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tekniklr writes: "They just released Kernel 2.4.16. Download it here, and you can read the changelog here. This hopefully fixes the error that 2.4.15 had of corrupting filesystems on unmount." Update: 11/26 14:14 GMT by T : p.s. Don't forget to look in the mirrors.

visnu writes: "I've been waiting for this for 2 years now -- a REAL glass-like windowing system. And yes, it's Microsoft to do it. Ever since W2k came out, and they included alpha-blending in the GDI, I was tempted to write a little tool to turn on any window's transparency, but of course I'm way too lazy to do that. These guys weren't though: glass2k runs in the systray and handles turning on any window's transparency. yes, here's a screenshot. I'm not too sure about the speed in W2k, but in XP w/ the newest Nvidia drivers and a somewhat recent video card, it's hardware accelerated, and yes, you should be drooling." Update: 11/26 19:00 GMT by T : Links updated, so hopefully you'll be able to actually get to the content again :)

Vikki_R. writes: "Wired has an article about grafting a microelectric circuit directly onto a human brain cell. Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin have been working on developing an interface between semiconductors and neurons. Imagine being able to give your computer a piece of your mind ..." Update: 11/25 22:54 GMT by T : Here's an earlier post linking to a different article on the same research.

Human cloning, or at least the production of human embryos, is no longer hypothetical; a company called Advanced Cell Technology claims to have successfully done just that. DivideX0 writes: "The Scientific American has this article. Note the research was conducted in the U.S. although there are bills pending in Washington that will ban this research." There's also a story at MSNBC. Update: 11/25 16:07 GMT by T : Here's ACT's press release as well.

exceed writes: "The New Scientist is reporting: 'A long-distance laser communication link between two Earth-orbiting satellites has been established for the first time. The technique allows fast-moving, low Earth orbit satellites to relay information to the ground almost instantaneously via a geostationary satellite fixed in a much higher orbit.'" Update: 11/24 22:28 GMT by T : Sorry, it's a duplicate. The lashing has begun.

John Ineson writes: "There is a bug in the latest kernel releases, that causes fs corruption on umount. A lot of people have already been hit by this, so for now I suggest you hold fire on booting those new kernels. More dead-duck than greased-turkey. Two possible fixes are being discussed on linux-kernel." Colin Bayer adds links to a story at the Register and Al Viro's fix. Update: 11/25 00:39 GMT by T : Tarkie writes "Linux 2.4.16-pre1 is out, as detailed at NewsForge. If you've been having the filesystem corruptions, might be worth a try so that 2.4.16 can be out ASAP!"

Rabenwolf writes: "In the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, the first ISP (ISIS Multimedia) has given in to pressure from the state government and has started to block foreign websites with supposedly "illegal content" by changing the corresponding DNS entries. ISIS customers trying to access these sites are redirected to the website of the local government. ISPs in North Rhine-Westphalia will have to pay a fine if they continue to provide access to sites with "illegal content" through their DNS servers. It's not as bad as China or Saudi-Arabia, but it makes you think... An article from the heise newsticker is here, and if you don't sprechen Deutsch, Google might help." Update: 11/22 15:23 GMT by T : As sqrt points out, this report is misleading: "A single technican altered the DNS Entries to demonstrate it is possible. His changes were already reversed. Heise already posted a new story about this today."

Slur points out an article at the New York Times which says that the "Bush administration is considering the creation of a secure new government communications network separate from the Internet that would be less vulnerable to attack and efforts to disrupt critical federal activities," writing "It seems to me money would be better spent getting the next-generation Internet going, for the government to fund more of the existing research and standards boards to create protocols that are invulnerable to the kinds of attacks the government seems to fear, namely massive DOS attacks. Or is there something else a 'net terrorist' could do to 'disrupt the vital flow of information'?" Isn't hard-to-disrupt communication the reason that DARPA got involved in this "Internet" business anyhow? Update: 11/19 22:48 GMT by T : This was mentioned before a little while ago when USA Today wrote about the same concept, but apparently a Digital Pearl Harbor is still being flogged.

Microsoft's C# has raised eyebrows, interest and debate since its official announcement last year. The prolific Carnage4Life (Dare Obasanjo) has completed a detailed comparison of C# and Java, outlining the things that are identical, similar, nearly the same, or completely different between the two languages. If you're considering learning or applying either one, you might benefit by reading this paper first. There are some other excellent comparisons to be found linked from the Open Directory Project as well. Update: 11/20 03:35 GMT by T : Note: here's a mirror; interested readers who mirror the mirror get good seats in heaven.

For all the Terry Pratchett fans reading mblase contributed this review of the illustrated The Last Hero, writing: "There are only two things a Discworld fan can think when encountering an illustrated Discworld novel. He'll either love it for giving him a concrete visual idea of his favorite people, places and things, or he'll hate it for the very same reason. You probably already know which type you are." Read on for the rest of his review. Update: 11/19 21:30 GMT by T : Note: The reference to Jack Kirby should have been to Josh Kirby instead; apologies. The Last Hero author Terry Pratchett pages 158 publisher HarperCollins rating 8 reviewer mblase ISBN 0061040967 summary A short but lavishly illustrated return to Terry Pratchett's Discworld and several of his most popular characters.

If you're the second type, though, be warned that the illustrations in this book are still incredibly, incredibly beautiful. If you're a comic book afficianado, then think of Alex Ross painting caricatures. This isn't the first time artist Paul Kidby (not to be confused with Josh Kirby, who illustrated Eric and most of the British Discworld covers) has tackled Terry Pratchett's Discworld characters, but it is the first time he's tackled an entire story. His art appears next to, above, below, and behind the story on every single page of this oversized book, and despite his habit of giving each character exactly one expression for the entire book, they're always a joy to look at. They're lavish, detailed, stylized, detailed, believable, real. You'll have to be hard-set against having your literary characters drawn for you to object to how Kidby renders them here.

Of course, as they say at Pixar, all the pretty pictures in the world won't rescue a bad story. Which brings us to Pratchett's half of the book. This is a short novel even by Discworld standards, about the same length as Eric, which is probably why the art is there (instead of vice versa). The plot goes something like this: Cohen the Barbarian and his octagenerian cohorts have decided to embark on one last heroic expedition, to return fire to the gods. Specifically, fire in the form of a very large explosive keg, which he intends to detonate inside the home of the Discworld gods atop the mountain at the center of the Disc.

