "A review of more than 240 scientific studies has shown that today's temperatures are neither the warmest over the past millennium, nor are they producing the most extreme weather - in stark contrast to the claims of the environmentalists.""

jpt.d writes "Wired has a nice article on what they wish to be for 2013. It is not too far fetched either! My personal favorite is the roll up television screen made of light-emitting-polymer. How about another Apple gadget? Their first item is an iPhone bracelet, including the functionality of a 'PDA, wireless Internet, a mini iPod, and, of course, a phone.' Notice the Apple logo in the picture." I'd settle for ubiquitous unmetered wireless network access.

MacDaffy writes "Kudos to Adriaan Van Os: He has produced a 'second prerelease' of the GNU Pascal compiler for Mac OS X. Work actively proceeds on porting the Carbon Pascal Interfaces for use with it (longtime Macintosh Pascal guru Peter N Lewis has already gotten a great start on this). Thanks to Adriaan, Peter, and Bill Catambay of Pascal Central for helping take Pascal on Macintosh into the future."

cpk0 writes "This article from MSNBC discusses how data returned from SETI@Home users is beign retested by the Institue for a possibility of alien radio signals being included. At just over 4 years old, I think this would be the first big break for SETI@home." This is a followup to a December Slashdot story. Apparently this is getting some major attention in the mainstream media lately.

Myoglobinologist writes "The New York Times has an article about how the State of Maine purchased $37 million worth of iBooks from Apple. The article states that the kids have adapted quickly to the laptops, attendance is up, and there is even heart-warming testimony from some politicians that were opposed to the project." We've done several previous stories about this initiative (they were originally considering custom-designed thin client machines - probably a good idea to go with off-the-shelf systems), and it's interesting to see how it has panned out.

interdigitate writes " There is another piece of beta Mac OS X software called Romeo which also allows you to control your Mac using the Sony Ericsson T68i Phone. It works like the Sony Ericsson Clicker except it is freeware." For now, it does not support arbitrary AppleScripts like Clicker does, but it does allow using the phone as a remote mouse. Also note that Apple has put up a page of Clicker scripts.

mister_tim writes " Apple has released an iDisk Utility for Windows XP. It could be useful under a mixed environment or those (like me) stuck using XP at work and such." Is there a way to mount iDisks on Linux, too?

fraser_joat asks: "The other day I finally took the time to watch Starship Exeter, previously reported on Slashdot. Coincidentally, I also revisited the BBC's excellent radio adaptation of The Lord Of The Rings, following the hype caused by the recent movies. The two of these got me thinking: while _Exeter_ was clearly a huge effort, it looks like they had a lot of fun making it. In many ways they are scratching the same sort of itch that generates free software. So what about audio drama? The technology needed to produce it is freely available, things like Ardour and Csound. So is it possible to produce an audio drama based on free texts such as those from Project Gutenberg in a distributed fashion, with contributers from all across the Net, just like with software? Would they even be useful as an introduction to classic fiction or just as pure entertainment?"

"While the technology exists to cut a play together, I see several possible problems:

• High-quality audio recording equipment is expensive, and homes are not ideal environments. Can source material of sufficiently good quality be generated without professional facilities?
• Since the actors could be widely separated, can they act in isolation in a sufficiently convincing manner that they can be cut together later, in the same way that film actors must pretend that the special effects exist during shooting?
• Are there good (royalty-)free sound effect libraries available?

I think the possibilities are interesting, if people can be gathered together to actually do it. Imagine the subtle horror of Poe's The Cask Of Amontillado, or the adventure of Stevenson's Treasure Island, all staying as faithful to the book as possible, without Hollywood's story-twisting and sensationalism spoiling it all.

