Slashdot Mirror

stubear writes "According to MSNBC, 'Lord of the Rings: Return of the King' won 4 Golden Globes, for Best Picture - Drama, Best Director (Peter Jackson), Best Original Score (Howard Shore), and Best Original Song ("Into the West" by Howard Shore, Fran Walsh and Annie Lennox). LotR: RotK was the big winner for the night, at least for movies. Hopefully LotR: RotK will fare just as well, or better, at the Oscars."

penciling_in writes "Brock N. Meeks of MSNBC reports on his recent visit to VeriSign's secret location: 'The unassuming building that houses the "A" root sits in a cluster of three others; the architecture looks as if it were lifted directly from a free clip art library. No signs or markers give a hint that the Internet's most precious computer is inside humming happily away in a hermetically sealed room. This building complex could be any of a 100,000 mini office parks littering middle class America.' The report goes on to say: 'Access to the Network Operations Center, the "NORAD" of the Internet's traffic monitoring, requires the electronic badge and then a double biometric hand print scan.' And here are Karl Auerbach and Robert Alberti offering their interesting analysis of this report on CircleID."

Tree writes "Following four months on the heels of JetBlue's confession that they released passenger data to the Feds against their stated privacy guidelines, the Washington Post is reporting that Northwest has now admitted that they've done the same thing during a time period when they said they weren't. Nice. They were once my favorite airline."

Jsf72672 asks: "With the recently-passed Sarbanes-Oxley legislation, and the looming HIPAA compliance requirements a constant thorn in the side of IT staff, Enterprise Instant Messaging seems to be overlooked. Most users are using AIM or MSN. Microsoft and Yahoo! both have products tailored to the Enterprise, but no one wants to rely their technology to keep them out of jail, or from paying huge fines. Jabber looks attractive but our already overtaxed IT staff does not have the time to compile, secure and test homegrown solutions. What are Slashdot-reading IT Managers doing? I found these guys and their InterIM line of products, and they look pretty good. Is anyone using them? Are there other low-cost solutions you have employed?"

Some Clown writes "MSNBC has a great article on the details of the camera system on the Mars Rover titled How Sprit makes great photos. Apparently the high resolution images are all done with a 1-megapixel camera. All the money is in the CCD and Lens. The hardcore digital photographers in the crowd will probably find the article to be only a teaser on the technical specs, but the rest of us in the unwashed masses should find it interesting."

hcg50a writes "MSNBC reports that overnight, 'the golfcart-sized rover cut the final cord tying it to the landing platform that it came in on 10 days ago, then backed up about 10 inches (25 centimeters) and turned 45 degrees. These were the first maneuvers planned in preparation for having Spirit roll 10 feet (3 meters) down a ramp onto the Martian surface on Wednesday night or early Thursday morning.' The NASA Mars rover website has complete animations from numerous cameras of the 45-degree turn. Driver training was never this cool!"

MikeDataLink writes "Kodak has announced today that they are no longer going to sell or manufacture film based cameras in the USA or Europe (except for disposables) and instead concentrate on Digital cameras. It looks like consumers have spoken and film is finally going to go the way of the dinosaur."

lemist writes "Cross Match has rolled out digital fingerprinting at major airports in the United States according to MSNBC. It's designed to increase border security. They appear to be using Cross Match's Verifier 300 LC. Note that the actual capture of the fingerprint requires no interaction with the device. It determines when the image quality is excellent and grabs it."

linuxwrangler writes "In the ongoing saga of electronic voting 'security,' eVoting company VoteHere is the latest to reveal that they were the victim of a computer break-in. According to VoteHere founder, Jim Adler, the concern isn't about their source code which they plan to reveal 'eventually,' anyway, but is about the possible release of salary and other HR data. Astoundingly, the 'hot poll' associated with this story has (as this is being posted) 28% of respondents saying they would trust their vote on the internet and 41% saying 'not now, but maybe soon.' Feel free to cast your vote." Reader nSignIfikaNt points to the Assocated Press' article as carried by CNN.