Impossible, you say? Probably not -- after all, Cohen hasn't gotten as old as he is by failing to kill people. And the residents of Ankh-Morpork, magical and non-magical alike, all have reason to believe that his success will mean the end of the entire Disc. So the ingenious Leonard of Quirm is given the assignment of getting himself and a select team to the center of the Disc as quickly as possible in order to intercept Cohen before he gets what he wants.

That "select team," it turns out, consists of Carrot Ironfounderson, the six-foot-tall, red-headed, large-muscled captain of the City Watch, and Rincewind, the worst wizard the Disc has ever seen and the only citizen of Ankh-Morpork who has anything approaching a friendship with Cohen. (They spent half of The Colour of Magic and most of The Last Continent together.) It's the first "crossover" story Pratchett has written with these two major characters, and has probably been demanded by fans for years.

You'd expect the embodiments of perfect courage and perfect cowardice to have some pretty interesting dialogue in this story, but surprisingly, they don't seem to interact that much. Rincewind doesn't have much patience with brave heroes, and Carrot is too polite to force his views on Rincewind. On the other hand, Leonard's relentless imagination and total faith in his own radical inventions makes him a far, far more interesting companion for Rincewind. The two of them get along absolutely dreadfully.

There's also a new villain by the name of Evil Dark Lord Harry Dread, but he's really just a supporting role. Mostly this book is an exercise in giving Rincewind and Cohen another story together, with Leonard and Carrot thrown in to make it all possible. But as Pratchett himself has said in the past, Rincewind just isn't a compelling enough character. His gimmick is that he's a coward, and a very good one, and while it's certainly funny, it's hard to write great stories around a character that refuses to be developed. Both Eric and The Last Hero star him, and both are about half as long as Pratchett's usual novels; I doubt this is a coincidence.

So Cohen's character is really the only one that sees any interesting growth in this book, which is probably why it's named after him and why he's the only one illustrated on the cover. And while it's short, it's still plenty interesting and chock-full of the humor and insights Pratchett's fans have come to love. It's a little annoying that the two teams of characters spend almost the entire book not interacting with each other, because the lack of a united plot has wrecked a few Discworld novels for me. (Soul Music comes immediately to mind.) But this time, the ending redeems it.

Diehard Pratchett fans will buy this regardless of how it's reviewed, of course. But the non-diehards and even non-fans should enjoy it, too -- it's a solid story that gives a quick, fun look at several recurring Discworld characters, and the artwork is so lavish it's almost impossible to say "no" to. The price tag is a bit higher than an ordinary Discworld hardcover, though, so it's really not for first-timers. Give them a paperback copy of Wyrd Sisters or The Light Fantastic instead, to get them hooked on the early stuff. The Last Hero isn't a literary main course, but it's an excellent dessert.

You can purchase this book at Fatbrain. Want to see your review here? Please read our review guidelines first :)

chongo writes: "The Leonid meteor shower certainly lived up to its hype this year. At Fremont Peak, CA (USA) we saw a peak rate of 2408 meteors/hour. We saw many bright fireballs. During the peak (18 Nov 2001 1015-1130 UTC) there were frequent instances where multiple meteors were visible. Because of this, we suspect the true rate was likely higher than 2500/hr." We've also heard from several folks who were foiled by weather, but it's good that at least some people got the full show. Update: 11/18 17:09 GMT by T : BrianGa writes: "If you missed the show, like I did, you can see some still pictures and animated pictures." He also points to a site with a preliminary graph of the number of meteors visible on November 18th.

bwoodard writes "Over the weekend Duke University Law school held a conference on the public domain which included many well known Free Software advocates such as Lawrence Lessig and Eben Moglen. The papers (in PDF) are presented were quite thought provoking and well worth a read." Timothy brought this conference to our attention on scary halloween.

Another plane has crashed, this time in Queens. You can read a blurb at Yahoo. CNN.com isn't responding for me. LaGuardia, Newark and JFK are closed now. Update: 11/12 14:54 GMT by T : New reports indicate that the plane was departing from JFK, not arriving. Also, CNN has confirmed that this was American Airlines flight 587, an Airbus A 300. Update: 11/12 14:57 GMT by T : Further information is that the plane was en route to the Dominican Republic, and that the disaster actually involves two crash sites, not just one -- an engine fell from the plane some distance from the fuselage.

Another plane has crashed, this time in Queens. You can read a blurb at Yahoo. CNN.com isn't responding for me. LaGuardia, Newark and JFK are closed now. Update: 11/12 14:54 GMT by T : New reports indicate that the plane was departing from JFK, not arriving. Also, CNN has confirmed that this was American Airlines flight 587, an Airbus A 300. Update: 11/12 14:57 GMT by T : Further information is that the plane was en route to the Dominican Republic, and that the disaster actually involves two crash sites, not just one -- an engine fell from the plane some distance from the fuselage.

kilaasi points out this CNET story about the planned release on Monday of Apache 2.0, "or at least the version that has proprietary extensions. Covalent sells the core of Apache and its own extensions which make it easier to adapt for specific areas and simpler to administer. Covalent is confident that the next generation Apache is mature and is ready for prime time. Covalent employs some of the core members of the Apache-development-team." XRayX adds a link to Covalent's press release, writing: "It's not clear when the Open Source Edition (or whatever) will come out and I didn't find anything at the official Apache Site." Update: 11/10 16:37 GMT by T : Note that the product name is Covalent Enterprise Ready Server; though it's based on Apache software, this is not Apache 2.0 per se. Thanks to Sascha Schumann of the ASF for the pointer.

Jon F writes: "I saw this picture on Yahoo! today, it looks like Nintendo decided to license out the GameCube to Panasonic to make a clone. It's a hybrid DVD player/GameCube that came out in Toyko today. The only other article I came across about this was on IGN a few months ago. It has a mirrored surface and trippy purple lights on the controller port." Gaming guts (and purple bits) aside, this is one of the nicest-looking DVD players I've seen. Update: 11/01 23:50 GMT by T : As several readers have pointed out, this looks like just a tease for now, but will be out (in Japan) next month.