It would need to be a real community effort - I fancy that I could produce a passable script adaptation of a book and help with the audio production and sound effects, but I'm no actor, nor do I have equipment at home that even approaches what would be required. What about it?"

flash_cube writes "Boeing Co.'s 'Connexion' business unit finally demoed its in-flight WiFi (802.11b) service this weekend ... even as (noted in this previous /. article) struggling U.S. carriers pull out of the joint venture. Still Boeing promises availability on other airlines in 'early 2003.'"

kshkval writes "According to Business Week, Intel is marketing the Centrino, a 1.6 Ghz chip that is slower than previous laptop processors from Intel, but does more. Hey, isn't that what Apple and AMD have gotten so much guff about? The worm turns..."

Gorgonzola writes "It was reported that Virex 7.2 and Fink were conflicting, it turned out that Virex 7.2 was overwriting libraries in Fink's default directory, thus hosing Fink for those who had it installed, and preventing Fink from installing for future users. Also, one user pointed out that of Virux's included packages, several (CURL, OpenSSL, and DLCompat) had license terms that Virex was ignoring." It is strongly recommended you don't install Virex 7.2 until this issue is resolved.

Aaron Steele writes "Okay, I work at an Apple Authorized Retailer and we just had a lady come in to see if we could fix her PowerBook G4. She walks in the store and comes up to me, 'Sir, I've got a baked Apple.' The top of the screen was a little brown and warped. The lady opened up the machine and the screen was all cracked, and there was not a single key left on the keyboard. It turns out she had the machine in the oven for 20 minutes, baking at 400 degrees. No joke. And what's even more amazing. The machine still works. Ethernet, Modem, USB, it all works. Plug in an external monitor and keyboard and it's good as new ... almost." Am I the only one for whom this conjures up images of Shrinky Dinks?

filmsmith writes "It looks like Nintendo may be interested in using the GBA to enter the PDA market and even considering itself competition for the Apple iPod. It smells of DMCA pandering, though. 'It looks like protection will be in place to ensure that even content recorded by users (through the use of a special adapter) will not be able to be shared with other users.' Planet Gamecube has the article here."

hexgrid writes "A dream come true! Blacktree, Inc. has released Pith Beta 2, 'a utility for Safari that tracks the currently open sites and displays them in a window.' It's not exactly tabs as we know them in other browsers, but serves the same purpose with the added bonus of being more 'Mac-like.'"

b3n writes "From our local paperspace fishwrap this article (http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/uniontrib/mon/ business/news_mz1b20snoope.html) ... "San Diego police have rejected the use of a controversial face-scanning technology for Sunday's Super Bowl, saying it's too costly and ineffective. Face-scanning technology that compares faces in a crowd with digital photos of criminals, fugitives and suspected terrorists gained national attention and sparked an outcry when it was used at the 2001 Super Bowl in Tampa, Fla.""

Chris Jones asks: "I am finding that with all the large IDE harddrives becoming so cheap lately, I now have 4-5 nice sized IDE drives lying around my home office. Does anyone know of firewire enclosures that support multiple harddrives and are NOT RAID? RAID seems to quadruple the cost of enclosures... I just want a box with a power supply that can handle 4 IDE drives as well as the 4 Oxford 911 firewire bridge boards. On a different note, does anyone know if the Oxford 911 bridge board supports master and slave drives? If it does, then I would only need two boards for my 4 IDE drives, so if someone currently makes something like this, please point me to them! I would expect to pay $35 per Oxford board, $50 for the power supply and $50 for the enclosure... $15 for a cooling fan Does this sound reasonable?"

kongjie writes "Cleveland's The Plain Dealer has a story in the business section about a pest-control web site that is suing someone who obviously has a particular bone to pick with exterminators: he is accused of being a "troll" who "constantly leaving obnoxious and offensive messages" on their pest-control bulletin board. The suit is for $5,000 and is for "violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.""

dogmeant asks: "I have yet to see MOM (message oriented middleware) offerings on Linux much less open source projects that address the same. And while we're at it, what about tools that address SOA/BPM (Service oriented architecture/business process modeling) type architectures on Linux? Is the Open Source community ready to take on challenges like this?" If anyone else out there has this particular itch, maybe this will be another niche in which Open Source software can catch some Enterprise mindshare.