Some Clown writes "MSNBC via the Seattle Post Intelligencer is reporting that Bill Nye the Science Guy, as part of the Earthdial Project has got what's being billed as a 'Marsdial' put onto the Mars Rover. Interestingly, it is now the official backup for orienting the Mars Rover in case of primary camera failure. Maybe an old fashioned sundial is just what the doctor ordered after the many math and other blunders of late. This whole Earthdial Project seems pretty interesting as well. They're trying to set up a worldwide network of sundials tracked via webcam. The goal is to track the sun's movements as viewed from many points on earth, as well as from Mars. Definitely interesting... at least if the 'Marsdial' doesn't disintegrate upon landing." There's a little more technical description of the Marsdial in our earlier story.

erth writes "Newsweek has an interview with Peter Jackson asking him what he thinks about some of the most famous and/or obvious bloopers in the LoTR series. Moviemistakes.com has more Fellowhip of the Ring, The Two Towers, and Return of the King bloopers as well for your snickering pleasure." I just wanted to give my props to Jackson and all- we took off early yesterday to see the final film. It was everything I hoped for... except for the bits that I expect I'll have to wait for the extended edition DVD to see. And I was to busy grinning ear to ear to notice any serious bloopers.

Thanks to GameSpot for their review of Activision Anthology for the GameBoy Advance, as the compilation of Atari 2600 titles such as Pitfall! and River Raid goes portable, following a previously released PlayStation 2 version. The creators of the compilation "recruited Bradford W. Mott, the creator of the personal computer Stella Atari emulator, to write the underlying code" for the anthology, and, as IGN Pocket points out, "there are also several homebrew 2600 games included in this pack", including Skeleton+ and Climber 5. There's a lengthy thread on the compilation over at AtariAge, and elsewhere, Slate has passionate words to impart about classic games and how "restrictions... inspire creativity", and Yahoo/Reuters has similarly nostalgic musings about the recent retro revival.

Thanks to Slate for their piece discussing why there aren't more videogames simulating current-day politics. The article posits: "The U.S. presidential campaign may be the first true election of the digital age, but it's still missing one key ingredient. Where is the video-game version of Campaign 2004?" It goes on to suggest that "presidential politics lends itself naturally to the idiom and audience of today's games. Political campaigns are already structured like games, with an escalating series of discrete competitions that determine the eventual winner. In addition, there's an existing body of readily available data, going back many decades, that could be harnessed to craft the simulation" Would you play a modern-day political sim videogame?

MoonChild was the first of hundreds to submit that MSNBC, ABCNews and others are reporting that Saddam Hussein was arrested. This isn't normal Slashdot subject matter, but I figured it was worth mentioning.

Suki writes "In this recent story a PC Mag writer concludes that "Panther and Jaguar were not better at outrunning vulnerabilities than Windows" and as my personal fav. ends by asking "How cocky are you feeling now, Mac elite? Hmm. Suddenly it's gotten pretty quiet around here." The article discusses many previous Windows security holes against a recent Mac OS X security flaw."

mike9010 writes "A person named I)ruid has come up with an ingenious way to combat those spammers. His program, spamhole, creates a false 'open relay' that the spammer thinks he/she can send messages through. The messages then get sent nowhere, and the spammer has no idea. "spamhole is an open project. Hopefully, through user's and developer's contributions, we will amass a collection of spamhole implementations spanning all commonly used platforms, programming languages, etc. Ease of configuration and use are the primary objectives, for the easier to use by the non-techical layperson the implementations are, the more widely adopted and used spamhole will become.""

theodp writes "Slate ponders whether a climate where anything can be photographed or surreptitiously recorded means the once-esoteric world of cell-phone jamming will become mainstream. Sites now offer portable cell-phone jammers that can provide you with the same kind of security bubbles used to thwart industrial spies, hostage-takers and bomb detonators. While actively jamming a cell-phone signal is illegal in the US, a distributor reports most of his sales go to US customers, including universities which use the technology to stop students from diddling away on phones during lectures."

