Slashdot Mirror

matt writes "InfoWorld reports: Marriott aims to provide WLAN (wireless LAN) access at 400 hotels in Germany, the U.K. and the U.S., the company said. It will collaborate with wireless service provider STSN to offer the service in hotel lobbies, meeting rooms, restaurants and other public spaces, complementing its current in-room high-speed access."

ChrisGoodwin asks: "Why do geeks support MPAA and RIAA? Here on Slashdot, the talk is all about how evil the film and record companies are. But when the next Star Wars or Matrix or Lord of the Rings comes out, it's all about camping out to get tickets. According to RIAA's web site, member companies distribute 90% of the legitimate sound recordings in the United States; chances are, if you've ever bought music, you've given them money. (Take a look at their list of members.) Heck, most of the film companies own, are owned by, or share a corporate parent with a record company, and many of us get our internet access from part of the MPAA/RIAA conglomerate. So why is it? Why do we continue to buy their product? Why are we giving them money so that they can harass us? Why hasn't there been a call for a boycott of the record and film industries?" This is in the FAQ, but this is certainly a discussion worth having. With the pervasiveness of media in our society, for some it is not as easy as "boycott" or "no boycott", and it may be unfair to the artists we like for us to do so, and as Big Media diversifies, a boycott on movies and music may still not be enough. So do you feel a boycott of mass media will help matters, or would such be counter-productive in some way?

Lemuel writes "Tivo has finally pre-announced its music and photo pictures for the Tivo 2. Users will be able to play MP3s and view photos that come from their computer. It will also be possible to program the Tivo via a web site. An official announcement is due in January. There will be revenue associated with these items. Only the remote programming sounds interesting to me, but I'm glad for anything that would keep Tivo afloat."

aka pseudonym writes "Remember the game Dragon's Lair, the laserdisc based game from the 80's? Well, it is now out for the X-box and other game systems. You can check it out at www.dragonslair3d.com. This looks like the first game that supports the HDTV 1080i resoloution the X-box is capable of. There is a review of the game here. A related slashdot link is here. Aaahhh memories, at least now I don't have to drop a full dollar into the machine every time I want to play this addictive game."

Anonymous Coward writes "According to this BusinessWeek article you can now get your MTV a la carte. I having been waiting for years to buy my cable by the channel, and this article indicates that my cable company is now legally required to let me. I am going to call Time Warner tomorrow with my list just to see what they say. Anyone out there doing this now?"

WallytheWalrus writes "This NewScientist.com article discusses the proposed next generation of telescopes and space stations. The concept presented with little fanfare by the NASA Exploration Team (NEXT) consists of placing a space station about 5/6ths of the way to the moon at one of a handful of local Lagrangian Points. This station would act as a springboard for constructing new telescopic mirrors, maintaining the telescopes that use them, and as a haven for future manned exploration missions. If only NEXT's budget was more than $4 million a year...."

James asks: "My employer is a small consulting firm. Our owners have always tried to sell us as a solutions provider and tried to land project based contracts. Currently though our only truly successful business model is staff augmentation. I feel that our main failures in project based contracts is in our bidding and software development process. Our sales staff always seems to oversell our capabilities (not technically, time and money...I cannot squeeze 70 hours of work into one day). I want to better formalize our processes and was looking into the IEEE/EIA 12207 standard. Has anyone gone though the pains of formalizing to this extent their software development life cycle? If so, are there any tips, good resources to look to for insights?"

crwulff writes "The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle today is carrying a story about Kodak's newest OLED display venture. Unfortunately only a prototype to look at here but at least it is on the way in a couple years." It's worth it just for the photograph. Maybe best to hold off on a plasma TV ...

DingleyDon asks: "I am currently administering a growing Unix environment and am interested in better documenting changes such as upgrades, software installs, configuration changes, etc. to the hardware and software on those servers from a SysAdmin's point of view. Obviously, this could be done with something as simple as a text file stored on each system, or a spreadsheet, or any other number of ways. But what I envision is a database app (web-enabled) where I can easily keep all of this information in a centralized location and query on the history of any given server. Is there any such package out there? (free=even better!) What do other SysAdmins use to document changes made to their environment?"

