Slashdot Mirror

MacHore writes "0xFE has an excellent tutorial on Mach-O, which is the file format used by OS X executable files and libraries. It goes into great detail about how Mach-O works, and explains what OS X actually does when it loads and runs an application. Subtopics include Universal Binaries, The Dynamic Linker, Using otool, and other goodies."

Henry G. writes "The BBC is reporting that recent satellite pictures may show the location of the fabled city of Atlantis, as described by Plato. It is in Southern Spain, though, and not on an island as is commonly believed. Here's an image of the concentric rings over the alleged area." This story has gotten a lot of submissions; it's worth noting that it's also shown up off Cyprus, or near Cuba, or is Crete, or... It is worth noting that that Ubar was found this way.

FolkImplosion writes "Internal documents have been released suggesting that IBM was well-aware that its click-of-death 75GXP hard drives had a failure rate of as much as 10 times that of its competitors. IBM apparently sold drives it knew were faulty into distribution, and reportedly planned to deal with any issues with marketing spin rather than a fixing the problem. This new information should help bolster a class action suit that accuses IBM knowingly shipped defective 75GXP drives with abnormally high failure rates." The lawfirm pursuing the class action suit has a page of information, including the latest news report (pdf) on information coming out in the suits. See also our original story about the drive failures.

Well, one science journalist's opinion, anyway. Charles Seife writes for Science magazine and is the author of Alpha and Omega: The Search for the Beginning and End of the Universe. These are his answers to your questions, and they're very detailed, to the point where you may want to set aside more than a few minutes of quiet time to read and digest them. Q1) "Publishing hype" by BobTheLawyer (#6606631)

A1)I'm not embarrassed at all because it's not hype. Scientists now know how the universe will end. Of course, as with all things scientific, there's a big honking asterisk on the word "know," but before I get to that, let me explain why I feel justified in making such an arrogant statement.

We're in the middle of a scientific revolution, in the honest-to-god paradigm-shift sense. This revolution started in 1997 when two groups of astronomers, the High-Z Supernova Search Team and the Supernova Cosmology Project used the bright flashes of a particular type of dying star (a type-Ia supernova) to measure the expansion of the universe at different times in the past. Since then, a whole raft of astronomical observations -- of faint patterns in the afterglow of the big bang, of distributions of galaxies, of the composition of intergalactic clouds of gas, of distortions of light going around massive bodies -- have all forced cosmologists into a remarkable consensus about the composition of the universe and, yes, its fate.

Just to give you a little taste of what the difference in the state of knowledge was like: in 1997, if you asked an astronomer how old the universe is, you'd get an answer somewhere between 12 and 15 billion years. Now, you'll get an answer of 13.7 billion years, plus or minus about 100 million. That's a big jump in precision. Similarly, before 1997, nobody had a clue how the universe would end; now, cosmologists agree on its fate. Some of the details haven't been worked out (what an understatement!), but the gross picture of the ultimate fate of the cosmos seems to be pretty well established for the first time in history. And by the end of the decade, a lot of the details will be fleshed out.

The ongoing revolution isn't just astronomical; it's physical. A decade ago, nobody knew whether neutrinos have mass. (For those who aren't particle physicists, neutrinos are particles that so rarely interact with matter that they can easily pass through the Earth without noticing the big chunk of mass they've passed through. This property makes them exceedingly hard to study.) Now, neutrino physicists are in accord -- and they've concluded that neutrinos, collectively, weigh about as much as all the visible stars and galaxies in the universe combined. High-energy physicists are using an accelerator in Long Island to recreate the condition of the universe a few microseconds after the big bang. By next year, they will formally announce the creation of a new state of matter that existed only in the very, very early universe. (There are alreadystrong hints that they've succeeded.) And another particle accelerator under construction in Geneva is very likely going to discover the particle responsible for exotic dark matter. (More on this shortly.)

All these experiments, all these observations, are pointing in exactly the same direction; they reveal the composition of the universe and its fate. But as with any good scientific revolution, such as relativity or quantum mechanics, it generates more questions than it answers. Scientists now know how the universe will end, but that understanding comes at the cost of a new mystery in physics.

As to the asterisk on the word "know," scientists are acutely aware that their theories are subject to revision. But at the same time, they have good reasons for being confident about their theories -- and they are more confident about some theories than about others. The new cosmological picture that's emerged has a darn high confidence rating; extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, and the scientific world wouldn't accept the ideas of dark matter, much less dark energy, if there weren't a number of independent lines of evidence that forced scientists to make that conclusion. And while they're not confident about many of the details of the cosmos and the mechanisms that shape it, they are pretty sure that the overall picture is correct. (More on this coming, too.)

Q2) [Almost] Serious question! by Noryungi (#6606694)

and

Q3) Why does the rate of expansion change? by Anonymous Coward (#6606745)

A2,3) The universe will end in... umm... you really want me to give away the ending to my book?

Actually, I reveal the answer in chapter four, because the understanding of the fate of the universe is just the beginning of the current cosmological revolution. So it's not a spoiler to say...