CowboyRobot writes "ACM Queue has an interview with Peter Ford, chief architect for MSN Messenger, by Eric Allman, CTO of Sendmail. They discuss the present and future states of IM, the current big players as industry shuffles toward standardization, some of the social implications of IM versus email or telephone, and technical issues such as using SIP as opposed to XMPP (Microsoft is pushing for SIP, everyone else seems to favor XMPP). They don't bring up Wallop, Microsoft's community application that will be built into Longhorn, but that's surely part of the long-term discussion."

Romeo E. Cabrera writes "In advance of an imminent launch of its own search engine, Microsoft has launched its own version of the popular Google News service. Based initially on feeds from the Moreover news aggregation service, the new beta service (known as MSN Newsbot) aims to provide news on a range of subjects including World, Sports, Entertainment, Science and Technology."

xihr writes "Harry Fletcher writes in The Inquirer about an obvious discrepancy between searches for "linux windows" on Google and MSN; the former comes up with almost 9 million hits, but the latter only comes up with -- wait for it -- 16. The author then speculates on Microsoft's ulterior motives for their attempted (and failed) purchase of Google."

xihr writes "Harry Fletcher writes in The Inquirer about an obvious discrepancy between searches for "linux windows" on Google and MSN; the former comes up with almost 9 million hits, but the latter only comes up with -- wait for it -- 16. The author then speculates on Microsoft's ulterior motives for their attempted (and failed) purchase of Google."

blamanj writes "As reporters and researchers depend more and more heavily on the Internet as a research tool, manipulation of the net becomes a serious problem. A recent Slashdot article discussed this in regard to the White House. Now, The Memory Hole has noticed that Time magazine has pulled an article by Bush, Sr. on why it was a bad idea to try and overthrow Saddam. How can we keep corporate America honest?" Update: 11/11 22:16 GMT by T : Declan McCullagh (former Time, Inc. employee, among other things) writes in with the non-conspiracy explanation for the change, below.

Declan writes "It is silly to claim that Bush Sr. and Scowcroft would strong-arm Time Inc. into removing an article from time.com -- when that article was an excerpt from their book that you can buy today from Amazon.com for $21.

Another explanation is more likely. And, yes, a quick search turns up a May 2003 article from Slate that debunks this rumor. It turns out that Time Inc. only had permission from the publisher to post the content for a limited time."

shelleymonster writes "The Matrix Revolutions was released worldwide at 9 AM EST today. With a running time of 2 hr. 9 min., I'm expecting the /. reviews to start pouring in around 11:30. Since critics are saying things like, "Matrix finale could put you back in a coma," and, "The final episode is a slam-bang, dreary mess," I'm curious to hear some real fans' reactions." Many readers have pointed to the BBC's review; they were not amused. Were you? Update: 11/05 17:17 GMT by T : Read on for one reader's (spoiler-free) first impression. wickedweasel writes "Just came from one of the first showings of Matrix: Revolutions (Germany, don't know why, but it started 2:30 pm here) and came by to drop some comments (no spoilers). To cut it short: not even close to the first one, and honestly spoken way worse than the second one (which wasn't _that_ bad). The ones looking for cool action will hardly find any, neither will the ones who came for the story (like me) be satisfied. Only a few good scenes in and around Zion, some quite big plot holes and unfinished threads and, most important, an unsatisfying end, to say the least. I guess I'll be flamed for my opinion by the die-hard-fans, but hear this: I once considered myself one too until I saw this."

