Slashdot Mirror

VinceV sent us a link to a new site he's started up called Control-Escape.com which aims to be a help site for novice linux users making the migration from those less known alternative OSs from Redmond. jedgar wrote in to announce the Feb. Edition of DaemonNews and FreeBSD 'zine, and Squeezer wrote in to say that the feb. issue of Ext2 is out. (Mention one, ya gotta mention 9 more. Sheesh *grin*) Several other folks wrote in to note that The GNOME Project has released 0.99.5. Justin Clarke wrote in to show us Rioport.com which is Diamond's new site to connect Rio owners with legal MP3s. danmil noted another Slashdot reference in the mainstream- this one is in a NY times story. Now we have a few funny bits not for the Moral and Pure: the_gimp sent us a link to what is probably the most amusing patent in recent memory. Glad that's patented. Don't want that technology uncontrolled. Somewhat related, behhl sent us a site that was bound to happen- AdultLinux. You can guess what it's for. And lastly, for the strangest bit of the day, Hans sent us a link to Furniture Porn. Fear. And hide your children.

The guy in the next cubicle writes "Looks like Intel has an official slogan for the Pentium III processor: "This Way In." You can make up your own joke. " I'll muffle my own jokes. It's just too easy.

libtech writes "S.u.S.E. has just released v. 6.0 of their linux distro... Its a german only release but the english version will be out later this month."

Jesda Gulati wrote in to plug his Linux based iMac Rival. It's from Infinital Spacial Technologies and it's called the Infinital One. It costs more ($1500) but it has an LCD screen, it weighs less and is smaller than the iMac. I'm not quite sure why, but the press release says you have to add $10 for Linux, but Win98 is free. Has ethernet, PCMCIA, USB etc. It's also better looking than the iMac, although it's a P233 so I suspect a LinuxPPC iMac will outperform it. I still want one. one.

If you're bored, there's a ton of strange links on the next page, selected by the warped minds of my slashdot co-authors ;-).

tom writes various stuffed Tux's (including a 1m high one), BSD Daemons and a TeX Lion at link (under "Un*x fan shop" and "ZU DEN ARTIKELN" - unfortunately the site's in German, but they speak English). Excellent quality, IMHO.

Robert Ennals writes A writer for the guardian/observer has a mention of one of their articles being linked from slashdot and considers this honour to be the "nearest I'll get to a Nobel prize" link

Kam writes Furniture Porn. Not much else to say... link

Louis Bertrand writes The December issue of DaemonNews, the monthly ezine devoted to the three open-source BSD operating systems (FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD) is available at link

SpaceDust writes No URL on this one, and not sure if it is really a /. thing. A friend who works at EA, tells me they are currently in Beta for Sim City 3000. Supported platforms will be Windows (mid Jan) and MacOS (in 6 months) I guess Linux gets squat (though, the /. effect may convince them otherwise) It's not too much different than "SC2k" except for a couple of new buildings, an improved interface, and now you have to manage garbage as well. They're in late Beta now, it's pretty stable and most of the major problems have been resolved but it still needs some tuning.

Josh Mast writes According to ,"> link A new opensource DOOM port has been started. "The Open Gaming Resource Engine project has been launched. This is a manifestation of the "Merger" project among members of leading DOOM source code projects, and will be an open source project. Looks nifty, maybe we'll finally have a decent port of DOOM for Linux now.

che guevara writes You bet it!!! I was surfing around on Camneerg- and saw this site that has an iMac that was hacked for a disk drive. You can get some info here, but don't try this if you don't want to void your warranty! Peace.

Brent Dearth writes ever since i got their demo tape at an underworld site, i've been searching for Market's webpage. well, i found it, and they have a couple mp3's full length for download. not really news, but i recall Hemos having good taste in music. link (sorry didn't paste)

Ben Smith writes The Onion has a silly little iMac joke in their new issue. In the left side column they have a neon blue stapler, and the caption says " New Stapler Makes All Other Staplers Look Like Worthless Shit". Good for a midday laugh.

Anonymous Coward writes Steven Hawking will appear on the Simpsons. Go figure. link

Anonymous Coward writes Kinda slow site.. (geocities) but well worth it :))))) link

Anonymous Coward writes More GNOME screenshots are available on the GNOME web site.