-- drum roll -- the universe will die a heat death, or "Dark & Cold" by your terminology.

In a big bang universe governed by the laws of general relativity, there are two possibilities. (Actually, there are more than two, but all the cases boil down to two real outcomes.) Big crunch or heat death, fire or ice.

The fate of the universe depends on how the universe expands. In general, things that expand cool down and things that are compressed heat up. (This is what causes a propane container to feel so cold after a barbecue -- all the gas that expanded.) After the big bang the universe was extremely hot and was seething with energy. As it expanded, it cooled; free-roaming quarks condensed into protons and neutrons, and wound up as hydrogen, helium, and a handful of other light elements and isotopes. About 400,000 years after the big bang, the universe cooled enough so that the electrons could combine with the nuclei and form neutral atoms. Now, about 14 billion years later, the universe is a pretty cool place.

The expansion of the universe is like a cannonball shot into the air. As the cannonball flies ever higher, the force of gravity tries to drag it back to earth, reducing its upward velocity and slowing it down as it zooms upward. If gravity is very strong, then the cannonball rapidly loses its speed and quickly comes crashing back to the ground. On the other hand, if gravity is very weak, then the cannonball might escape the pull of the earth entirely and zoom away into outer space.

Similarly, the big bang gave the universe an initial cannonshot of expansion. If the mutual gravitational attraction of the objects in the universe is very strong (if there's a lot of matter in the universe) the expansion will slow down, halt, and eventually reverse itself. After the cooling phase of expansion, the universe will begin to swallow itself, getting smaller and smaller each day. This will make it heat up. The skies will get brighter and brighter as galaxies and stars get closer and closer together, and eventually, the universe will become a bath of radiation once more. Electrons will separate from atoms, atoms and then protons and neutrons will shiver into their components, and the universe will collapse in a "big crunch," a reverse big bang. The cosmos will die a death by fire.

On the other hand, if there's not much matter in the universe, then the expansion of the universe will continue forever. The expansion will slow down, but it will never halt and never reverse itself. The universe continues to cool down, and for a long time, space will look pretty much as it does now. Stars will be born and die, and galaxies will age. The night sky would get darker and darker as distant objects get too dim to view, and eventually, as the hydrogen in the universe is consumed, stars and galaxies will begin to wink out. Many billions of years hence, the universe will be a lifeless soup of dim light and dead matter. It will be a death by ice.

In 1997 and 1998, the two supernova teams used the brightness of distant supernovae to measure the rate of expansion at different times in the past. (Because the speed of light is finite, looking into the distance is the same as looking into the past. This causes no end of tense problems when writing a book about cosmology.) What they found was absolutely gobsmacking. Not only was the universe's expansion not slowing down very much -- it was speeding up! The cannonball was zooming into the air faster and faster as if it were propelled by some sort of weird antigravity force. Not only was the cannonball going to escape, it is so OUTTA HERE! This means a death by ice.

Yegads -- an antigravity force. This was a really hard thing for scientists (and probably you) to accept. But there's a number of different lines of evidence that support the idea, and in the book I go through those lines of evidence in great detail. I'll have to settle for a brief summary here. In 2000, a balloon experiment known as Boomerang took very detailed pictures of the ubiquitous afterglow of the big bang, the cosmic microwave background (CMB). This afterglow has hot and cold spots in it, and for years, scientists have been making very, very detailed predictions about the size and distribution of those spots. The results of the Boomerang experiment and the DASI and WMAP experiments matched those predictions incredibly well, giving scientists great confidence in the underlying theory. It also allowed them to figure out the amount of matter and energy in the universe, and 73% of the "stuff" in the cosmos was dark energy, this antigravity force.

There are a number of other lines of evidence, too; the current distribution of galaxies, for example, implies the presence of an antigravity force, and just last month, scientists made a very nice measurement of something known as the late integrated Sachs-Wolfe effect. This effect can't occur unless you have something like dark energy counteracting gravity's pull.

Unfortunately, a fuller exposition requires a lot more writing -- it takes up several chapters in my book. (Shameless plug). But in summary, there's a number of independent observations that all point to the existence of a dark energy. Furthermore, the theories underlying the idea have made very specific predictions that have been verified with incredible precision. It's extraordinary stuff, but no matter how scientists look at it, they're forced by extraordinary evidence to make the same conclusion.

Yes, it's true that scientists don't know the mechanism of dark energy (though they're not entirely at sea) but there's little doubt that the cannonball is zooming into space faster and faster. They don't know precisely why, but the universe is being pushed toward its icy death by an antigravity force. Scientists are watching it happen.

And you don't need to wait billions of years to know the outcome -- you don't need to observe something directly to conclude that it's going to happen. The planet Pluto was discovered in 1930. So why don't people object to the statement that it takes about 250 years to complete an orbit? Just as you don't have to wait until 2180 to confirm the conclusions of Newtonian dynamics, you don't need to witness the end of the universe to be able to figure out its fate or validate the theory that leads you to that prediction.