An Anonymous Coward writes "IBM is working on a generic GUI wrapper to allow Python developers to write cross-platform GUIs. The anygui project will expose a common set of functions to the programmer and choose which backend gui toolkit to use for the given platform: TK, WIN32, GTK, Bethon, etc. Currently the software is in an alpha stage. The article also has some example code." Update: 10/27 23:53 GMT by T : Magnus Lie Hetland wrote to point out that though this article is hosted at IBM, "Anygui has nothing to do with IBM. It is, in fact, an independent Open Source project currently hosted at SourceForge."

jwest writes "LCS now has Debian GNU/Linux 'woody' on DVD-R We were just tired of shucking around the 6 CD/ROM's it takes to do a new installation with woody. One DVD that can be read on a common place DVD reader seemed like its time had come. More info." Debian unstable, for the adventurous with a DVD-drive. Update: 10/25 23:14 GMT by T : Sorry, that's "testing." Just ... testing.

k_hokanson writes: "I was just going to check out some tasty news articles, with my trusty Mozilla, at MSN. but what do I get when I go there? A nice little message telling me that 'in order to display this page properly', I have to get the latest version of IE! And no, there's no option to display it incorrectly. " Enough people have submitted this story that it can't be an isolated case;) Thanks, Microsoft. Here's the story on Yahoo!. CT: telling konqueror to lie about its User Agent causes the page to render correctly save the background which is the wrong color. Update: 10/25 23:19 GMT by T : kuwan writes "Looks like Microsoft was getting too much heat. CNet is reporting that Microsoft is backing off on their browser block. I'm only wondering how long it will be before they do it again with some other excuse as to why we all need IE."

maddmike writes "Nasa's Mars explorer Odyssey is scheduled to brake and orbit about Mars today at 7:30PDT. Among the mission's objectives are to understand Mars' climate and geological history and to search for signs of life sustaining environments including water. Main web site is at the JPL website." Update: 10/24 13:12 GMT by T : The BrownFury writes cites a Space.com summary which says "The Mars Odyssey spacecraft appears to have succeeded Tuesday night in one of the most tricky and critical parts of its missions by slipping into orbit around the Red Planet."

Shawn King of The Mac Show Live talked a few days ago with Apple co-founder and knowledge-omnivore Steve (The Woz) Wozniak. Shawn graciously agreed to post the interview, formerly Quicktime only (downloadable or streaming), as an MP3 file -- so now most anyone can listen. This is an interview worth listening to: Woz talks about his lifelong motivations, his years with Apple (up to the present), OS X, the Newton, and what the future holds for him. He also talks about building TV jammers and the only prank he got caught for in high school, one which might not fly so well right now. (The interview starts about 55 minutes into the show, and lasts for nearly an hour.) What's this got to do with typing madly? Well, since Shawn's program is all-audio (no pictures, and only the barest explanitory text), it's a lot less useful to those on text-only or just-plain-slow links than it could be. Read on below for your chance to change that with just a few minutes of your time. Update: 10/20 20:43 GMT by T : Thanks to everyone who's volunteered to transcribe, and to the several alternates who are already in line! No need for more voluneers right now :)

Transcribing an hour of text takes a long time. But if you (yes, you!) are willing to transcribe a 3-minute (well. 3:15) chunk of this interview, I will spend my putative day off gluing chunks of interview together. Shoot me an email with "WozScript" in the subject if you'd like to participate, and I'll give the first volunteers (it shouldn't take that many) a randomly-drawn three-minute segment to type up, as well as more instructions on how to format it. No compensation except your name in lights, and the knowledge that lynx users everywhere appreciate your efforts. I'll update this story if and when the transcription is complete. (And if anyone can suggest a good Quicktime audio --> .ogg converter, Shawn and I would both appreciate it.)

Slashback brings you updates tonight on book reviews past, intentionally defective CDs, failing disk drives, and joining the HURD. Enjoy!

Spin control for some IBM drives? If you are one ofthe people who have the same results with IBM 75GXP hard drives that Sean Kelly did when he posed a recent Ask Slashdot, you may be interested in this report from legLess, who writes: "Pair Networks is swapping out every IBM 75GXP hard drive they have "[b]ased on an amazingly high failure rate." Pair is a big host: 114,000 sites all running on FreeBSD 4.1.1, including cdrom.com and Tom's Hardware. "We currently use and recommend Maxtor drives" they say. Big black eye for IBM."

GNU isn't Linux, either. Amid the stream of recent and upcoming software releases (Suse 7.3, Red Hat 7.2, Qt 3.0), it's sometimes easy for projects with smaller followings or more esoteric goals to get lost. BorrisYeltsin writes: "The Debian HURD iso images are now available from your local ftp.gnu.org mirror. There are 3 iso's available, so get downloading now!" (And read through the recent months' on the HURD Kernel Cousin too.)

Update: 10/16 14:20 GMT by T : Please note that the GNU Project maintains a list of ftp mirrors -- look for one local to you for best results all around :)

Placing warning signs along the road to consumerism brigc writes: "Good interview in the Chronicle of Higher Education with Jessica Litman about changes in the copyright arena since the publication of her book.

For those who were asleep, Litman's book 'Digital Copyright' does a good job of discussing why the copyright process got handed over to the industry and Congress has failed to protect the rights of the public."

Litman's book got a rave review from Michael a few months back; I suggest you check it out, and better yet ask you local library to put it up on display. Libraries have a strong vested interest in not ceding all control to copyright holders forever and ever amen.

It might pay to have a big fat mouth and ask for a refund on defective merchandise, too. anonicon writes: "Here's a heads up to the web site I'm running at http://www.fatchucks.com. I've started both a Corrupt CDs list for people who wish to report 'copy-protected' CDs or find out which ones they are, and an Indie Rec for people who want to recommend independent artists to the public. Thank you."

Lars Olsen writes: "Amdmb.com has posted a review of the new AMD Athlon MP 1800+ processor -- a big speed jump for the dual Athlon processor family with the new processor running at 1.53GHz. There are also 1600+ and 1500+ Athlon MPs available as well right away at stores around the World. Dual AMD Goodness is now running just as fast as its desktop counterpart ! Here's a quote: 'Those of you who want to jump into the dual processing Athlon world will finally be able to do so with the knowledge that your processors are the top speed that the Athlon family has to offer. And for anyone who already has a Tyan Thunder or Tiger MP board and a pair of Athlon MP processors, you may just want to pop a couple of these new Athlon MP 1800+ CPUs in your system to boost performance.'" Some of the comments following yesterday's "dream system" article addressed dual-Athlon complications, so make sure you read before you buy.Update: 10/15 15:14 GMT by T : Check below for LinuxHardware.org's take on this chip, and Athlon MP systems in general as well.