SilentBob4 writes "On October 7th, the developers at Vector Linux released the latest version of their lightweight Linux distro, version 4. Vector has always been built upon the Slackware Linux framework and this time around it is based on Slack 9.0. The interesting thing here is that there was quite a delay between releases from the Vector camp, so as they were readying version 4, Pat Volkerding was releasing version 9.1 of his Slackware distro. This past Friday, the first review of Vector Linux was released (Distrowatch.com posted a link to it today). It was a pretty good review for the most part, but the interesting thing about it was that they actually benchmarked it against Slackware 9.1 and posted the results. I'll spoil the ending right now and tell you that Vector Linux won, but you should check out the findings. There are some pretty interesting numbers obtained from the two distros. The reviewer has published three PDF documents detailing the results. Everything was tested from the kernel to filesystem performance. It is interesting to say the least. Even if you don't have to time to read the whole article (it's two pages long), do check out the benchmark results. "

bot writes "There have been a number of stories on Microsoft trying to do a 'Netscape' on Google.. what would a world in which Microsoft provides search look like? A search for 'linux' on msn.com give amazon and ebay as the top two results, and a microsoft site promoting migration from Linux to Windows as the fourth listing. A search on MSN India is even more amusing -- the top result is a dead link, and the second one is Linuxsucks.com."

Thanks to Slate for their article discussing the Madden football game series' enormous popularity. The article suggests: "To a new generation of football players, landing on the cover of the latest version of the game is a career-defining experience, the way an enormous shoe contract, or the Wheaties box, or the cover of Sports Illustrated once determined which sports stars had hit the big time." It also points out that "In the last two years, only the Grand Theft Auto games sold more copies than Madden", and Wired News are also running a story on the Madden franchise, which debuts its 2004 version this week, and was recently voted into the Pro Football Hall Of Fame.

DrLudicrous writes "CNN is running a story about sightings of an ape in central Africa that doesn't seem to fit the description of known apes. Pictures of the animal are rare, but it seems slightly taller than most gorillas, with a flatter face. One woman even reported seeing it walk upright on two legs. It has been hypothesized that the ape might be a new species, a subspecies, or perhaps a hybrid between two other species."

theodp writes "The speed with which the 4MB e-mail hoax purporting to be the new cookbook from the Naked Chef streaked across the Internet suggests to Slate that a new, disquieting era for the publishing world may be in sight. Indeed, the latest Harry Potter tale made the rounds on the Web just hours after the book went on sale, its 870 pages apparently scanned in and distributed by rabid fans. The old argument that no one likes reading on a computer has pretty much eroded. Just because publishing people can't conceive of book piracy doesn't mean it can't happen."

jeremycec writes "Evidently, nothing's been resolved since 2001, when this happened the first time. In these Memorandum Opinion and Preliminary Injunction documents from Judge Royce C. Lamberth of the U.S. District Court for Washington, D.C., we see how the court stepped in to pull the plug on a system, which, through its abject lack of due care, left someone's important financial information wide open to attackers. According to the former CIO of the Bureau of Indian Affairs: 'For all practical purposes, we have no security, we have no infrastructure, ... Our entire network has no firewalls on it. I don't like running a network that can be breached by a high school kid.' So, when the BIA could get no relief through Interior's IT Dept., it went to the courts. Source: Government Computer News "

bmarklein writes "The RIAA has announced that it has named Mitch Bainwol, former chief of staff to U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, as chairman & CEO. He replaces Hilary Rosen, who left earlier this month. This confirms the speculation that the RIAA would appoint a well-connected Republican (Rosen was a Democrat)." Several readers have submitted links to CNET's coverage as well. Update: 07/29 12:30 GMT by J : Lobbyists wield incredible power nowadays, and Slate's report on why was enlightening. Here's part 1 and part 2. Includes lyrics to the rap recorded for Rosen's going-away party by some of the most powerful people in the world: "Who wants the job of Hilary Rosen? / How 'bout the dream team of Bono and Tauzin?"

bmarklein writes "The RIAA has announced that it has named Mitch Bainwol, former chief of staff to U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, as chairman & CEO. He replaces Hilary Rosen, who left earlier this month. This confirms the speculation that the RIAA would appoint a well-connected Republican (Rosen was a Democrat)." Several readers have submitted links to CNET's coverage as well. Update: 07/29 12:30 GMT by J : Lobbyists wield incredible power nowadays, and Slate's report on why was enlightening. Here's part 1 and part 2. Includes lyrics to the rap recorded for Rosen's going-away party by some of the most powerful people in the world: "Who wants the job of Hilary Rosen? / How 'bout the dream team of Bono and Tauzin?"