Siva writes "There's an update on the X11AMP homepage regarding the release of the next version along with some nifty screenshots. X11AMP is a (soon-to-be GPL'd) mp3 for linux. "

Ron Harwood was the first of probably 50 readers to submit a link to ml.org where you can read that the free DNS service is officially shutting down . That ought to break a huge number of my bookmarks.

cluening writes "This week at PEST are a slew of wonderful Lego death scenes, sure to prove that Legos aren't just for kids... " The carnage! Oh lord, the carnage! Sorry, its monday. I think things are funnier right before class.

shai writes "Ahem. The funniest article title I've seen in a long time, is over here on Wired. Seems IBM's new G5 mainframes are flying off the shelves, with this being the best product launch of mainframes in company history. "

Saxgod writes "The free dynamic DNS service at Monolith has been having problems, and will be down for at least a few weeks due to lack of people to fix the latest problems. Your money, hardware, and support could help. It looks like they need money and machines for servers, and help keeping miniSQL running, or even replacing it with something better." For those who aren't aware of it, this basically lets people on dial up connections have domain names. Its pretty nice.

Saxgod writes "The free dynamic DNS service at Monolith has been having problems, and will be down for at least a few weeks due to lack of people to fix the latest problems. Your money, hardware, and support could help. It looks like they need money and machines for servers, and help keeping miniSQL running, or even replacing it with something better." For those who aren't aware of it, this basically lets people on dial up connections have domain names. Its pretty nice.

Greg Gulrajani d writes "A trip down memory lane.. specs, photos and adds from the first personal computer wave that made us what we are!" I feel left out- my first was a TRS-80.

An anonymous reader wrote in to send in a link to one of my favorite pet topics. Wearables Central has lots of info on various options available both now, and soon. Tons of good links, pictures, and even schematics for the do-it-your-selfer.

sune writes "It seems the big bad bit-bucket has swallowed x11amp, no information is available yet (more info will be available soon according to the homepage.) " update: Thanks to D Hall Stevenson for alerting us to the fact the site was cracked. In fact x11amp is going to be GPL'd and converted to GTK.

sune writes "It seems the big bad bit-bucket has swallowed x11amp, no information is available yet (more info will be available soon according to the homepage.) " update: Thanks to D Hall Stevenson for alerting us to the fact the site was cracked. In fact x11amp is going to be GPL'd and converted to GTK.

David Raufeisen writes "Opera Software has had an ongoing project to port its lightweight web browser to non-ms operating systems such as Linux,macos,BeOS and OS/2. In their latest status report they noted that the Linux and Macos teams have failed and they are shifting the project to another team, Delays suck.. I personally can't weight to try out their web browser in Linux.. I used it heavily in windows before and it is superb. " Why's this article posted? Simply because diversity is essential, and that is why a certain giant's current strategy of making one size-suits-all software is unsound. Linux should not fall into the same trap.

Ego writes "I've been searching high and low for the past year for a good business accounting package for Linux. Currently, my father runs an in-house beer and winemaking supply store, and since about five years ago, we've been using Peachtree Accounting for Windows. I'm looking to upgrade all the computers in the house network from windows to Linux, and this is the one obvious thing that we cannot live without..." True. I wonder how many other shops could use something like this? Click below for more... ...continued...

Ego contines with: "I need something that has basically all the functionality of Peachtree, which include at bare minimum: Invoicing, Customer database, Inventory management, billing, reporting (financial, inventory, etc), and the ability to review total profits in detail for each month. These are the bare necessities. I've found Xaccountant, and GNUCash, as well as tons of other personal finance programs, but none for business accounting. Another requirement is that it needs to be very simple to use, and have an X interface. My dad is not the most computer literate person in the world, so a text-based system is probably a bad idea(tm), as a graphical interface is much simpler for a 50+ year old man who knows almost nothing about computers to learn. Any help would be GREATLY appreciated, as I want to get this rolling and get all the customer data and inventory data loaded and ready to roll out on the first of 1999 (stupid to switch in the middle of the inventory year, it'd be much easier to just take the logs of when we do our yearly inventory and input it on January 1st)."