Augustus writes "LinuxHardware.org takes a look at the Athlon MP platform under Linux and the newly released Athlon MP 1800+ is included. Covered in this article is not only the technology and performance of the AMD-760 MP chipset and the Tyan Thunder K7 motherboard but we also look at why anyone would consider a multi-processor system."

ldopa1 writes "True to form, AMD has released the new Athlon XP today. This article on Tom's Hardware has the full technical specs for the chip as well as a look at the new packaging. Tom's also has a full set of benchmarks for the chip." michael : See also reviews on LinuxHardware.org, Newsforge, AnandTech and AMDMB. Update: 10/09 20:29 GMT by T : gregfortune points out that AMD is giving away quite a few of these in a six-city promotion as well, so if you live in one of the six, perhaps you can snag one.

kevin@ank.com was there last night when "Max Lanfranconi of the OpenOffice project spoke to the Silicon Valley Linux User Group on Wednesday morning's release 6.0 of the LGPL'd office suite. When the project was opened two years ago, it was missing online help, spell-checking, and printing which had been based on proprietary commercial libraries. With release 6 the open source community has replaced these missing features." Read on for some more information on the new release, courtesy of Kevin.Update: 10/04 22:11 GMT by T : Several readers have pointed out that the 6.0 release is actually the beta of StarOffice 6.0. Though StarOffice is based on OpenOffice code, there's not actually a new build of OpenOffice yet. OpenOffice's is currently at build 638.

"Release 6 also gets rid of the old Star Office desktop of version 5 which was generally disliked for its annoying tendency to cover up all of the other windows you were working with and make it difficult to interact with your X Window Manager.

The application suite has programable APIs for each of the applications, exposed through a custom object request broker named UNO. In an impressive demonstration, Max showed live update of a spreadsheet with real-time stock data, all under the control of a small Java application. Changed data were reflected throughout the spreadsheet table with each update as the sheet recalculated each cell based on the new input.

Max freely admits that there are still weaknesses in the code. He pointed to the ten year lifespan of the mostly C++ code base, and hopes to see the code improved with the use of more modern C++ features. In browsing through the source tree I don't find that the code is in nearly as bad shape as Max portrayed it. Admittedly I've only seen a tiny fraction of the code (at 3.7 million lines, OpenOffice is by far the largest open source project in the world), but my random sampling showed very good coding practises, like preprocessor guards around each header include to reduce compile time due to reopening headers that have already been processed. Even with these measures in place however, the full system takes upwards of 15 hours and 1.5GB of disk to build on currently available hardware.

System load time for the office suite has been significantly reduced (about 20s on Max's 500MHz laptop with 128MB memory) by removing several libraries from the link process and instead loading them on demand. Over the next year or more Max hopes to see more modularization of the code base with the eventual goal of seperating the monolithic program into seperate applications linked together through an object request broker.

Q&A went on until we got kicked out of our room, so there is a lot more that is new about OpenOffice than I've described here. If you are interested you can pick up a copy at OpenOffice.org, or at one of its mirrors around the world."

Moghedien writes: "This time a sturdy PDA, without a keyboard, but a big hi-res screen and it's designed for work in the field. Still runs the EPOC OS, 8 hour battery life time, probably a 200MHz StrongARM, 64MB RAM and MMC. It measures 215x85x28 mm. It has an IP rate of 67, meaning it's capable of lying under water for hours, and it can put up with a fall of 1.5 meters against concrete. According to Psion, its purpose is to fill the gap between powerful PDAs for the industry and handheld machines for the professional consumer market." There's a blurb describing this device on Psion's site -- but does anyone see pictures? Update: 10/01 13:35 GMT by T : An anonymous reader says: "Here is the page for the NetPad. It has a small picture, but it's better than nothing."

downundarob writes: "In Australia there are essentially only two major backbone suppliers; eventually all traffic either rides on Telstra (Part govt. owned) or OptusNet (part of C&W Optus). According to this page OptusNet has gotten itself on spews.com blacklist, potentially causing issues for a large percentage of Australian Internet users." Update: 09/30 12:01 GMT by T :DanielS writes: "Looks like Optus did indeed back down; according to the SPEWS listing & delisting info page, Optus were removed after shutting down the DNS service."

Seabass55 writes: "Researchers say Nimda is set to propagate again after rechecking Nimda's code. God help all the MS boxes ... again." Looks like the owners of unpatched IIS machines have until 9 p.m. GMT (1 a.m. ET) to get ready. I'd like to see a nice double stockade for the writers of Sircam and Nimda, and maybe some fireants. Update: 09/27 22:45 GMT by T : Temporal confusion -- that's 5:00 GMT, sorry :) Update: 09/28 00:14 GMT by T : Carnage4Life contributes this link to a command-line tool from Microsoft to list patches already installed or still needed, if you think your Windows machine may be vulnerable.

Seabass55 writes: "Researchers say Nimda is set to propagate again after rechecking Nimda's code. God help all the MS boxes ... again." Looks like the owners of unpatched IIS machines have until 9 p.m. GMT (1 a.m. ET) to get ready. I'd like to see a nice double stockade for the writers of Sircam and Nimda, and maybe some fireants. Update: 09/27 22:45 GMT by T : Temporal confusion -- that's 5:00 GMT, sorry :) Update: 09/28 00:14 GMT by T : Carnage4Life contributes this link to a command-line tool from Microsoft to list patches already installed or still needed, if you think your Windows machine may be vulnerable.

SkewlD00d writes: "The story is that colleges spent a load of money wiring schools, now they want more money to censor them in class. I bet I can get around any of this, all I need is a proxy server running on campus on port 80. LOL! But breaking it would probably violate the DMCA. Oh no, proxy servers are now all illegal!" From the article: "some classrooms at Bentley have technology that allows teachers to capture a student's e-mails or instant messages and display them on a large screen for the whole class to see." Of course, a lot of classes do (and will) require Internet access -- the article is more about steps taken to control exactly when and to what degree students can reach it. Update: 09/26 13:32 GMT by T : If the AP server-choosing link doesn't work well for you, el_nino-2000 suggests this Yahoo! link to the same text.

sachmet is one of the many readers who contributed news that "Gartner Group is now recommending that IIS be replaced in corporate environments. This is based on the fact that TCO for IIS is rising due to the almost-weekly patches sent out by MS, and even then, it's nearly impossible to get patched quickly enough. Best part: 'Gartner remains concerned that viruses and worms will continue to attack IIS until Microsoft has released a completely rewritten, thoroughly and publicly tested, new release of IIS,' which they say has an 80% chance of happening by the end of next year." Gartner hasn't always said favorable things about Linux systems in the workplace, but the businesses that rely on this type of analysis to justify purchasing decisions may find this one interesting. Update: 09/24 22:04 GMT by T :As several people have pointed out, the 80% figure appears to be Gartner's odds that IIS won't be rewritten that soon, rather than the other way around (.673334 probability).

