Slashdot Mirror

Ralph Bearpark asks: "June's IEEE Software mag carries an article titled 'The Cable Modem Traffic Jam' that claims (amongst other things) that 'a 56K dial-up modem can at times be faster than a cable modem and access can be more reliable' due to neighborhood bandwidth hogs, billing system bottlenecks server overloads, and various other problems, many of which apparently also apply to xDSL."

"Now, I had been seriously considering upgrading to cable, but now I'm not so sure whether it will be worth the extra cash. What is your experience? Is broadband really slowing down?"

I'm working at a cable-modem connected computer which really does seem sometimes to lag behind good old 56K -- anyone out there have advice on avoiding The Great Slowdown?

Ralph Bearpark asks: "There are several hundred/thousand radio stations out there putting out live streaming audio on the Internet. What if you want to regularly record your favorite show at, say, 11:30 on Wednesday on BBC Radio 4 and then, maybe, download it to your MP3 player for listening on the move ... How'd you do this? Is there software out there already? If not, what would you need to put it together?"

psydii writes: "Matt Deegan is running an interesting project to explore the nature of the concept of 'interactivity'. Is it really neccesary to have projects that are only limited by the users' minds, or is there a need to provide rules and routes that must be obeyed?" This is actually extremely nifty.

gogo asks: "I'm working for a company which intends to provide an end-to-end business solution to the end users over the Internet. This will include complete sales, purchase, inventory control, CRM, financial accounting, etc., for small to medium business. Being asked to look in to this project, I have decided to have a multiprocessor Linux box for the server, and Oracle for the data base. Since the nature of the application is quite complex with all of the business logic that has to go into it, I'm toying with the idea of having the user interface in Java, as applets. But I'm not very sure how the whole thing will turn up. Is there anyone out there with some similar experience? Am I sounding reasonable or outright crazy? I've heard lots of people talking about using things like EJB, and CORBA objects to put the business logic back to the server side. I'm looking for real world experience, here."

Martin Pomije writes "This is a really interesting story illustrating how a shared resource can also be a communication channel. If you have any interest in software design or operating systems, the Multics web site is worth your time. Tom Van Vleck has obviously put a lot of time into this and deserves credit for making all of this information available. " It's like 10 years old, but it's really interesting.

alkali sent in the link to a silly Washington Post story about how the Internet isn't the first technology that made people stay home alone instead of going out to socialize. Bread baking, vaccination, and plumbing are other human advances cited here that threatened to turn us all into sit-at-home loners. Ah, for the good old days when we all hunted and gathered (and sometimes starved and died) together!

flanksteak writes "Monsanto has bowed to pressure not to sell single-use seeds for their genetically modified crops. These so-called "terminator" seeds work only once. The resulting plants produce sterile seeds that can't be used to grow more food. This forces farmers to keep buying seed to grow additional crops. Monsanto says it's a way to recoup the cost of genetic engineering. Are we going to have to buy "seed" licenses to grow food? Read about it at the USNews Web site." On a planet covered with 6 billion humans, agriculture is our most important concern. Yes, more important than the Internet. We rarely pay attention to food-growing on Slashdot, but nerds need to eat too. (Fun fact of the day: even frozen pizza and Hostess cupcakes are made from farm products!)

Metaphysicist writes "According to a new Executive Update, Amiga's new Prez says: "The reports of the Amiga's death are greatly exaggerated". While he didn't really say much about what AI will do, he did seem to say that AI won't be building any hardware: "we have decided to work with business partners who will deliver our software technology on their systems, rather than enter the hardware business directly." " So insert your random amiga theory here.

flanksteak sent us this U.S. News and World Report story about head-shakingly high Silicon Valley housing prices. A local homeless shelter administrator is quoted as saying, "We're serving firemen, cops, and teachers. We even have the human-resource departments of some of our biggest companies calling us, asking,'Can you get this employee into your shelter?'"