George Greer writes "While idling doing a search for Transmeta on AltaVista, I came across the title "Recent Ph.D graduates". Naturally I was curious. On the page link they list the following people now working at Transmeta and their focus. Craig Anderson, ``Improving Performance of Bus Based Multiprocessors'', Autumn 1995. Advisor: Jean-Loup Baer. Current Employment: Transmeta, Inc., Santa Clara, CA. David Keppel, ``Runtime Code Generation'', Spring 1996. Advisor: Susan Eggers. Current Employment: Transmeta, Inc., Santa Clara, CA. Jack Lo, ``Exploiting Thread-Level Parallelism on Simultaneous Multithreaded Processors: Hardware and Software Techniques for Effectively Managing Shared Resources'', Spring 1998. Advisors: Susan Eggers and Hank Levy. Current Employment: Transmeta Corporation, Santa Clara, CA. As if there's any doubt left they're making a (really cool) processor. " Mmm...and based on what Linus said at Linux Expo, I think it's clear that they are headed toward SMP fun.

HoserHead wrote in to let us in on the skinny on recent mozilla.org developments. Basically, it goes like this - binaries built nightly are available for download, and the Win32 ones can integrate with the IE/Win98 Active Desktop. Screenshots are here, but I think it's a personal workstation, so can we get a mirror or two (small shots)? I wonder if we're on track to beating them at their own game...

rick-o writes "The current issue of Software Magazine arrived to me at work today with a cover story on Linux. Featuring incredibly bad photos of Linus and Eric (and a photo of RMS that seems to be missing from the online version), the article doesn't really say much that's new, but it's still good press. "

Chris Howard wrote to tell us about a new chamber to trap antimatter. Eventually antimatter may prove a cheap energy source for interplanetary exploration (as in Star Trek). moonboy contributed this link to a new plasma engine NASA is developing. Finally in related news, Tom Rothamel informed us of a setback for the Delta III rocket (i.e. a successful test, since those are the ones that find bugs): "Well, the new Delta III rocket's first test flight just exploded. I saw it on RealVideo from Boeing."

Michael Chisari writes "If you're a fan of Squaresoft's games, you've probably seen some renders from the up and coming Final Fantasy VIII. However, you also might be interested in seeing what kind of artwork Squaresoft's other graphics-only division is capable of. This image comes from their Honolulu studio, which will be working on the new Final Fantasy Movie. It seems Pixar is about to have some heavy competition. "

This site explains how to disable PICS in Netscape. I guess it was a good idea for awhile at least :) The hack was created (and sent in by) Brian Ristuccia. Update News.com picked up the story too. They have a writeup here. Thanks again to Brian for letting us know.

This site explains how to disable PICS in Netscape. I guess it was a good idea for awhile at least :) The hack was created (and sent in by) Brian Ristuccia. Update News.com picked up the story too. They have a writeup here. Thanks again to Brian for letting us know.

lc writes "This article in LAN Times basically tells about Linux and what it is, and how its stability and speed are why NT professionals are switching to Linux. It also goes on to tell about the software companies that recently stated that they're supporting Linux such as IBM, Oracle, Informix Corp, and Netscape. Cover story too..."
As well, PC Week is running a good review of Caldera Netware, and tying Linux into x-nets.

How Big is 64 Bits? is just one of the interesting entries in the VOX archive. There is tons to read ranging over many many years. I've just been scrolling around and skimming it, and ran into skads of interesting things. We've got chain letters, those forwards that never die, comments about porn, taxes, lawyers and more. Definately worth spending some time. Probably worth spending a lot of time. Thanks to Disconnect for sending this in, and #Slashdot for whining that I haven't been posting enough geeky silly stuff lately. This should be enough crazy stuff to keep everyone busy for a few weeks *grin*

While perusing Freshmeat, the title Anti-filter-proxy-proxy caught my attention. What it does is defeat the site-blocking functionality of censorware. This is cool because it neatly solves the CDA nonsense, and with a network of sites such as httpd-afpp's homepage it should also allow citizens of countries such as China and Singapore to get around state imposed censorware, keeping the internet a free-speech area.