According to this story running at Info World, the license from FrontPage 2002 contains a clause that says 'You may not use the Software in connection with any site that disparages Microsoft, MSN, MSNBC, Expedia, or their products or services ...' An unfortunate clause that will prevent me from my long term plan of migrating Slashdot to Frontpage (cough). There's lots of other nastiness in this article too. Can anyone find that specific clause? Can anyone find the EULA itself? Update: 09/20 18:10 GMT by T : According to reader bteutsch "FWIW, the clause appears only in the EULA agreement for use of the FrontPage Logo, not with the product or server extensions license."

Sideways The Dog writes: "According to this MSNBC article, "72 percent of Americans believe that anti-encryption laws would be 'somewhat' or 'very' helpful in preventing a repeat of last week's terrorist attacks on New York's World Trade Center and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C." I realize that I'm preaching to the choir here, but it is scary how many people do not realize that the bad guys are not going to play fair here. Even granted that people may not realize the tools are already out there for the bad guys to use, I wonder what the polls will say when the backdoor gets compromised and 72% of people get their bank accounts wiped." Update: 09/19 19:26 PM GMT by T : Declan McCullagh adds a link to "the actual text of the question asked by the pollsters, which Princeton Survey Research Associates describes here." Note the numbers on this page as well.

cybaea writes: "In this article, the BBC reports on the first successful major telesurgical operation. Doctors in the United States removed a gall bladder from a patient in eastern France by remotely operating a surgical robot arm." Note that this was using a "high speed optical link," not competing with email, viruses, or other things being sent on the Internet. Update: 09/19 17:05 PM GMT by T : Uh, that's "gall bladder," not "tumor." From this distance they look the same to me.

jdavidb writes: "The GNU Project has a new essay today by Eben Moglen, general legal counsel for GNU, about enforcing the GPL. People ranting about the GPL not holding up in court should read this. Very interesting, but I felt that this paragraph looked bad: 'In such situations we work with organizations to establish GPL-compliance programs within their enterprises, led by senior managers who report to us, and directly to their enterprises' managing boards, regularly.' I'm all for the GPL, but this sounds suspiciously like an Software Publishers' Association audit. On the other hand, circumstances of something like this would be completely different, i.e., illegally taking copyright privileges over software you didn't write, as opposed to illegally copying software." Actually, I also think they sound alike in certain ways, but that it makes sense -- since both are about unauthorized reproduction of software. I like the FSF's terms a lot more. Update: 09/18 19:53 PM GMT by T : As Dr. Nonsense points out, davidb "probably meant the dreaded audits by the Business Software Alliance," rather than the SPA.

mertzman writes: "Rather than wait for the government assaults on civil liberties to reach full steam, ClearChannel, one of the nation's largest radio networks, has decided to do some censorship on their own! According to F***edCompany, ClearChannel has created a list of banned songs with "questionable content" in light of the recent tragedies. Stuff ranging from Drowning Pool's "Bodies" to Nena's anti-war hit "99 Red Balloons" have made their list." ClearChannel owns many radio stations, so this probably affects you. Update: 09/18 18:30 GMT by M : The San Francisco Chronicle has more on this - ClearChannel says it isn't an official mandate, just some sort of internal memo circulating. Update: 09/18 23:18 PM GMT by T : Fuzzy points out that "snopes.com has an explanation of the ClearChannel hoax. ClearChannel has also sent out a press release saying they have released no such list."

Further news of the events going on around the world following the attacks earlier today on New York and Washington. To follow things even more closely, you are encouraged to join realtime CNN coverage in channel #cnn_newsfeed on irc.idlenet.org. (Doubtless there are other similar IRC and IM feeds going on -- please post them in comments.) In addition to the news below, note that CNN has reported that multiple suspects were arrested with a van loaded with explosives in the vicinity of New York's George Washington Bridge. Update: 09/12 04:29 AM GMT by T : Many readers have reported that the van in question was found not to contain explosives, though its occupants were held for questioning. And Giacomo DiGrigoli, international product manager at PayPal.com, wrote with word of a donation fund on the PayPal website where folks can make donations to the American Red Cross.

Contradicting earlier reports, reader Adam Brookman writes: "I can guarantee that no car bomb went off in front of the State Dept. in DC. My father is part of the critical personel at State dept. When I read that I called him. He said he heard the same thing and he also heard that the building was hit by a plane, but neither were true."

Worth reading is this analysis of the motives and some possible suspects in today's violence, at Jane's International Security News. They've picked three plausible attackers. Motive aside, Jack Bryar has a convincing take on who is really most hurt by the attacks today.

babyruth writes: "amazon.com has a Red Cross Relief fund set up on their homepage, where you can contribute online. Only several hundred have contributed so far, let the power of /. help!" Iridium provides a link straight to the donations page, noting that "All standard fees are waived -- all proceeds go directly to the Red Cross." Of course, the Red Cross is -still- in desperate need of blood. If you can donate, please call 1-800-HELP-NOW to find the donation center nearest to you.

iggyflashbulb writes: "CNN reports some oddball group not associated with bin Laden is attacking Kabul at night. Are they taking advantage of the NY situation or did they create it?"

An anonymous reader writes: "Following the sad (and outrageous) mess of these terrorist attacks, results are already starting to impact the country. When a RSM failed on one of our 5500 Ciscos, we recieved the following notice

'Due to a national emergency completion of your case, delivery of your parts or engineer will be delayed until further notice. Several areas of the country have restricted transportation and currently no air traffic is available. Cisco will notify you as soon a we are able to dispatch your order.'

There doesn't seem to any information on Cisco's site."

CERT is in action as well: SilentTone writes: "Ween Hall at Carnegie-Mellon University was evacuated today so the the Computer Emergency Response Team could go into action."