Q4) Dark Matter by notcreative (#6606772)

A4) You are correct; the nature and location of dark matter are crucial puzzles in modern cosmology, but I think that the answers will be pretty much in hand by the end of the decade.

I've already mentioned results (most notably WMAP) that reveal the amount of "stuff" in the universe, and 73% of it is dark energy. The rest is matter. But the grand total of the matter locked up in visible stars is a mere 0.5% of the stuff in the universe. What is the other 26.5%? That's dark matter, and, in fact, there are two different types.

Scientists have known for decades that most of the matter in the universe is invisible to telescopes. In the 1960s, Vera Rubin measured the motion of stars wheeling around the center of the Andromeda galaxy and concluded that there had to be a lot more matter pulling on those stars than could be seen.

Despite what some contrarians say, dark matter isn't dogma; viable alternatives, like Moti Milgrom's MOND are taken seriously, if not accepted. Unfortunately, all of the alternatives, including MOND, fail in crucial ways. Besides, you can see dark matter, both directly and indirectly. The MACHO and OGLE projects see the twinkle of stars caused by a passing chunk of dark matter, and they can see the distortion of light caused by a huge amount of unseen mass sitting on the fabric of spacetime. (Distant galaxies are stretched into arcs around this gravitational lens.) This is allowing scientists to figure out just where dark matter resides. But at the same time, a number of observations lead scientists to conclude that the minority of the matter (dark or light) in the universe is ordinary, atomic matter -- the stuff of stars, planets, and people. Again, it will take too long to describe all the lines of evidence, but one powerful way of measuring the number of atoms in the universe is to look at the proportion of hydrogen to deuterium, helium, and lithium in primordial gas clouds. In the first three minutes of the universe, atoms were fusing, just as they do in a hydrogen bomb. The universe was a giant pressure cooker, turning protons and neutrons into heavier elements. If there are a lot of atoms, then there is a lot of fusion and a lot of heavy elements made; if there are not very many atoms, then the universe winds up being almost entirely hydrogen. By looking at the ratios of heavy elements to light elements, scientists concluded that atomic matter makes up about 4% of the "stuff" in the universe -- which is precisely what other measurements, like the CMB ones -- imply, too.

So, 27% of the stuff in the universe is matter: 4% "atomic" matter, leaving 23% to be made of "exotic" matter, stuff that's not made of atoms. I've already described some of that exotic matter; neutrinos make up about 0.5% of the stuff in the universe, about the same as the visible matter in the universe. What's the remainder?

That's the big open question, but one that I'd wager will be solved by the end of the decade. There are very good reasons -- particle physics ones, rather than cosmological ones -- for believing that the main constituent of dark matter is a proposed particle known as the LSP. If it is, then the LHC accelerator in Geneva will find it. If not, then the LSP almost certainly doesn't exist and the puzzle will be compounded -- but I think that scientists are extremely optimistic. Again, there's lots more detail in the book about the justification for this.

Q5) variable constants by Cally (#6607000)

A5) The point's well taken, and I'll get to it after a few remarks.

First, you're right in that the supernovae serve much the same purpose as Cepheid variable stars do -- they're both objects of known brightness, or "standard candles," that allow astronomers to make a precise measurement of the distance to a faraway galaxy. However, they are not the same thing. Cepheids are stars that pulsate and the rate of that pulsation reveals its intrinsic brightness. They're what Hubble used to spot the expansion of the universe in the 1920s, but they're relatively dim and impossible to find in very distant galaxies. Type-Ia supernovae are standard candles that are much, much brighter than Cepheids, and so can be seen halfway across the universe. (And as you note, since distant supernovae mean ancient supernovae, they reveal the expansion rate of the universe billions of years ago.)

Second, the time-varying speed of light (or more precisely, the time-varying fine structure constant) is a controversial idea. The scientists that made the observation in question are pretty solid and they're taken seriously. However, my impression is that mainstream thinking is that the results are due to a systematic error. That aside, the effect, even if real, is very small, and it has nothing to do with interpreting the data from standard candles. The interpretation there is quite well established; there's little question that scientists are seeing an expansion of the universe;. Alternative theories, like tired light, fail in countless ways and scientists have even seen the relativistic time dilation caused by the motion of the distant object.

But, yes, it's natural for a layperson to conclude that the concordance cosmological model is looking increasingly kludge-y, and you're naturally led to wonder whether scientists are trying to prop up a failing model with the equivalent of epicycles or aether. I don't think this is the case for a few reasons.

For one thing, the theory isn't really getting added to and made more complex; it's getting subtracted from and being made more simple. This seems counterintuitive, but it comes from the fact that modern big bang theory is really a class of theories, rather than one set-in-stone dictum about the way the universe is. All these theories agree on the basic physics about the manner of the universe's birth, the forces that drive the universe, and the physics behind them; the difference between the theories are the values of a handful of parameters that are not predicted by the theory. These parameters are inputs rather than outputs, and by pinning down the values of these inputs, the acceptable class of theories gets narrower and narrower.

