Slashdot Mirror

mvw writes: "Here is an interview with OpenBSD's Theo de Raadt. Interesting is his comment on Soft Updates and the comparison to the rivaling Journaling file systems technology. Further he links to a very interesting paper by some Soft Updates researchers." And although OpenBSD 3.0 has an "official" release date of December 1 for whatever reason, it seems to be available by FTP or CD already. Lots of changes since 2.9.

mvw noted that Toonami is serving up the four videos directed by Star Blazers creator Leiji Matsumoto for the first four tracks on Daft Punk album Discovery. The album is an absolute masterpiece and one of my favorite CDs. The videos are impressive too, telling a continuing story through each of the four songs with that distinctive style. Anyway, I was just pleased to see them online since I only got to see them once when Toonami aired them. and figured others would enjoy this.

mvw writes: " This article is about yet unidentified species of poisonous spiders .. found by British Telecom technicians beneath Queen Elisabeth's Windsor castle!"

mvw inputs: "These days the large JavaOne conference is taking place. The commercial and proprietary vendors will be well represented there. In addition I would love to see a discussion here, on the state of Java affairs from the open source crowd. Java is a bit special, in that it does not only represent a programming language but establishes a kind of operating system as well ('Java the platform'). And indeed this world is not fully closed there is also open source software blossoming there, ranging from the GPL to the BSD sides of the free/open source community. The Jakarta Project initiative is going the BSD license way (actually they use ASL, but it is quite close), with prominent software like Tomcat or ant. Less mentioned in the Java press IMHO is the GNU Project which working on a GPLed Java implementation, with a long list of Java programs. They even have a couple of quines in Java here."

Slashback tonight with stuff to chew on re: XFS, the baseball-Everquest connection, and whether it's safe to login at SourceForge. Oh, and yet more on the state of HAL. Please read safely.

XFS on track Have no fear for XFS at present! Thanks to Steve Lord, Principal Engineer, Filesystem Software at SGI (no relation), for the following positive news about journaling file systems for GNU/Linux systems:

splord writes "I just became aware of the slashdot posting based on email I send to the XFS linux list yesterday and I want to clarify a couple of points.

1. Linuxcare was not 'sponsoring' the port, SGI was paying Linuxcare for work on the port. This contract was terminated by SGI and Linuxcare management, all the technical people involved wanted it to continue. I believe it was financial considerations on the part of both companies which resulted in the termination of the contract.

2. SGI is not stopping work on the port, but reduced headcount will change how fast we can respond to questions and problems.

I personally remain committed to working on the port, even if at some point SGI does not. Martin Peterson of Linuxcare has also stated he will continue doing XFS work on his own time. For now however, SGI does remain committed to the port, and work will continue."

Strike Two! OakLEE writes "Following up on last weeks article about the Everquest grudge between baseball players Curt Schilling and Doug Glanville, ESPN put this article in which Schilling accused Glanville of "slanderous lies being spewn, about the kind-hearted (computer) dwarf of mine. Stout and strong, yet gentle is he. But he will not allow his good name to be dragged through the mud by a reckless goof of a Paladin." They plan a "re-match" later online this week."

It's back for a hopefully not-too-limited time! After being compromised not long ago, everyone's favorite all-in-one Open Source development site SourceForge is back up. Interesting account of how it was compromised, too. Small comfort that it had to do with a stolen password rather than a code exploit, but even small comforts feel good.

Quick, only 7 months left! mvw writes "Two interesting features on the state of AI:

• Hal's Legacy: 2001's Computer as Dream and Reality is an article by Douglas B. Lenant, who is working on project cyc (pronounced psyche), a huge database of common knowledge with inference system, and gives his profound opinion and critique on 2001's HAL computer and how real intelligent computers should behave.

• It's 2001. Where Is HAL? is a lecture from AI legend Marvin Minsky (formats: video, mp3, transcript), who next to giving lots of funny annecdotes (e.g. what robotics and ESP have in common and why building physical robots is a stupid idea for students) talks about the state of present AI and some interesting ideas how to move on, that will be explained in detail in his upcoming book The Emotion Machine.

  His prior book Society of the Mind was about Minsky's view of the mind being the result of the workings of a lot of different mental processes. This time he focusess on the question of knowledge representation and the need to keep a bag of different ones around to be able to understand and solve problems (great dissing of neural nets, genetic algorithms and statistical methods :-)

Regards,
Marc"

We'll start this off with Ant's submission -- a hilarious story about The Endor Holocaust which no doubt follows the destruction of the 2nd Death Star. After reading something so clear, confuse your mind confuse your mind (thanks to The Musician). Now that you are adequately confused, cardoso sent us a ridiculous flash app where you can control dancers. This will put you in the mood to enjoy the most retro homepage ever, sent in by mvw Got some money to burn? Check out the Spinal Tap Guitar which features among other things, chrome exhaust pipes and a tachometer that (of course) goes to 11. If you're not a musician, maybe you'd be interested in Randy Rathbun's link to personalized action figures: I could send in my mugshot and be immortalized in plastic, standing forever atop my monitors with Darth, Goku, and Trinity! Or maybe you wanna buy a Dalek? If you're on more of a budget, Jay Novak sent us a great t-shirt from copyleft considering all the layoffs around the net companies. With all of these great things to waste cash on, you might need some cash: geekguy sent in a funny list of ways to cash in on Doom without wasting time making a game (like for example, Doom breakfast serial! Free BFG inside!) Just get id to license ya! For you do-it-yourselfers, mr100percent submitted what might be the most impressive automotive MP3 player ever. The Pathintosh is a beautifully integrated Mac complete w/ steering wheel controls, and a custom bezel. And finally, the eycandy. First up is davco9200's link to Daily Astronomy Astropix which is actually pretty sweet: today is Mars Dunes. Second and last of all, the pr0n: Jeff K sent in Unix-Sex which features sysadmins getting it on w/ Sun Hardware. Thats why we don't let them work 3rd shift.

mvw asks: "I spotted this organizer by Siemens that together with my infrared interface equipped Nokia mobile might give me WAP browsing. Anyone has experiences with this? If this is programmable (under Linux, FreeBSD) as well, this is more interesting than a palm pilot to me, due to its (supposedly) better integration to mobile phone standards here in Europe." Has anyone played around with other PDA/phone combinations in order to do this? Thoughts?

mvw sent us an amusing link for the super paranoid. These cases claim to be all shielded, all filtered, and emit none of the stuff those snoopers like to listen to. Plus it looks like it could be dropped from a low flying jet and keep ticking.