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IRC (Internet Relay Chat) was born at the Department of Information Processing Science of the University of Oulu 30 years ago. Taking some time out of his summer job, Jarkko Oikarinen developed the internet chat system. For the last several years, Oikarinen has been working at Google, overseeing the development of several communication services. Though several mainstream services have ended support for IRC over the years, the system is still in existence and used by many.

Ponca City, We love you writes "David Ropeik writes at MSNBC that there's a lot more to making a basic firework display than putting a fuel source and an oxidizer together. Pyrotechnic chemists, who are trying to create bedazzlement instead of bang, don't want their work to explode, but to burn for a bit, so it gives a good visual show. To achieve the desired effect, the sizes of the particles of each ingredient have to be just right, and the ingredients have to be blended together just right. To slow down the burning, chemists use big grains of chemicals, in the range of 250 to 300 microns, and they don't blend the ingredients together very well, making it harder for the fuel and oxidizer to combine and burn, thus producing a longer and brighter effect. Surprisingly few emitters are used in pyrotechnics, and there are no commercially useful emitters in blue-green to emerald green in the 490-520 nm region. Energy from the fire in the basic fuel is transferred to the atoms of the colorant chemicals, exciting the electrons in those chemicals into a higher energy state. As they cool down, they move back to a lower state of energy, emitting light. So, you actually see the colors in fireworks as they're cooling down. To get the really tricky shapes, like stars or hearts, the colorant pellets are pasted on a piece of paper in the desired pattern. That paper is put in the middle of the shell with explosive charges above it, and below. When those charges go off, they burn up the paper, and send the ignited colorant pellets out in the same pattern they were in on the sheet of paper, spreading wider apart as they fly."

nemiloc sends us to the F-Secure blog for breaking news about widespread vulnerabilities in programs that process archive files: "The Secure Programming Group at Oulu University has created a collection of malformed archive files. These archive files break and crash products from at least 40 vendors — including several antivirus vendors... including us." Here is test material from OUSPG and a joint advisory from Finnish and English security organizations. It isn't news that security products can have have security vulnerabilities. What makes this advisory important is that antivirus software is a perfect target. It is run in critical places with high privileges and auto-updates to keep versions coherent.

istewart writes "Version 1.5 of the AirBuccaneers mod for Unreal Tournament 2004 was released today. This isn't a typical FPS mod, since it's about pirates on balloons and the player is allowed to select from 4 roles on the different craft : pilot, cannon loader, aimer, and musketeer. Hand to hand combat is de-emphasized in favor of strategic air battles."

shpoffo writes "In relation to the recent /. article i thought i'd give people a heads-up on some more console info. For those of you with the time, interest and know-how there are a few really good resources around for reverse engineering most of the major video game consoles such as Jeff Frohwein's site for the Gameboy. There's others for the N64 here and here, Dreamcast, Playstation, TurboGraphix, Genesis, and the Nintendo."