Dark energy is one of these inputs. Although nobody took it seriously before 1998 -- everyone thought that the value of the parameter in question was zero -- it was lurking there nonetheless. It turns out that this parameter is not only non-zero, it's really big, much to everyone's surprise. But this doesn't add complexity to the model, especially since other parameters, such as the "curvature" of the universe as a whole, which many physicists thought would be non-trivial, turn out not to be important after all. (In other words, the universe seems to be slate flat, rather than saddle-shaped or sphere-like.)

So, from a mathematical viewpoint, the model is no more complex than it was in 1997, and is, in fact, significantly leaner. But what about from a physical viewpoint? Dark matter and dark energy seem to fly in the face of Occam. But here, too, the increase in complexity is much less than it appears. Long before this cosmological revolution, astronomers knew that dark matter had to exist; more recently, they've begun to see it. Even without worrying about cosmological questions, astrophysicists had accepted the existence of dark matter. Cosmological measurements like WMAP showed that these astrophysicists were right -- it was an independent confirmation that dark energy exists and that it comes in two forms, something that other astronomers had concluded a while ago.

Dark energy, on the other hand, has more claim to being a "hack" to the theory. It really is something new and unexpected (even though it was always a mathematical possibility, nobody in the physics world suspected it actually existed.) Nevertheless, the groundwork was already there, and modern big bang theory implicitly requires the existence of a form of dark energy in the very early universe. And since the 1930s, scientists knew that even the deepest vacuum is full of energy and can exert pressure (something known as the Casimir effect, which I describe in this book and in my previous book, Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea). Thus, the idea of dark energy wasn't completely alien to physics before 1997, and in some sense, it was a necessary component.

Yes, it's possible that scientists are looking at the cosmos in the wrong way, and somebody will establish a simpler, more elegant theory that takes all these threads and weaves them together. (More on this shortly.) But at the moment, far from having a kludged-up theory, cosmologists have a leaner (if weirder) theory than ever before -- one that makes very precise predictions that are getting verified with stunning accuracy. I think this argues for increased confidence in the theory rather than for increased fear that it's falling apart.

Q6) Universe's container by bios10h (#6606748)

A6) It freaks a lot of people out. There's a lot of philosophical problems with having an infinite universe -- for example, if the universe is truly infinite, and if, as scientists believe, the number of quantum states of a finite volume is finite, then it's hard to escape the conclusion that, some great distance away, there's a bizarro-you on bizarro-earth reading bizarro-Slashdot. On the other hand, there's no positive evidence that I can think of that the universe is truly infinite; it's just the sparest conclusion in a mathematical sense, if not a philosophical sense.

But an infinite universe is not a foregone conclusion. Earlier this year, Max Tegmark at the University of Pennsylvania published an intriguing paper that looked at slight anomalies in the WMAP data that seem to imply that the universe is not only finite, but shaped like a donut. Nobody takes the idea terribly seriously, not even the author, because there are other statistical tests that seem to rule the donut-shaped universe out. But it's the sort of thing that people are looking at very closely.

Whether it's finite or infinite, in a mathematical sense, there's really no need for the universe to be "in" anything -- there are models where our universe is embedded in a higher-dimensional space, but there are models where it isn't. Philosophically, though, I don't see any advantage to embedding the universe in something bigger -- as you say, it just punts the problem forward. (Who, then, will contain the containers?)

It's one of those things that is hard to get comfortable with -- and even when you accept it, it sometimes can cause pangs of uncertainty. Quantum mechanics does this, too... it's just something that's hard to wrap your head around. Take solace in the fact that it's hard for everyone else, too.

Q7) How ultimate is the end of the universe? by Lane.exe (#6606766)

A7) If there were a collapse-type universe, yes, there could be a reboot and a new big bang. (And if Microsoft built the universe, a reboot would be coming sooner rather than later. *duck*)

In fact, the theory behind the cosmic microwave background stemmed from calculations to see whether this was possible. Remember the expansion-cooling/contraction-heating bit I mentioned a while ago? A physicist at Princeton was trying to figure out whether matter would break apart into its constituents in a collapsing universe, so he looked at how the universe heated up as it compressed. He then realized that his calculations worked equally well in reverse -- the young expanding universe was very hot but cooling -- and it had to have an afterglow: the CMB.

There are restrictions on this rebirth argument, though. For one thing, the fact that the universe will expand forever prevents a big crunch in our future, so we're at the end of the line if such a line existed. And in 2001, Alan Guth proved a mathematical theorem that shows that bang/crunch/bang universes can't have an infinite history; they must have started some finite time in the past. (Though there are a few ways around the theorem if you reject a few assumptions.) So yes, it's possible, but there is no reason to believe it actually happened, and there are very good reasons for thinking it won't happen in the future.

Q8) comparable ramifications? by sstory (#6606658)

A8) I'm not going to give the usual B.S. answers about spinoffs (though there are some). And I'm not going to evade the question by saying that genomics hasn't yielded any transformation, because the potential is certainly there. But I will answer this question obliquely.

If I asked you, "Quick! What's the most important scientific achievement of the 20th century?" how would you respond?