Shai writes "Hola /. folks. There's a new Linux Gaming site that's just opening for buisness, on the Telefragged network at Linux Gaming. They've got message boards up, and promise to provide a central resource for folks looking to game with the Penguin. "

Jeremy Sholovitz writes "Due to a new Washington State law prohibiting commercial email messages where the sender mis-represents or tries to mask where the message is coming from, a man collected $200 from a spammer! I heard the story at the end of Marketplace today, and found this link to a page with some information and a picture of the check! Anyone in Washington, you should pursue this as well... maybe spammers will begin to think twice! " I think we each should get $200 from Bulls Eye. If I get one more of those things I'm going to be very unhappy.

John Corey writes " Slashdot's Team is about ready to clobber the Czech RC5 Team in the next day or two for the coveted 8th place. Woohoo! But we'll need a LOT more help to take over the next rank (over 3 million blocks to get up there). " Been awhile since we plugged Distributed.net anyway. If you're interested, follow the link.

Caffiend writes "An interesting sitet I came upon while watching the news, flamming pop-tarts, those delicious breakfast pasterys turn deadly when left unattended. kinda cool if you don't have anything else to do. "

Nate wrote in to ask about something that I'm sure a lot of people around here have thought about- shopping online. He asks " For quite some time, I have been a big opponent of online shopping. I refused to put any kind of sensitive info across the Internet due to the insecurity of it. Well, they've had 'secure transactions' for quite some time now, yet I'm still paranoid. Is this paranoia justifiable, do I have a better chance winning the lottery than having someone sniff my credit card info, or is it quite safe?" I figure I'd throw in my 2 bits- I buy everything but food online these days. I don't do it unless I have a secure connection (eg, the little lock icon is closed in Netscape :) but when that happens, I don't feel any phobia whatsoever. Maybe I'm just naive, but I don't have any fear whatsoever. What does everyone else thing?

nothing writes "Palm computing (a divison of 3com) has decided to make ROMS for their handheld PDA's free. According to Greg Hewgill,Copilot (Pilot emulator), would now be renamed to Palm OS Emulator and would be supported by Palm computing. They have also released a debug version of the PalmOS 3.0 ROM file. Your can get it and more from this link. Enjoy.. "

Bowie J. Poag writes " GNOME developer Eckehard Burns has submitted a color-reactive Lamp/Beacon widget to the GNOME UI Library, making it official--From written proposal to working code in less than 48 hours. GNOME developers now have the ability of encorporating color-reactive elements into their apps, at their own discretion. :) " What took so long? *grin*.

Nathan Anderson writes "Just wanted to let you (and all the readers of Slashdot.org) know about my new open-source project, CommonTone. In a nutshell, it will be a set of CGI scripts that implement a simple web database system. Hopefully, I'm not re-inventing the wheel or anything. ;-) *grin* But, really, the purpose of CommonTone isn't just to implement a new database system, but to build a "webified" database system that allows you to make your site up entirely of CommonTone databases and HTML template files for simple maintenance. The first version is slated for a late summer '98 release. Slashdotters, make sure to tell me if the description on my web site is clear enough. :-) "

Wintermute wrote in to tell everyone that it is possible to get StarCraft to run under Wine . In a word Un-be-f**king-believable . Battle.net apparently doesn't work, but single player play is fine. I haven't even seen StarCraft yet, even though my Room Mate has a CD. I think installing wine just became a priority :) Check out This Page for details on how to make it happen.

kovi sent us A Link to StarHack. I hadn't heard about this one, but it definately strikes me as important. Apparently Blizzard, fearlessly striking bold move after bold move in an effort to win "Worst PR of the 1998" has decided to take action against StarHack, a site dedicated to sharing info about the back end of StarCraft, and to ultimately write a new server. Blizzard wants them to stop. Go to the site, read what they have to say, and if you agree that what is happening is wrong, they have directions on how you can help.

kovi sent us A Link to StarHack. I hadn't heard about this one, but it definately strikes me as important. Apparently Blizzard, fearlessly striking bold move after bold move in an effort to win "Worst PR of the 1998" has decided to take action against StarHack, a site dedicated to sharing info about the back end of StarCraft, and to ultimately write a new server. Blizzard wants them to stop. Go to the site, read what they have to say, and if you agree that what is happening is wrong, they have directions on how you can help.