Many readers have been assembling mirrors for the overloaded news sites of the world. Jon Anhold writes: "I've compiled more photos and what not, mirrored many of the sites around to help the load. They're available here: http://ziggy.dreamland.net/wtc/"

Owen Bossola writes: "This is a simple webpage I put up with shots I took all day of the World Trade Center. I go to school across the river at Stevens Institute of Technology and I watched the whole thing from campus. It is absolutely nuts, I'm looking out my window and for the first time, downtown NYC is dark, and there aren't two large buildings gleaming back at me."

rhyder writes: "I was last in the World Trade Center and the attached World Financial Center on Saturday evening. Many people I know work in those buildings, even more live and work in the shadow of those 2 towers.

From the Port Authority of NY and NJ:

1. The Port Authority
   
2. Trade Center Concourse Level Map
   
3. Trade Center Plaza Level Map
   
4. Trade Center Complex Overview
   
5. Area Map showing southern tip of Manhattan and the Trade Center location."

An Anonymous Coward seeks more information about an interview that Washington area readers may be able to provide: He writes: "Fox News channel 5 (local around 6:30ish E.S.T) this evening had an interview with a witness about what he saw at the Pentagon the moment of impact. His interview was the basic 'I was in my car looked to my side..blah blah' but then he said something totally unexpected. He observed a second airplane immediately swing behind the first in a follow like manner and swoop down on the Pentagon only to pull up at the last second, out of the smoke cloud, and fly away. His description of the plane was pretty detailed, saying it was propeller-driven ... He stated everyone around him who were also outside their cars saw the SECOND Airplane following the first and it was also going in."

Anyone else able to confirm this rumor?

Jon Bishop asks: "Why Today? Why did this attack happen on September 11, 2001. Here is a guess. I played with the date commonly used for programming. YYYYMMDD returns 20010911. 911...in 2001. Is this play on numbers intentional or coincidence?" It may be significant that the anniversary of a Congressional resolution "favoring a Jewish homeland in Palestine" falls on this date. Then again, if you go back a century or two, you may find a lot of anniversaries that seem just as significant.

Carl Merritt writes: "Since many sites seem to be creaking under the load today I've dumped every relevant picture and video I can find onto my server, please feel free to suck up some of my unused bandwidth with downloads or links: http://www.binaryvista.com/WTC/ I'll probably leave it up for a couple weeks, or until CNN asks me to remove their pictures ;-)."

An Anonymous Coward writes "I just want to remind everyone that there is still active air cover over at least Chicago. A tanker is orbiting O'Hare and at least what appear to be two F-15s are making the rounds. If you would like more information including frequencies I suggest subscribing to the CARMA mailing list at QTH.net for up to date monitoring information."

Disheartening news from Egypt: soulflakes points to this story of some Egyptians celebrating the attacks today. Here's a BBC piece which indicates the feeling is shared in some other African countries. This doesn't mean that all or most people in any country feel the same way.

yoda389 writes: "I'm getting reports from friends that gas prices are jumping to as much as $5.00 a gallon. There are huge lines at all gas stations here in my hometown someplace in Wisconsin." And ikohl1 writes: "A friend just informed me of how gas prices were raised to $3.50 in a town near where i live. I didn't believe him at first but I found this article on Yahoo."

Gas prices may fluctuate in the short term, but in the long haul, effects on exports of goods physical and abstract may be affected just as drastically: elliotj writes: "MSNBC has a Steven Levy opinion piece on the possible implications of today's attack on America and governmental policy on encryption export restrictions. Personally, I think we need to determine exactly what happened before blaming physical or electronic security measures for a role in the tragedy. I heard the planes were hi-jacked with knives ... that doesn't sound very high-tech or a sign of significant security failings to me. It is the act itself that is so shocking and sickening."

Nutcase was the first to write with news from the AP that "Dmitry Sklyarov, 27 and ElComSoft Co. Ltd. of Moscow were charged with five counts of copyright violations for writing a program that lets users of Adobe Systems' eBook Reader get around copyright protections imposed by electronic-book publishers." Here's a link to the AP story at the Washington Post. Here is the story at Salon as well. Update: 08/29 01:57 AM GMT by T : Here's the EFF's release on the indictment, too -- including information about where to go if you'd like to demonstrate your reaction publicly.

kminogue sent in a case mod that definitely is different then the ones we've been seeing lately. Instead of tricking out something ultra modern w/ lights and windows, this guy modded an IBM 5150, yes, thats right, it's the original PC, back for a new generation. The color scheme is a little disturbing, but the end results are pretty sweet. To say nothing of the nostalgia I feel when I see that case. Update: 08/27 03:00 AM GMT by T : citroidSD wrote to say: "I put up a mirror at another stronger server."

Big Nothing writes "Mike Tuck @ webmasterbase.com has written a piece on the development of GUIs. Like most other articles on webmasterbase.com it is fairly non-technical, but entertaining nonetheless." Update: 08/21 02:45 AM GMT by T : Note that the link above takes you to the print-friendly version of the story; for online reading, you might prefer this version instead.

Rikardon writes: "Adding a little fuel to the ATi-vs-NVIDIA fire started earlier today on Slashdot, NVIDIA and Square are showing a demo at SIGGRAPH of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within being rendered in 'real time' (four-tenths of a second per frame) on a Quadro-based workstation. Now that I think of it, this should also inject new life into this debate." Defender2000 points to the Yahoo article. Update: 08/14 09:30 PM by T : Original headline was wrong, said ".4FPS" but as cxreg pointed out, .4 frame per second isn't .4 seconds per frame. Sorry.

rubberpaw (J. Nathan Matias) writes: "Sunspire Studios is going to release Tux Racer 1.0 as a closed source, commercial product. Tux Racer is the Free Software community's premier 3d game, and I only found out about the future closed-source release in emails from Sunspire. They are following the procedures of relicensing allowed from the GPL, so everything is legal. In response to this, I have started a project called Open Racer whose purpose is to continue development of the GPL Tux Racer. Sunspire is ok (and, I believe, happy) with everything so long as the project doesn't go into direct competition with Tux Racer 1.0. It's my goal to develop the project in a different direction in accordance with Sunspire's wishes, but I'm still looking for ideas at this point." See this Newsforge story for more details.Update: 08/02 09:55 PM by T : According to the Sunspire site, the eventual retail version of Tux Racer will have binary versions for Windows and Linux, "(and most likely the Macintosh)." The OEM version in the works, however, is presently Windows-only.