You would probably answer relativity or quantum mechanics, or perhaps the Apollo landings. Probably some would say the atom bomb. I suspect that only a handful of people would mention the computer, and even fewer people would say penicillin. (Am I right?)

Science has two faces -- it can transform society (for better or worse), and it can advance human knowledge. The two are not inextricably bound, though they often come together.

Relativity was a profound shift in our understanding of the way the universe works, but you have to look pretty hard to see a direct effect on our lives. Conversely, penicillin wasn't a central advance in understanding biological systems, but it affected all of us -- I suspect many people here on Slashdot wouldn't be alive today without penicillin and its descendants.

For me, though, relativity is a greater scientific triumph than penicillin -- even though penicillin is probably much more important to us. It altered our view of the universe and gave us a greater understanding of the fundamental laws of the universe -- it was a philosophical advance as much as it was a technical one. That's why we seem to admire Einstein more than Fleming and Newton more than Jenner.

The present cosmological revolution won't change our lives dramatically; heck, a good spam filter would probably have more direct effect on our quality of life. But at the same time, it will finally answer some of the most ancient questions of humanity -- where did the universe come from and how will it end -- and when it ends, we will have a firm grasp of the answer of the latter if not the former. It will be a towering intellectual achievement, and I think that is what will set it apart from even the human genome project.

Q9) What is the next paradigm shift? by geeber (#6606890)

A9) I disagree with the idea that there's no paradigm shifts left -- indeed, I think we're in the middle of one now. I think that it will be associated with one in the Standard Model of particle physics that will begin before the end of the decade.

It's hard to say where future paradigm shifts lie, but there are lots and lots of outstanding questions in science, some of which are incredibly basic, yet totally out of scientists' reach. For example, neurologists have a very good idea about how individual neurons work -- how they connect and communicate. But when it comes to explaining how a large sloppy hunk of neurons becomes a conscious entity, they're completely at sea. I don't think there's even a good definition of consciousness, which is crucial if you're going to study it seriously. Even more basic -- scientists are struggling to define what life is. There's a heck of a lot more work to do, and plenty of room for paradigm shifts.

Speaking of paradigm shifts, I'd like to take a bit of issue with the term (which I've used myself a number of times in the responses to these questions.)

For those who don't know, the idea of a "paradigm shift" comes from Thomas Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions, a seminal work in history of science. While I think that Kuhn's idea of a paradigm shift has a lot of merit -- models and philosophies do change suddenly and dramatically in the face of mounting conflicting evidence and despite resistance -- I think the term itself is misleading. It implies the complete abandonment of one idea and acceptance of a replacement.

In my view, this is not the way modern science works -- I think that science is cumulative. Each model extends and corrects the previous one, and while there might be a dramatic shift philosophically, there is almost never a dramatic shift physically. Relativity, for example, made a profound change in the way we think about time and space and gravity, yet the functional difference between Newton and Einstein is pretty small. All these complicated tensor equations are approximately equal to Newton's laws in the vast, vast majority of cases -- it's only under conditions of extreme gravity, extreme speed, extreme energy, or extreme time that relativistic predictions diverge from Newton's. Similarly with quantum mechanics.

While I think that relativity and quantum mechanics are paradigm shifts, they're not rejections of the Newtonian picture as much as they are extensions. The paradigm shift can be huge philosophically, but its effects tend to be small in magnitude. And with these small corrections, scientists extend the applicability of their model of the universe -- they can explain the orbit of Mercury or the photoelectric effect -- and in the cases where Newton's laws were strong, these models boil down to Newton's laws.

If I remember my Kuhn correctly, he explicitly rejected the idea of cumulative science; he really saw each model getting completely replaced by its successor, rather than as an extension -- and this leads, at least in my view, to the excesses of postmodernism.

I think that this issue goes to the heart of the questions about how scientists can be sure about the end of the universe if their models can be replaced at any time. To that I'd argue that, yes, all models are provisional, but even with "paradigm shifts" models are usually extended rather than replaced. The central findings of the previous model still hold with good accuracy in most cases, even if the philosophical underpinnings are badly shaken. Maybe scientists are missing some crucial understanding that will simplify the way we look at the universe -- and scientists are seriously pondering alternate models to things as widely accepted as the inflationary big bang -- but even if such a shift occurs, it probably won't invalidate today's discoveries.

Q10) What will it mean? by boatboy (#6607285)

A10) One thing's certain. If I knew the answers, I'd be even more insufferable than I am now.

Seriously, I'm not sure that knowing the answers would have a profound moral and sociological effect. While I think that asking and answering big questions is a hallmark of a prospering society, a society doesn't necessarily draw strength or stability from its intellectual curiosity. (For example, Athenian democracy lasted only about 80 years if I remember right.) Even the most profound philosophical ideas can wind up having little real effect on the everyday functioning of a civilization -- for example, I think that Godel's incompleteness theorem hasn't changed society in the slightest.