Roy Stogner asked me to tell everyone that The Linux Web Map has moved to a new location. TLWM is another site tracking urls related to Linux. The nice thing is Roy's descriptions of the sites in the database. Quite helpful information in many cases. Anyway, update those bookmarks (and if you've never visited, check it out)

Mike Trinastich sent us something to bring a smile to your face (unless you happened to go to this school). The Story is about a kid who tried to flood someone with like 10,000 email messages, and caused his school's systems to go bannanas. Kinda makes ya wonder what spammers are are doing to ISPs when they send a lot of email and not just this dinky 5 figure stuff.

Jason Boyles sent us this link where you can read about action being taken against classic arcade game emulators like Mame. Thourougly depressing.

We also have this place sent in by herbman. From here you can read about SNEmu, a new SNES emulator joining the Linux Emu scene. My SNES is accumulating dust, but as these emulators get better, I get nearer and nearer going back and trying to take on Zelda again.

Kendall Koning has written in with a mini editorial that everyone should read. In addition, read The Linux Advocacy Mini HOWTO, On many occasions, Linux users appear to be more of a mob than a team. I've fallen prey to this more than a few times in the thousand articles I've posted on these pages. Its something that we all need to work on if we want Linux to truly be mainstream.

The following is a mini editorial by Slashdot reader Kendall Koning

Why too much MS-bashing is a Bad Thing (tm)

I'll make this really short.

After reading many of the comments sent to Mr. Berlind about his piece on MSNBC, I'm a bit embarrased. This is the kind of thing that gives (influential) people like Mr. Berlind a negitive impression of the user community that supports Linux. While he may have been wrong in his judgement of Netscape's source code release, we certainly have no right to accuse him of being paid-off.

A few of the responses were fair and professional, but most were just flames. Keep in mind that people are often turned off by disrespect, anger, unfounded allegations, and name-calling.

From the linux advocacy mini-howto:

As a representative of the Linux community, participate in mailing list and newsgroup discussions in a professional manner. Refrain from name-calling and use of vulgar language. Consider yourself a member of a virtual corporation with Mr. Torvalds as your Chief Executive Officer. Your words will either enhance or degrade the image the reader has of the Linux community.

Always remember that if you insult or are disrespectful to someone, their negative experience may be shared with many others. If you do offend someone, please try to make amends.

If you believe that Linux was not given fair treatment in an article, review or news story, send the details, including the above information, to li@li.org so that an appropriate response can be sent to the publisher. If you contact the publisher directly, be professional and sure of your facts.

Focus on what Linux has to offer. There is no need to bash the competition. We have a good, solid product that stands on its own.

If you plan be an active advocate of linux, through whatever medium, please read the rest of the advocacy mini-howto, and try to follow the suggestions it has to offer.

Thanks,

Kendall Koning (kkoning@kkoning.ml.org)

Kendall Koning has written in with a mini editorial that everyone should read. In addition, read The Linux Advocacy Mini HOWTO, On many occasions, Linux users appear to be more of a mob than a team. I've fallen prey to this more than a few times in the thousand articles I've posted on these pages. Its something that we all need to work on if we want Linux to truly be mainstream.

The following is a mini editorial by Slashdot reader Kendall Koning

Why too much MS-bashing is a Bad Thing (tm)

I'll make this really short.

After reading many of the comments sent to Mr. Berlind about his piece on MSNBC, I'm a bit embarrased. This is the kind of thing that gives (influential) people like Mr. Berlind a negitive impression of the user community that supports Linux. While he may have been wrong in his judgement of Netscape's source code release, we certainly have no right to accuse him of being paid-off.

A few of the responses were fair and professional, but most were just flames. Keep in mind that people are often turned off by disrespect, anger, unfounded allegations, and name-calling.

From the linux advocacy mini-howto:

As a representative of the Linux community, participate in mailing list and newsgroup discussions in a professional manner. Refrain from name-calling and use of vulgar language. Consider yourself a member of a virtual corporation with Mr. Torvalds as your Chief Executive Officer. Your words will either enhance or degrade the image the reader has of the Linux community.

Always remember that if you insult or are disrespectful to someone, their negative experience may be shared with many others. If you do offend someone, please try to make amends.

If you believe that Linux was not given fair treatment in an article, review or news story, send the details, including the above information, to li@li.org so that an appropriate response can be sent to the publisher. If you contact the publisher directly, be professional and sure of your facts.