Matias writes: "Sunspire is ok (and, I believe, happy) with everything so long as the project doesn't go into direct competition with Tux Racer 1.0. It's my goal to develop the project in a different direction in accordance with Sunspire's wishes, but I'm still looking for ideas at this point."

Also, he's looking for a new maintainer -- if this project grabs your attention, pop him an email.

beanerspace writes: "In spite of Michael Hyatt-like hype, the Washington Post now reports that the 8pm EST deadline for the Code Red worm came and went without grinding the internet to a halt. Darn, I was sorta hoping it would so I could take the day off and go fishing." Why is it that Code Red gets the trumpets and klaxons, while Sircam continues to spread private documents(!) with considerably less attention? Update: 08/01 03:41 PM by T : On the other hand, incidents.org's graph shows a different picture of Code Red's progress, as several readers have pointed out. That's a pretty little curve there, isn't it?

1millionmhz writes: "NewsForge is reporting that Alan Cox has resigned from his position on the USENIX ALS committee in protest of Dimitry Sklyarov's arrest in Las Vegas. He is also urging non-US programmers to boycott American computing conferences until the DMCA is overturned." Boy, aren't you glad that the DMCA now has nine special units to prosecute hacking and copyright violations? At least it will help keep the country safe from programmers. Update: 07/22 01:05 AM by T : Yup, it's a dupe. Mea culpa -- I missed it the first time. Worth dwelling on, though ;)

metalhed77 writes: "A new version of the Nautilus file manager (1.0.4) has made its way out to the gnome ftps. here's the article on linuxtoday. It includes various improvements which are described on linux today, these primarily consisted of bug fixes and speed ups." Good to see that the effort that went into making Nautilus friendly wasn't wasted. But if you want to browse more than your hard drive, HeUnique points out another interesting project which is not distributed with the official KDE package. It's called: KDENOX ("KDE No X" -- you can use it with X or with framebuffer and QT Embedded: here's a screenshot). The gain? You get Konqueror without KDE, with SSL, cookies, proxy, bookmarks, fonts, and without KDE itself. The executable is small (4MB), doesn't take much RAM, and it works very nicely on low end machines ... (grab it from KDE CVS). Update: 07/08 01:17 AM by T : Here's a screenshot elsewhere; first person to mirror gets a lollipop.

Mark Spencer, author of the well-known GAIM instant messaging client, wrote the following account of how large, lawyer-laden AOL is dealing with software projects with names similar to its AIM service. Trouble is that (among other things) AIM wasn't registered as a trademark when GAIM appeared. Does anyone believe that the two are "confusingly similar"? It reminds me of Parker Brothers objecting to clue.com -- is the Air Force next? Update: 06/25 10:53 PM by T : Russell Balch of Akridge & Balch will be representing the GAIM project; if you're interested in helping the GAIM authors in this legal fight, Mark writes: "We've set up an account on paypal ("paypal@linux-support.net") for contributions. Left over money or all of it if we can't get enough to pay for the letter will be refunded as much as possible through paypal."

Well, AOL is at it again. In 1998, I wrote a program called GAIM which provided Linux users with a way to participate in AOL's Instant Messenger (tm) service. GAIM is one of the best examples of Open Source software in action, because even though I have not personally coded on it in years, momentum as continued through multiple maintainers to make it one of the best instant messaging programs available. From its humble beginnings as a two-week long project I started to teach myself GTK programming, to today where it is included in virtually ever Linux distribution, FreeBSD, and others, it has shown how even highly non-technical software can benefit from the Open Source model. We even receive numerous requests to port it to windows, because people like it more than the native AIM client in windows.

In July of 1999, I received a letter from AOL's Legal Representation requesting that we remove their AOL trademark and logo from our web site and product name, which we promptly did. Now, in 2001, the same firm has sent us notice requiring that we change the name of the product (that they clearly have known for almost 2 years) because they believe GAIM's name to be confusingly similar to the AIM trademark that they applied for in 2000, almost two years after gaim was released. We have until June 29, 2001 to prepare a response to their charges. Similar notices have been sent to the owners of the "AIMY," "KAIM," "wmGAIM," "TAIM," "phpaim," "blaim," "libfaim," "jaim," "eaim," and "maim" projects.

We have consulted with an attorney who believes we stand on a strong foot for the following reasons:

• "gaim" and others are not confusingly similar to "aim."
• Since AOL has been aware of our name for over two years and has not expressed any concern at the use of "aim" in the name of the product even while expressing concern over their AOL trademark and logo, they may have implicitly given us license to use it.
• AOL's trademark was filed for nearly two years after GAIM was first released. Unlike patents, it is sometimes permissible, however, to pursue a trademark since "first commercial use."

We are nearly out of options at this point, however, for the gaim project. We either will have to have some legal defense for gaim and the other projects, or will be obliged to change names.

If anyone out there is a lawyer, and is willing to take on this project to support these projects, please contact us by sending e-mail to gaimdefense@marko.net. We have a lawyer who is willing to do the requisit trademark research and send a letter for $500, so if you feel strongly enough that you are willing to contribute money to the project, please contact us and let us know that too.

Unfortunately, in the legal world, it's not just sufficient to be right, you have to have the finances, determination and other resources to fight the battle. There is always a balance tha requires picking and choosing the battles so important that you are willing fight, and those that you choose do not wish to spend resources defending. The question is, do the 40,000+ gaim users out there believe strongly enough that the defense of the "gaim" name is an important battle to fight.

joestump98 writes: "Yahoo! is running a story about Sony and Sega teaming up to allow their consoles to play nicely with each other over the internet. It also mentions plans with Nintendo and Microsoft." Which should mean more cross-platform games, so perhaps consoles can be bought and sold more on their merits than their stable of games. Update: 06/05 08:11 PM by T : And RimmerExperience writes: "A recent story on Gamespot reports an agreement between Sun Microsystems and Sony to release Java support for Sony's PlayStation 2."

sammoth writes: "themes.org was hacked [CT:Cracked] and replaced with a rather vulgar logo. The intruder makes some bold statements about the security, or lack there of, on several sites. " Of course I'm still in Tokyo right now, so your guess about what's happening is just as good as mine. And 5000ms ping times to the U.S. East Coast sure makes posting this story tricky ;) Apparently the cracker managed to get into SourceForge and Apache.org too ... and he posted user accounts and passwords on t.o along with a rant that I haven't seen. Update: 05/31 02:40 PM by T : Here's an informative explanation on apache.org of the break-in on that site.

