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Seriously, though. timothy mentions that "media, drives and applications" must cooperate in order for the plan to work. That's done easily enough with enough man hours working on proprietary software. But why does fujitsu think that they'll actually be able to sell any of these drives? Yours in sarcasm, Matt

everyone knows carnivore is just mailsnarf in a box. that's probably why they don't want anyone to see the source code.

( Read More... | 768 comments | Your Rights Online )

Miniskirt-clad girls save universe
Posted by CmdrTaco on Friday August 18, @08:25AM
from the roketto-ga-sugoi dept.
AnimeNewsNetwork.com is reporting that earlier this morning in Tokyo, five girls in color-coded blouses and miniskirts transformed into scantily-clad superheroes. The five girls then screamed, hurled glowing balls of energy, and screamed some more at a thirty-tentacled monster. Still no word on whether this is connected to the large humanoid robots spotted battling last week in Osaka.

( Read More... | 168 comments )

Slashback: Frisson, Sesquipedalianity, Responsitivitiness
Posted by timothy on Tuesday August 08, @10:45AM
from the beware-the-froomious-bandersnatch dept.
It was a dark and stormy night. In a salutiferous octastyle basement, an ultracrepidarian man was hermtically hunched over a piperaceous desk beneath a ornate mazarine, typing furiously away on an obumbrate keyboard. Meanwhile, in a meandrine corner of the world, several setose seeds were being entrenched in the muculent minds of the hoi polloi.

( Read More... | 9235 bytes in body | 214 comments )

Traffic Cops' "Justice" and Napster
Posted by JonKatz on Friday August 18, @11:30AM
from the post-hellmouth-world dept.
Just as Shadowrun predicted, The Corporate Republic took another step in assailing geeks today by handing Shawn Fanning a $L00 speeding ticket. This narcissism is harmful because it shrinks the creative universe of media workers and disconnects them from the new global conversation taking place online. Hubcaps have sparked a cultural and economic revolution that is just beginning to be understood. Will we see an increase in the number of Chickdrivers receiving "closed" traffic tickets as well, or will the Edge power a paradigm shift to "open" community-based traffic laws?

( Read More... | 598235 bytes in body | 657 flames | Features )

Ask Slashdot: Are Corporations Trying To Make Money?
Posted by Cliff on Friday August 18, @1:25PM
from the yet-another-article-from-the-something-to-think-ab out dept.
www.sorehands.com writes: "Today I visited Yahoo and was shocked to see a banner advertisement - I thought I'd managed to block every form of advertisement possible with Junkbusters. After thinking about it some, I realized Yahoo was probably running advertisement in a crass, commercialized attempt to make money off of my web-surfing habits! Could there be any other corporations out there engaged in similarly devious practices?" An interesting question here: Are some companies attempting to turn a profit, and, if so, what can we do to prevent it?

( Read More... | 3082 bytes in body | 345 comments )

Autospy of a Furby
Posted by michael on Friday August 18, @3:43PM
from the deja-vu dept.

Vladinator writes "Ever wonder what it's like to take apart a Furby? I don't, because I saw this on Slashdot two years ago, but I needed some karma so I submitted it anyway. Fawking trolls!" Those of who you started reading Slashdot this week may not have seen this page yet, so I'm re-running this classic for you three newbies.

( Read More... | 1 FIRST POST! )

Interstate Highway Boycott Planned
Posted by emmett on Friday August 18, @6:25PM
from the fight-the-power dept.
Bowie J. Poag writes: "You guys are idiots and VA sucks, but being the nice guy that I am [Update: 08/18 11:11 AM by CT: Further investigation reveals that he isn't ] I thought I'd let you know that know Wired is reporting that a boycott is being proposed against the interstate highway system for its treatment of Shawn Fanning. The interstate highway sucks almost as much as anime! PROPAGANDA RULES!!!!!" It's good to see that some people are taking the battle for free (as in Willy) highways into their own hands.

( Read More... | 218 comments )

Holland Convenience Store Switches To Linux
Posted by Hemos on Friday August 18, @9:33PM
from the key-victory-for-open-source dept.
Today while visiting my local 7-11 in Holland, MI, I noticed that their inventory computer was running Linux! Best of all, a representative from the store assured me, due to complaints from Bruce Perens, that the store may consider GPLing its inventory "sometime in the future." Looks like another business has finally "got it" and adopted the tenets of the free software movement.

( Read More... | 164 comments )

Napster? Napster Napster
Posted by CmdrTaco on Friday August 18, @11:25PM
from the napster dept.
Napster Napster Napster. Napster, Napster Napster Napster! Napster Napster (Napster) Napster Napster Napster, Napster Napster Napster. "Napster Napster Napster," Napster Napster. Napster Napster, Napster Napster Napster.

( Read More... | 304 comments | Napster!! )

Switched networks aren't impervious to sniffing. Switches were developed for speed, not security.

This is a Good Book (TM), and well worth reading, and timothy 's writeup is solid. However, I was turned off initially by what I still consider to be an inexcusable failing of the book.

Per my standard practice, after cracking the spine, I went to first the ToC, then the back of the book -- the index. Entries for Microsoft, Apple, Xerox, PARC, IBM, Intel, Sun, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, etc., etc., etc.

Entries for: Linux, Free Software Foundation, GNU, Linus Torvalds, Richard Stallman, Eric S. Raymond, Open Source, Apache -- nil. Ponder this: how many pages are printed worldwide by Xerox copiers in a week? How many pages are served worldwide by Apache webservers in an hour? "The document company" is completely dissing the Internet -- the largest, most accessible, and most efficient document distribution system ever invented?