Kurt LoVerde writes "Though google has become synonymous with searching, the folks over at MSN have written up an interesting article on our favorite search engine's pitfalls. Included among these are a tendency to skew results toward shopping, a lack of diversity for searches containing synonyms and its impact on research."

jgercken asks: "I recently survived a 16-hour drive solo thanks to having downloaded 10+ hours of old Off the Hook shows, a 2600 sponsored radio program. It is so refreshing to hear news from a technically cognizant perspective. Is anyone aware of any similar programs or maybe sources of recorded lectures?"

Slate has a piece about Harry Potter and copyright worldwide that is a disguised call for copyright reform. Well written, well argued, extremely good argument, won't be picked up anywhere else.

Thanks to an anonymous reader for pointing out the Slate article called Iraq: The Computer Game, and subtitled "What 'virtual world' games can teach the real world about reconstructing Iraq." Written in a similar vein to an MSNBC article we covered a few weeks back, it looks in a bit more detail at how simulations "may offer useful lessons for rebuilding broken nations in the real world", mentioning the recent news that virtual world company There Inc. has been commissioned to create anti-terrorist training simulations, as well as Richard 'Lord British' Garriott's suggestion that "..games do clarify the essential rules for stabilizing a chaotic society."

EisPick writes "A column posted today on Slate ponders projections that Linux PCs will pass Apple in desktop market share next year. Will Linux do to OS X what it already has done to Tru64, Irix, HP/UX, AIX and Solaris and emerge as the only viable competitor to Windows on the desktop?"

alen writes "According to a story by the New York Post the CEO of the RIAA is stepping down. She is going to be an anchor on CNBC. Maybe this is going to signal a change in the way record companies think about file sharing?"

Eponymous Meow Word writes "After trying to cut the cord for wireless e-mail with RIM, AOL is pulling the plug on its mobile communicator, citing a move away from its older wireless technology. The disgruntled can get a discount on a shiny new T-Mobile color Sidekick." Wireless email is a rather small niche, and it's cool that current users won't be left high and dry, but it looks like they'll have to pay some money to continue using the service.

DrLudicrous writes "Anthropologists have reconstructed and dated three skulls from Ethiopia that they believe to be the oldest anatomically modern human skulls in existance. They date to 160,000 years ago, in agreement with genetic studies that pin the arrival of modern humans to at least 150,000 years ago. The skulls also demonstrate evidence of ritual burial." UC Berkeley has the original release as well.

John Jorsett writes "Seduced by the siren song of wireless access throughout the home, many a user has experienced the discrepancy between the manufacturer's advertised claims (150 feet indoors, 300 outside) and real-world implementation (the living room and upstairs bedroom may as well be on different continents). In steely-eyed determination to exercise his inalienable right to network access anywhere on his property, MSN author Paul Boutin hired a Wi-Fi engineer to help him bathe his property in 802.11 waves, using only mass-market consumer hardware."

Meshach writes "An article in the Globe and Mail is discussing a possible change to the way postal codes are assigned over the world. NAC Geographic Products will be using Microsoft's MapPoint to power their Mobile Location-Based Services Network, which could change all postal codes in the world to a simpler, more universal format."

DrLudicrous writes "The NYTimes is reporting that the platinum-iridium standard mass for the kilogram is shedding at an appreciable rate -- at least compared to other reference masses. The Pt-Ir cylinder is kept in France, and measured annually, and the slight discrepancy is important because the kg is an SI base unit- thus other quantities such as the Volt are based on it. A new standard is being sought- the two frontrunners are counting the number of atoms in a perfectly spherical single crystal of silicon, and another technique uses a device known as the Watt balance."