As for the next big question, I think there are some in biology: what is life? What is consciousness? How did life arise? Are we alone in the universe? In physics, I think there are profound questions yet to be answered in a realm that I'd describe as "information theory" in the broadest sense -- what's really going on in a black hole? What makes quantum mechanics so weird? And I think that answering the question about the true nature of dark energy will probably have to await a future cosmological revolution. But one of the wonderful things about science is that you don't really know what big questions are within your grasp until you begin to grasp them. We'll know the next revolution when it appears.

Editor's note: Due to long answer lengths, we linked to the questions instead of running them directly here in order to keep this page from getting too large. This was an experiment. If you have comments or questions about Slashdot interview formatting, please email Roblimo.

Tekno2k3 asks: "As a sysadmin for a financial company, I have been tasked with removing Instant Messaging from our network. The only service that is being difficult is MSN Messenger. It uses many methods to get around being blocked. These include using port 80, using it's own DNS servers for lookup, using MANY logon servers, and using reverse DNS lookup. Has anyone had any success in blocking Messenger?"

deglr6328 writes "NASA's solar powered Helios airplane has crashed into the Pacific off the coast of Kauai today during its first test using a regenerative fuel cell power supply. Helios held the record for highest prop propelled plane altitude at 96,863 (set 2 years ago) and was making preparations for a 96 hour continuous flight using its 62,000 solar cells during the day while electrolyzing water into hydrogen and oxygen for use in its fuel cells at night. With the capability to carry 200 lb. to near 100,000 ft. for months on end, Helios was eyed with great anticipation by scientists and RF telecommunications buisnesses alike."

Glog writes "Peter Schwartz and Doug Randall of Wired magazine have written an amazing article explaining why we need to transition to a hydrogen economy. Lots of info there, estimated cost and benefit ... very good solid reasoning for whatever floats your boat - national security, environment, super-duper-charged automobiles."

zeropanic asks: "I'm not a person who likes to shell out 100's of dollars on new PC (or Mac!) equipment each year just because it's been "replaced" with something better.. Broke down and got a PS2 for Christmas this year, eyeing the iLink port in front. I know the designed task for the PS2 iLink was to hook up two or more Playstation units together, but could it be adapted to something else? Has anyone ever thought to write some software turn the PS2 into a DV suite? With all camcorders going to digital, someone (like me) who has a PS2 and a Sony handycam could connect up and do some minor editing.. Titles, splicing, etc.. while hooking up a USB HDD for temp storage.. (Poke poke to Sony!)" While this would be an interesting use for the PS2 hardware, why not use a laptop instead?

(eternal_software) writes: "The Associated Press is reporting that the FBI and Defense Department are talking to Microsoft about the serious flaws found in the XP operating system. As we all know, the most recent flaw allowed any XP machine to be hijacked simply by connecting it to the internet. The government is getting involved because of growing U.S. concerns about risks to the 'net as a whole." In fact, the FBI would like you to go a bit beyond the MS patch. davecl points out the updated page put out by the National Infrastructure Protection Center about this vulnerability as well.

DigitalRonin writes: "For a (welcome) change, WIPO have ruled against a high-profile company (Armani), and for the legitimate owner of the armani.com domain name - a canadian graphic designer, A. R. Mani. Full details in the article at the BBC's website."

jhittner writes "Space.com is reporting a reusable rocket plane designed by XCOR Aerospace to carry future travelers to space has succeeded in its first piloted flight test"

Andy Smith writes "British production company Celador is to launch an Internet version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? as reported in this BBC story. This may interest Slashdot readers because the online competition, which will be free to enter, will feature "e-mercials". It's commonly accepted nowadays that the Net's traditional forms of advertising (banners, pop-ups and spam) have a very low success rate, so it seems inevitable that the next step is interruption-based advertising, which has worked fine for TV and radio. The Millionaire web site will display 7 second ads between rounds, and the player must watch them before continuing. E-mercials couldn't arrive in a more high-profile way, so once the online version of Millionaire launches we can expect to see similar ad systems used all over the web." Actually, rollouts of this have already been attempted - the media agencies called them "interstitals" and they are supposed to be 5 seconds between pages or so. Some of the drive behind this is that selling interruption-based ads is easier, because the media buyers who bought TV/radio ads are well familar with them.

Jeff Scarpace writes: "Defense and intelligence alums, including former Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci, are marketing a copy-protection system that works by taking control of your computer. Try to hack InTether, the creators say, and it destroys the document. Check out the article article here." Strangely, this system works only with Windows. Hmmm. Interesting too is the mention of SPOCK, or Security Proof-of-Concept Keystone.

remy the man writes: "Yahoo has a story about some group [the Internet Advertising Bureau -- t.] basically wanting to have larger banner ads on websites. If they weren't already annoying enough, this group wants to make them bigger." Betcha didn't know there was a group called the "Internet Advertising Bureau. (Which despite its quasi-official sounding name, is an organization of advertisers, not a regulator body.) Look out soon for ads like the Wide Skyscraper (160 x 600 pixels) and -- even more fun -- a standardized pop-up ad (250 x 250). Mmmm.

