Slashdot Mirror

AlbionTourgee writes "It is reported that Gmail and Yahoo mail at least have been blocked in Iran, along with many English-language sites. While news of demonstrations seems to be getting out of the country, the government appears to be trying to prevent people within Iran from communicating and from learning what's happening. It remains to be seen whether TOR and Freenets can be effective to combat this sort of effort to block communications, and whether the general circulation of information about the protests around the world will help."

WillAffleckUW writes "CNN reports the discovery of three Neptune-sized planets found in orbit around a sun 41 light years away. The star they orbit is similar to our Sun, and the planetary distribution is probably similar to our Solar System. Recent observations by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope last year revealed that HD 69830 also hosts an asteroid belt, making it the only other sun-like star known to have one. No word on if they have habitable moons, or monoliths yet."

WillAffleckUW writes "According to the Washington Post, a coalition of environmental and consumer groups has asked the FDA to look at regulating nanotechnology. They point out that there are more than 100 nanotechnology products and that nanoparticles can penetrate cells and tissues, migrate through the body and brain and cause biochemical damage."

Will Affleck-Asch writes "According to an article on Infoworld today, France may require her citizens pay for new identity cards that hold their biometric information in electronic format. The French government outlined its plan last month to replace the identity cards and passports offered to French citizens with new ones that carry a microchip containing digitized photographs and fingerprints. The plan is to introduce the passports in 2006, and the identity cards a year later. Citizens haven't been forced to carry ID cards since 1955."

MonkeyDev writes "In the story on cio.com, 'Mr. Gates Goes to Washington', the author says...'Microsoft cared little for politics until the Department of Justice called it a monopoly. Now the company approaches lobbying the way it approaches everything- aggressively-and consequently it dominates the technology policy agenda.' The article outlines Microsoft's power, provides several examples of legislative decisions heavily influenced by the company, and talks about where they are aiming their newly found political clout. 'Microsoft's policy agenda includes issues that many CIOs agree with, notably more government funding for research and development, stronger copyright protection, and free trade in offshore products and services. However, two of Microsoft's policy priorities, limiting the adoption of open-source software and inoculating technology companies from spam liability, stand out as areas wherein what's good for Microsoft may not be good for all CIOs.' Further, 'Microsoft has lobbied particularly hard against open source, helping kill state bills that advocate for open source in Oregon and Texas. Microsoft argues that open source freezes innovation, and Krumholtz says that commercial software alone spurs economic growth and creates jobs.'"

Hentai asks: "I want to make a game. Specifically, I want to make a good, open-source computer RPG, with the same artistic style of the early Squaresoft sprite-pushers, like Secret of Mana and Chrono Trigger. I can code well enough, and I can get artists to provide character sprite graphics (which will be open-source, too), but I need background tile graphics on the same vein and caliber as those titles. Web searches invariably lead to commercial or shareware packages, or 'free to the public' tile sets that are, frankly, abysmal. I just need enough quality tiles to start with, and will happily add any new derivations to the repository. Anyone know of a good GPLed tile package that could get me started?"

RyanG asks: "So I'm looking to get a new laptop and have found myself very tempted by Apple's iBook for a variety of reasons like cost, performance, size, etc. Now I know Steve Jobs once touted the Mac/OSX as the (future) premier platform for Java development but I'm curious to know what people think of it in practice? I'm particularly interested in hearing from people who work with JSPs and Servlets."

catf00d asks: "My Dad has been in the computer biz since there was a computer biz. (He programmed the UNIVAC-1 and just retired from IBM.) For X-mas, I'd like to get him a book on the history of computers, so that he can see his place in the grand scheme. Can you guys recommend a good book?"

Phoenix-D writes: "Qwest.net, my Phoenix-area DSL provider and ISP, recently decided to hand over their ISP buisness to MSN. No huge deal, right? Well, check out this blurb: 'Due to the Microsoft anti-spam initiative, customers are restricted to use their mail services. Therefore, POP3 service is only available when using MSN Explorer, Microsoft Outlook, or Microsoft Outlook Express.'" Awesome. Microsoft's Anti-Spam initiative forces POP users to use the primary sender of mail worms.

bee writes: "Qwest.net has announced an alliance with MSN that will 'transition' Qwest's dialup and DSL customers to MSN Internet Access. If you're a Macintosh user, you'll be able to continue on Qwest until they figure out what to do with you. Zero mention, of course, is made of Linux or BSD. Here's the FAQ they're pointing their customers to."

bee writes: "Qwest.net has announced an alliance with MSN that will 'transition' Qwest's dialup and DSL customers to MSN Internet Access. If you're a Macintosh user, you'll be able to continue on Qwest until they figure out what to do with you. Zero mention, of course, is made of Linux or BSD. Here's the FAQ they're pointing their customers to."

adashtrash writes: "This article, from a Seattle area news source, reports that the Federal Trade Commission has ruled that Amazon did not deceive consumers with their revised privacy policy. This policy claimed Amazon's right to consider user information as a business asset, and removed users' 'opt-out' options. In fact, even those customers who previously had opted out of sharing personal information were now at risk of having that information shared out with Amazon partners or even sold at Amazon's discretion. Two privacy watchdog groups had protested to the FTC, prompting today's ruling."

LionMage asks: "I know Slashdot covered this a long time ago, but we have a new kernel now, and other things have changed as well. I followed the evolution of the experimental UDF drivers back in the 2.2.x series of Linux kernels, and Ben Fennema seemed to have both read and write support working. He claimed to be able to write to a CD-RW in UDF format, and I tried his drivers with my DVD-RAM drive with some measure of success. Recently, I installed SuSE Linux 7.1 on my machine, and discovered that the DVD-RAM drive was detected as two different devices, a CD-ROM drive and a "CD writer." OK, well, we'll forgive that little transgression. What's interesting is that inserting a DVD-RAM cartridge with data on it will in fact yield positive results when mounted. So clearly, the 2.4.0 kernel has some UDF support in it. (Unless this is a case where SuSE threw in support on a whim.) But I can only mount UDF volumes read-only. What's the point of a DVD-RAM drive under Linux if you can't write to it? A visit to Ben's page showed that little progress has been made recently, and there are no patches for the 2.4 series kernels. Can anyone comment on UDF support in the current Linux kernel, and how it's progressing? Alternately, are there perhaps some other drivers I'm unaware of which allow write support?"

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.

hohosforbreakfast writes "According to CNN, NASA launched the largest single-cell, fully-sealed balloon ever from Australia. This thing is supposed to be as large as a football (American) stadium once it's fully inflated, and flies 20 miles high. It'll circumnavigate the globe and then be landed by remote control in Australia. It looks like this flight is a proof-of-concept, but more flights, lasting 100 days each, are planned. Looks like an interesting alternative to satellites for certain observations. The official site is here."

Brew Bird writes "Qwest explains how they handle the various issues that crop up being a large ISP/Backbone Provider. They've got the presentations setup in a nice little website." It's very *BSD focused, since I believe that's mostly what Qwest runs but the presentations are interesting in the scaling issue - what do you do with that much data and that many machines?