Bamafan77 writes "Slate has an interesting article on the relationship between the productivity of mathematicians and age. The conventional belief is that most significant mathematical leaps are all made before the age of 30. However, the author gives pretty compelling reasons for why this once may have been true, but is definitely not the rule now. Two of his more interesting pieces of evidence include Grigori Perelman's (probable) proof of the Poincare Conjecture at 40 and Andrew Wile's proof of Fermat's Last Theorem at 41."

Anonymous Coward writes "A useful review of Evolution Robotics' ER-1 by the boys at Techfocus. It covers: construction, customization, hardware requirements, best features, programming, durability of equipment -- and all that good stuff. One interesting factoid is that the robot can recognize objects until the object is blocked - up to 40% - by something (like a piece of furniture). Techfocus aptly points out the Orwellian implications... Another thing that rocked my world is the notion that the robot is not as much of a drag on CPU as one might suspect. TF ran the unit on an NEC Versa VXi running Windows 2000, with a 900mhz CPU and 128mb of RAM, and encountered absolutely no problems. Encouragingly, if you want to further customize your robot, why not just write a script in C or Perl -- the manual even points users toward an app primarily based in Linux. What's not surprising: it's pricey. Also some nice pictures of how the robot really looks right out of the box."

boredMDer writes "According to a recent update on the Dshield.org mailing list, apparently the Fizzer Task Force has gained control of the Geocities webpage from which Fizzer updates itself. From an IRC-Security mailing list: 'We have also postted a Fizzer cleaner to the actual URL that the bot downloads its updates from, as a self extracting and running executable.' The Fizzer-uninstaller posted there creates the file '%WinDir%\uninstall.pky', which then causes Fizzer to remove all of its registry keys. Looks like the Fizzer worm will soon come to an end."

kauff writes "Slate has recently released a somewhat-inspired article about what the Matrix was. You have to read it for yourself. Good way to hype yourself up before Reloaded on May 15th."

FyreWyr writes "Whether Microsoft is searching for new ideas, or supporting inventors outright is up for grabs, but they're stabbing at it with $300,000 for 12 spanking ideas (that's $25k each). But as with everything Microsoft, the devil's in the details, or rather, the fine print. At first, you'd swear it was "Brought to you by VISA" - the logo is ubiquitous - but the very last statement in the contest rules reads: "The sponsor...is Microsoft ... VISA...have not sponsored or offered this contest in any way". They also retain a spectrum of rights, and responsibily suggest that you go out and patent really good ideas first. Okay, how much does that cost again? (see end of this article)."

FyreWyr writes "Whether Microsoft is searching for new ideas, or supporting inventors outright is up for grabs, but they're stabbing at it with $300,000 for 12 spanking ideas (that's $25k each). But as with everything Microsoft, the devil's in the details, or rather, the fine print. At first, you'd swear it was "Brought to you by VISA" - the logo is ubiquitous - but the very last statement in the contest rules reads: "The sponsor...is Microsoft ... VISA...have not sponsored or offered this contest in any way". They also retain a spectrum of rights, and responsibily suggest that you go out and patent really good ideas first. Okay, how much does that cost again? (see end of this article)."

theodp writes "Slate reports on the press release issued by IT consulting giant EDS to announce new CEO Michael H. Jordan that curiously doesn't show Jordan to have any experience in the IT consulting field. In the late '90s, Jordan helped create IT consulting firm Luminant, took it public, and served as chairman of its board for 21 months. Luminant raised $80+ million from its IPO and paid $422 million to buy businesses as part of its pure-play roll-up strategy before filing Chapter 11 and having its assets sold for a mere $3 million. Slashdot readers may remember Luminant as the wacky workplace of My Fake Job, in which an ex-"Late Night" writer described 17 days he spent faking a job at the dot-com."

bllb writes "Slate has an article about the "waterproof, vaporproof, shockproof" laptops the military is using. It's not at the cutting edge of performance, but it's nice to see some bombproof hardware." Most of the laptops I've owned over the years died through dropping or drowning, so maybe I should look into something a little more sturdy ;)