Katascope writes "Salon is running an article about targeted advertising on Napster and Gnotella. The worrysome part is the co-opting of P2P search databases to build profiles and advertise using instant messaging" I've always believed that targetted marketing might actually make advertising useful again (Any 24 year old who occasionally watches MTV and doesn't need zit cream knows this). This one is scary because people are sending you IMs based on the tunes in your napster share. Course I don't have IM, and use napster super infrequently, so I guess thats one way to not be annoyed. But frankly if I got junk mail about obscure Who stuff, I'd be happy. Much better then credit cards, viagra, and stock tips. As long as its opt-in. (michael: A number of people have written in with Cringely's comparison of Napster and subways. Good read.)

slamdaddy asks: "At my previous place of employment we used CVS's tagging features to move files from the repository to the staging and production environments. I had assumed that they just attached a script to a certain tag (i.e. the tag "ALPHA" sent it to the common dev environment, the tag "BETA" sent it to the QA environment and the tag "LIVE" sent it to the production/staging environment) and the script just ran whenever you tagged a file with the appropriate tag. I've been looking through the CVS documentation at www.cvshome.org and have not found any facility for this. To answer this, I did a search on Google and came up with Nik Clayton's excellent series titled Managing websites with Unix" on DaemonNews. It looks like part five was going to cover everything I need BUT... it was slated to come out in May and never appeared on the site! Are there any other resources that explain how I can use CVS tags to copy the HTML pages to the proper locations?"

Whanana sent us an article about information objects as visualized by Robert Kahn. The article is written from a fairly childish place (it explains DNS for crying out loud, and the bulk of it is a history lesson obviously designed for a mainstream paper) but Kahn's Digital Object Identifier concept is interesting. If anyone has links to RFCs and the like, please post them in the comments.

RatzMilk writes: "Quova Inc. claim they have completed a global scanning system [Note: first mentioned on Slashdot in July -- timothy] that pinpoints the geographic location of Internet users in real time. The information gathered is then sold as a tool called 'GeoPoint' that can be used by advertisers to better target their advertisments to people based on their location. It doesn't rely on cookies or voluntary submissions from users, instead, using a data base built by scanning every host on the Internet. In gathering this information, they set off alarms all over the world, and yet, it seems that this is an accceptable practice in the eyes of the law. Individual people are having their computers impounded and in some cases are being incarcerated for doing the same. ... Further details on this story can be found at Security Focus." (Sorry, but Security Focus is not designed for direct linking; click on the link that says "Scanning Mystery Solved.") [Updated 5:58 GMT by timothy] Scratch the comment about deep linking; I've restored the link RatzMilk provided, which originally brought me only "page not found" errors. Hope it works for everyone ...

Lets start this off with some eyecandy from Mdog. Hi res pics of coronal loops meet Rob's First Rule of Art. Wow. Not enough eye candy? tradica noted that Pixar's new movie 'Monsters Inc.' now has trailers available even the the movie won't be out for a year. Course since Jobs is @ pixar, no surprise that I can't watch the clip. Instead of food for your retinas, Nerf97A4 sent in recipes that will never be used on Iron Chef since they all involve cooking with twinkies in some form or another. Deep fried Twinkies? Makes me shudder... maybe instead you should look at jedigeek fouund an online store called CyberCandy which allows you to buy candy from around the world. funferal noticed that a OECD have publshed their Privacy Statement Generator. Ant noted one wizard that that probably doesn't exist in Word. alecto sent us a fun link where you can read 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall which has code snippets to generate the song in languages from APL to zsh. PhadeRunner sent us Mr. T vs. The Matrix. and FlameSnyper sent The Matrix and Ghost in The Shell. One is slightly more serious then the other. An anonymous reader documented filling a cubicle with packing peanuts in case your boss is out of time and you need some help. Speaking of bosses, Need a weapon? WD_40 aims you at a site where you can learn how to create your own spud gun. Course you could do it the old fashioned way: pimp showed us a site dedicated to electrocuting common household stuff. Like, for example, a furby. While on the subject of electricity, loose_change sent in several links about Power meters and how they aren't exactly the best in user interface. A competition followed to try to make a better on. The winner is definitely less hostile ;) CresentCityRon sent in something you don't want to electrocute: apparently MIT students are working on Geek Porn which is pretty much what is sounds like. School officials aren't so happy about it.

AcaBen writes: "MacSlash's Les Harris did an in depth interview with Jason Haas of LinuxPPC about their upcoming release and enhancements. It also includes some news of his recovery from the bad auto accident (covered by Slashdot) he was involved in, and provides details about how LinuxPPC will compete with MacOS X."

RatzMilk asks: "The firm I work for has several clients who are still running Novell 4.11 which Novell is stopping support for in early 2001. As such they will require expensive upgrades to the latest version to be able to continue their support with Novell. I have suggested to one of the clients that they could replace their Novell with Linux which would have the added advantage of being able to utilize their existing hardware. The Novell upgrade would also require a hardware upgrade has well. They have agreed but their only concern was stability as the Novell boxen has been very reliable and Linux is an unknown to them. My company's policy is to provide the best possible support to our clients. My question to Slashdotters is, do you think I have made the right recommendation? Should I just do the switch with one client and see how it goes, or go the hole hog and recommend it to all?" Would Linux be the ideal solution in this case? Would BSD be any better or worse in this situation? And is holding on to the outdated hardware a good idea? As it is, systems can't go on forever, and depending on age of this system, maybe a full upgrade is a good idea.