The fact that a book could be published in the year 2000 with no references to the largest sea-change to sweep computing and IT in two decades, well into its mainstream adoption curve, is mind boggling. I'm not sure whether it's a failing of the indexers (though I don't recall specific mentions of any free software technologies, though the 'Web is referenced once or twice), the authors, or simply an example of failed vision at PARC. I remain simply stunned.

That said, where the book does go, it's good. By and large, it's an argument for many of the dynamics which make free software work. FS is a social invention as much as a technical one, and as much as our interfacing occurs over the web, email, and (sometimes) phone, I've also met some good friends FTF at local LUGs, regional meetings, and on occasions when paths crossed, even when oceans were bounded in the process.

Read this book, but read it critically.

What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?
Scope out Kuro5hin

what's the deal with timothy lately, anyway? he's posted like 50 stories in the last 3 days. As a result, my brilliant posts go without proper attention from the moderators. Is his job on the line? Is he on crack or a new brand of coffee? what gives? please slow down!!!


:)Fudboy

Did you, in fact, read the article? Hannibal said as much in his article. Obsolescence is the wrong question here; timothy should be ashamed of himself for titling this Is The x86 Obsolete?.

Here's the short version for people too lazy to read the article or too dumb to understand what Hannibal is talking about:

Due to incredible amount of programs written for the x86 architecture, machines that execute x86 instructions will be around for some time yet. Everyone agrees (even Intel) that x86 is not a good ISA (instruction set architecture), but the ability to run all the programs written for it make it too costly to scrap. In order to achieve better and better performance, the current generation of microprocessors (Athlons and PIIIs) emulate x86 in hardware. The actual execution on these machines takes place using a completely different, RISC-style set of instructions (x86 being CISC for those who don't know).

This information addresses only half of Hannibal's article. The other and more interesting half describes the latest ideas computer architects have for circumventing the problems of the x86 ISA. The primary advancement is translation of x86 instructions into another architecture; this translation occurs only once, as opposed to emulation, and can be very aggressively optimized for the particular hardware it is running on because it is performed at runtime. Because the performance hit is only incurred once and because of the further, machine-specific optimizations, machines which execute x86 instructions will continue to increase in performance.

Furthermore, executing x86 instructions by translation means that computer architects have the freedom to change the native architecture of their machines without worrying about executing legacy code. These issues were addressed by emulation; translation is a further step in this direction.

As I said before, the obsolescence of the x86 ISA is a ridiculous and unanswerable question. However, I believe that the x86 ISA will continue to be a relevant problem until we leave 32 bit machines behind for 64 bit and larger.

Jonathan David Pearce

Sic scribit timothy:

Book burning has been a hallmark of our century, although we certainly did not invent it.

Hey timothy, if I serve a page saying you can *FLASH* your Win 95 box's hard drive with a neighbor's Win 2K firmware, will you post the /. article? Responsible journalism is irrelevant.

I'm glad someone else saw this too. Firmware development can be a major portion of a manufacturer's development costs. The product's sales price reflects the investment.

I wonder how well the open source code community will defray costs for commodity hardware in the future. The problem is convincing any particular manufacturer that their board really is a commodity.

Does not engaging in promiscuous browsing mean that I can't use Dug Song's Webspy program? Or does it mean that I should just stop looking at all this pr0n? I'm so confused.
--

http://www.monkey.org/~dugsong/talks/ids/

Software to get past almost all network IDS's (fragrouter):

http://www.anzen.com/research/nidsbench/

You can find some really nifty OpenBSD images at http://www.monkey.org/~nemickol/openbs d.html

There's some other OpenBSD stuff here

You can find some really nifty OpenBSD images at http://www.monkey.org/~nemickol/openbs d.html

There's some other OpenBSD stuff here

Let's get those attributions right!

Peter

Hello all:

I'm not the only one of course, but a big memory buffer to allow replays, commerical skipping, etc has been on my 'why don't they have' list for at least 5 years ... the more things are genericized into bits, the less the price of the format per se matters ... prices on hard drive storage fall nicely, but how much have video cassette prices changed in the last year?

Now, the question is: What hardware / software requirments would there have to be for this to work under Linux / other Free OS?

Here are the ones I see. Please correct my non-techy but sincere self!

Hardware:
- Big, fast hard drive (a given), probably one dedicated to this task
- Video card with appropriate ins (as many formats as possible) and lots of memory
- Firewire input

Software:
MPEG (some other acceptable) compression to turn incoming video into files on the hard drive
MPEG (or whatever) playback to replay said files.
Management software that lets you select time and date to record, or what to playback, or what to edit etc, with a nice graphical interface.

Again, please let me know if what I'm saying is obviously silly (it's happened before), but:

For the cost of the video systems described (around $700), wouldn't it be possible to outfit a PC with the above hardware and software?

Or better, couldn't some smart Linux entrepreneur package appropriate software and hardware (matching what's in those ready-made boxes) for people to install on their linux boxes?

Does Linux have no MPEG compressors right now, or are they not fast enough for this task? (head spins, confused.)

I would pay happily for a dedicated hard drive, CD-ROM full of appropriate software and maybe some games or something, too, and a new video card that was appropriate to the task, if it would let me watch Ally McBeal at my leisure and without interruptions.

If you have the know how to do what I'm saying, your market is out there.

Timothy