Focus on what Linux has to offer. There is no need to bash the competition. We have a good, solid product that stands on its own.

If you plan be an active advocate of linux, through whatever medium, please read the rest of the advocacy mini-howto, and try to follow the suggestions it has to offer.

Thanks,

Kendall Koning (kkoning@kkoning.ml.org)

Kendall Koning has written in with a mini editorial that everyone should read. In addition, read The Linux Advocacy Mini HOWTO, On many occasions, Linux users appear to be more of a mob than a team. I've fallen prey to this more than a few times in the thousand articles I've posted on these pages. Its something that we all need to work on if we want Linux to truly be mainstream.

The following is a mini editorial by Slashdot reader Kendall Koning

Why too much MS-bashing is a Bad Thing (tm)

I'll make this really short.

After reading many of the comments sent to Mr. Berlind about his piece on MSNBC, I'm a bit embarrased. This is the kind of thing that gives (influential) people like Mr. Berlind a negitive impression of the user community that supports Linux. While he may have been wrong in his judgement of Netscape's source code release, we certainly have no right to accuse him of being paid-off.

A few of the responses were fair and professional, but most were just flames. Keep in mind that people are often turned off by disrespect, anger, unfounded allegations, and name-calling.

From the linux advocacy mini-howto:

As a representative of the Linux community, participate in mailing list and newsgroup discussions in a professional manner. Refrain from name-calling and use of vulgar language. Consider yourself a member of a virtual corporation with Mr. Torvalds as your Chief Executive Officer. Your words will either enhance or degrade the image the reader has of the Linux community.

Always remember that if you insult or are disrespectful to someone, their negative experience may be shared with many others. If you do offend someone, please try to make amends.

If you believe that Linux was not given fair treatment in an article, review or news story, send the details, including the above information, to li@li.org so that an appropriate response can be sent to the publisher. If you contact the publisher directly, be professional and sure of your facts.

Focus on what Linux has to offer. There is no need to bash the competition. We have a good, solid product that stands on its own.

If you plan be an active advocate of linux, through whatever medium, please read the rest of the advocacy mini-howto, and try to follow the suggestions it has to offer.

Thanks,

Kendall Koning (kkoning@kkoning.ml.org)

James Baughn writes "InfoWorld has posted an interview with Linus at this location "Linus Torvalds talks economics and operating systems" "

Remember all the hoopla over studies that showed a serious technical expertise shortage in the near future? Well Eugenio Sanchez sent in this story which challenges that claim. Mike Trinastich sent in this article on the same subject.

Jeremy Collins wrote in to say "I would like to announce the creation of the GnoMoney Project. This is a project to create quality financial management software for Linux, and all other flavors of Unix. It is going to be written using Gtk to give it a slick interface."

I agree. I actually keep all my finances on PilotMoney these days, but would love to interface that with a nice clean X app. My only suggestion is a new name. GnoMoney seems like you would pronounce it 'No Money' which doesn't sound like a very good name for a program to help keep your finances straight.

This Yahoo Story talks about Interplay's new game "Of Light and Darkness: The Prophecy" which has hit a speedbump:The cover (designed by the famous artist Gil Bruvel, who also designed the game) which features a picture of a nude angel has been censored from major chains. Not surprising- album covers and movie posters have some fairly strict guidelines, but still depressing to see that our world can't see the difference between art and smut. Check out the web site- it's very beautiful. Thanks to talon for letting us know about this one.

Netscape has opened up Mozzila.org for dealing with the soon to be available source code to their browser. It's about time Mozilla (this link will only work under netscape) resurfaced- he's been missed for a long time. Thanks to Mike T for sending us This link where you can read about the site, and the dedicated Team that Netscape has on the job. Netscape is doing a great job so far and deserve congratulations. There will be growing pains for everyone in the next few months, but it'll be so worth it in another year!

If you check out this link sent to us by Arctangent you can see assorted tidbits leftover from the recent InSight core dump. For those of you who missed the article last week, InSight disolved and left its goods to the Gnome project. The link above has a few images with a conglomeration of decent icons and background images, and a technical write up on what InSight wanted to replace Scroll Bars:The Scroll Ball. It's an interesting idea. I won't post my opinion on the concept yet:I suggest everyone read the paper and discuss it carefully.