A few city blocks and many philosophical lightyears away from the New York University auditorium where Microsoft Senior Vice President Craig Mundie extolled the virtues of proprietary software a few weeks ago, Richard M. Stallman spoke this morning instead on the reasons that software developers, CEOs and every citizen whatsoever should prefer the Free software movement's methods and results. Stallman, founder of the GNU Project and the Free Software Foundation, said a lot of things that he's been saying since 1984, but also threw in some zingers aimed at Microsoft's recent public criticism of open development models. Update: 05/30 01:56 PM by T : Correction: I incorrectly reported in the story below that David Touretzky of CMU introduced Richard Stallman at this speech; in fact, it was Mike Uretsky, Administrative Director of NYU's Center For Advanced Technologies (CAT) and professor in the Stern School of Business; the text below reflects this. With many apologies to both professors and to readers, timothy. (Read more.)

NYU Information Systems chairman Mike Uretsky and NYU computer science professor Edmond Schonberg briefly introduced Stallman to a standing-room-only crowd at NYU's Courant Mathematical Institute.

Stallman drew laughter and applause during Uretsky's introduction by calling out "I do Free software, Open Source is a different crowd" when Uretsky made a reference to Open Source software. Rather than a point-by-point rebuttal of Mundie's speech advocating Microsoft's current "shared source" initiative, Stallman's speech presented both an overview of the Free software movement -- several times emphasizing how it differs from the more pragmatic Open Source movement -- and a defense of Free software at several levels. Though peppered with jokes and historical asides, the bulk of Stallman's talk was devoted to explaining the benefits of Free software and comparing community-based, non-proprietary software development to the "deliberately inflicted waste" of proprietary software.

The publicity that Mundie's speech has stirred up around software licensing is obviously not forgotten, though. Stallman began by saying "I'd like to thank Microsoft for providng me the opportunity to use this platform. For the last few weeks I've felt like an author whose book was fortuitously banned somewhere, but all the articles about it are giving the wrong author's name, because Microsoft describes our license as an 'Open Source' license." Stallman emphasized at several points that the approach he and GNU project have is at its core philosophical, not merely pragmatic.

Beginning with cooking rather than computers, Stallman pointed out the advantages of being able to share functional documents in the form of recipes. He pointed that while nearly everyone cooks, "unless you're great, you probably use recipes. You've probably had the experience of getting a recipe from a friend -- and unless you're a total neophyte, you probably have also had the experience of changing the recipe. If you've made changes and you make it for your friends, and they like it, you can write down your changes for them." Imagine, he said, if recipes were packaged in black boxes, unavailable for inspection.

Stallman named the qualities he uses to define Free software. He began with "freedom zero" -- the freedom to run the software for any purpose -- noting, "If you're not even free to run the software for anything you want, it's a pretty damn restrictive license."

He went on to describe three additional freedoms which distinguish Free from proprietary software: the right to change software to suit user needs; to redistribute the software; and to publish improved versions.

These freedoms are absent in proprietary software, Stallman said, and cited what he said was his first taste to the evils of non-disclosure statements, which took place while he was working as an operating system developer at MIT's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.

Stallman knew of a computer scientist at Carnegie-Mellon University with a copy of the Xerox source, and asked for a copy in order to add this feature. He found his request was denied, because his fellow academic had signed a non-disclosure agreement.

"He had refused to cooperate with just about the the entire population of the planet Earth, because he had signed an non-disclosure agreement. This was my first encounter with a non-disclosure agreement, and I was the victim -- my lab and I were the victims. The lesson it taught me is that NDAs have victims, they aren't harmless."

Toward the close of his speech, Stallman pointedly applied the advantages of Free software to businesses, giving examples of ways in which a community of more than 100,000 developers leads to more robust and maintainable software, all issues of price aside.

Describing his experiences after releasing GNU-Emacs in 1984, Stallman said "I got a msg that said 'I think I saw a bug, and here's a fix.'" Others emailed him with new feature requests and bug reports, and in many cases, the code to implement an improved version, "until they were pouring in on my so fast that just making use of the information I was getting was a big job. Microsoft doesn't have this problem."

The iterative, inclusive software development process resulted in constantly improving code for the GNU Project's various pieces of software, said Stallman. "What people began to note around 1990 was that our SW was better -- it was more powerful than the proprietary alternatives."

Since that time (before the Linux kernel was developed and employed alongside many GNU utilities), Free and Open Source software has increased dramatically in use and public acceptance.

Citing the large number of companies now paying to develop Free software, and that the majority of pages on the World Wide Web are served with Apache running on GNU/Linux systems, Stallman scoffed at claims that the GPL was unfriendly to business. "Microsoft says that busineses can't get along with the GPL. So if businesses don't include IBM, and HP, and Sun, then maybe they're right."

Addressing one persistent myth, Stallman said "It's not true, sometimes I wish it was true, that if a company uses GPL in any project, that the whole project has to be GPLd. If programs operate at arms' length from each other, then they're legally separate, in general."

Again, though, Stallman was careful to point out that the advantages and intent of Free software had more to do with ethics and social good in a variety of fields than any particular bottom line. Closed software, he said, "causes psychosocial harm which affects the spirit of scientific cooperation. Progress in science crucially depends on people being able to work together. Nowadays you see scientists act as if they're in gangs at war with other little gangs of scientists ... we're all held back." And not just scientists -- of anyone who uses computers in the workplace, Stallman said that in the absence of a broad right to modify and improve the software they use, "Their lives and jobs are going to be frustrating -- people protect themselves from frustration by deciding not to care. When this happens, it's bad for those people and for society as a whole."

Ninkasi writes: "Here is a rather alarming article from Yahoo which claims that Microsoft has a backdoor password into IIS web servers running FrontPage 98 server extensions. Here's another brilliant example of how closed source development models are a threat to security and privacy on the Internet." The article says that Microsoft "plans to alert customers as soon as possible with an e-mail bulletin and advisory published on its corporate Web site." This is really just too perfect. Update: 05/14 07:48 PM by T : Actually, it is too perfect -- guess this particular possibility for built-in backdoors is old news. Sorry.