Fros1y asks: "Okay, it seems like Microsoft may well make a big splash in the console market when they unroll the X-Box. With all the emulators out there, why wouldn't Microsoft expand their box's ability? If they took the new Playstation emulator and ported it for the system, they could tap a large market right off the bat. Roll in some cute NES and SNES emulators and they'd have an interesting system. Being Microsoft and all, they might even want to reverse engineer or license N64 and PSX systems. I guess there might be problems with ROM loading and such, but I'd bet that Microsoft could use their clout to license older games and put them onto a network pay system. Why wouldn't Microsoft want to pursue this kind of market strategy? Or have they already and I'm just out of the loop?" A nice thought, but Microsoft would have to play extremely nice with a lot of people to pull this one off. Thoughts?

pjbrewer writes: "Ever use an address like name@nospam.com when filling out a form on the web or registering software? Think thats safe? Somebody is surely receiving messages destined for these fake nospam emails... and for curiosity or boredom, I checked it out. Nospam.com is owned by Anything.com, which is apparently, as it says on their web page, based in the Cayman Islands. Their page gives a short bizspeak blurb about what the company does (provide strategic advice to internet companies and vc-types). Offshore corporations can be as legitimate as any other, so why does this suggest concern? Could it be that the owners or managers of nospam.com want to avoid US laws for some reason? The Caymans sound like a place to incorporate rather than a place to set up offices and a T1. Am I overly paranoid, or is there something interesting that could be done to analyze people's use of *@nospam.com type addresses or some other interesting use of this content they must be receiving? Nospam.org and Nospam.net appear to be net malls owned by BestOfTheNet."

datarealm writes "In a story on yahoo, Intel badgered Harvard into covering all iMac kiosks during an Intel sponsored event. Apparently the Intel provided covers trapped heat, forcing the machines to not only be covered, but also powered down." How much of is this happening in donations to education, and what questions need to be asked when companies sponsor these kind of things?

Gonzo, the Pirate King of the Underworld writes "It sounds like something out of one of those magazines that you might find at a grocery story checkout stand, but as is typical with news sensationalism, it is a play on words for what is really going on. Researchers at Stanford University, in cooperation with NASA, are preparing an experiment consisting of four extremely precise gyroscopes in the form of quartz crystal spheres. The Relativity Mission will last a year in an attept to measure the effects of frame-dragging and geodetic precession, and give scientists a means of testing General Relativity. "

jhittner wrote to us with more news about the release of the KDE 2.0 beta. We're currently looking at a release towards the end of this month. As well, there is a new timetable on the KDE development mailing list. Update: 03/14 01:26 by E : To be more clear - it is kdelibs 2.0 that are being frozen - KDEBase is frozen around the end of April.

J. FoxGlov writes "UCLA's Project Appleseed has been updated with new benchmarks showing their clusters of Macintosh G3s and G4s running neck and neck with Crays and kicking the snot out of Pentium II clusters, generating fractal clusters in parallel. Includes the recipe for making your own Apple-flavored Beowulf cluster. "

moonboy writes "I know Netcraft exposed this awhile back, but here is a new story. This quote says it all: "We'd been running Sun Solaris since 1994, it was coming to the end of the life cycle for early machines and direct replacements would have cost a lot of money. We'd been running Linux on Intel [computers with Intel processors] internally for testing and had been impressed with their reliability and you can't beat them in the bangs for your buck department. It blows Sun [computers] out of the water and, as a web server, Linux is great. So we did some load testing internally and managed to get some more than satisfactory results." 'Nuff said. Here is the Sunday Times (UK) story" The article also says the Queen is a "keen web surfer." Good for her! Do you suppose she reads Slashdot? ;)

swedub writes "Lucent Technologies announced a breakthrough technology that eventually will enable business customers and service providers to transmit up to 10 gigabits per second (Gb/s) of information between locations through the air. " They are calling it WaveStar OpticAir. Global Crossing will be doing field testing this December already. This is the first system to actually use Bell Labs dense wave division multiplexing-can I get coverage in my area? But the encryption issues will be interesting, methinks.

Shane McLochlainn writes "The Dallas Observer Online is reporting that Ion Storm, who employs ex-ID Doom/Quake hacker John Romero is in severe financial & personnel difficulties. Apparently most of the team programming the debut flagship game, Daikatana, have jumped ship to rival Games company Gathering of Developers (GoD), founded by ex-Ion Stormers. "

Thom Phillabaum wrote in with this article where you can read about Ted Nelson's latest thing. Since inventing hypertext, he's moved on to even more interesting ways of connecting information. I'm interested in seeing the product myself, if it works, it will be wonderful.