AdmiralKit writes "Ever wonder how much damage some users can inflict on their computers? This site documents the cream of the crop of parts that have been returned because they are "defective" or "broken." Pretty amazing what people can do to computers in the middle of the information age."

SpiceWare writes "In the summer of '21, Philo T. Farnsworth was struck by an inspiration after plowing a field. He transmitted the first television image six years later on September 7, 1927."

TibbonZero asks: "I am using Digidesign's Digi001 audio interface with Pro-Tools 5.3.1 (an industry standard recording application), but this requires using Windows XP. I was wondering if there have been any attempts at writing drivers that would add Linux support to the soundcard? The Digi001 is a PCI based soundcard, with a breakout box. It provides 18 channels of I/O; 8 Analogue, 8 ADAT Optical, and 2 SPDIF as well as Midi I/O. There is a large users's group that supports most issues with the interfaces, and software, but few of them have the time or skills to program drivers, there is a wealth if information to be found there however. Are there any Slashdotters who are into audio and are willing to help out this community by programming drivers for it. Even getting a two channel stereo driver would be a great start (there is one available for Windows if reverse engineering it would help)." As an add-on to the question: What multi-I/O cards already have Linux support, and what do you think of them?

Rimbo asks: "I'm building a computer for a friend, who has three major requirements from his system: He wants an Athlon with a 333MHz FSB, he wants absolutely no Microsoft software anywhere near it, and he needs the ability to read and edit Chinese. I imagine Red Flag Linux has great Chinese support, but is it as easy to use as a desktop OS as Mandrake or Red Hat? How easy is Chinese text editing and entry under the major distributions? What "office" software for Linux is good for editing Chinese? Thanks!"

deitrahs writes "I came across this, and wept with joy. It's an Athlon-based, dual-head laptop. Yes, that's right - dual-head LAPTOP. Dual 13.3" displays. And it folds up like an old-school Transformer. Now I just need to find a buyer for this spare kidney so I can afford it - $5 thousand - but the expressions on people's faces at LAN parties will be OH so worth it."

Rashan writes: "Video Business Online is reporting that Circuit City is becoming the first of the mass merchants to state its intent to discontinue sales of the aging video format."

Slashback tonight with more on deep linking, wireless access during Spider-Man, abusing terrycloth, Linux on the mainframe and more. Read on below to find the details. Update: 05/15 15:00 GMT by T : (Note the two updates below re: Towel Day, Observed.)

They're also good for drying off after bathing. Snitty writes "Douglas Adams passed away a little over a year ago now, and as tradition will soon dictate the first Thursday after May 11th every year is International Towel Day. This happens to be this Thursday, so make sure you all show up to the 12:01 am showing of Attack of the Clones with your favorite lightsaber and a towel. Always know where your towel is."

Update: 05/15 00:11 GMT by T : Hmmm -- this seems to clash with a link another reader submitted, which suggests "the last Friday of every May," which this year would be the 31st.

Update: 05/15 15:00 GMT by T : D Clyde Williamson writes: "Towel Day (since I'm the guy who started it) is on May 25th every year." So ... it's not a portable feast?

Three guesses where they each get that money from. mblase writes "CNet, among others, informed its readers that Macromedia successfully countersued Adobe for patent infringement to the tune of $4.9 million, almost double the $2.8 million Adobe recently won from Macromedia. The article notes Macromedia has another patent suit against Adobe going to court in June 2003."

Listening material when Prairie Home Companion is over. Ender, Duke_of_URL writes "The second portion of Rep. Boucher's interview is up (MP3). This has been discussed previously on Slashdot."

They're also opposed to front doors. dringess writes "Wired has yet another article about deep linking. This one has some fun lawyer rebuttals. I guess I am deep linking right now!"

I especially like this quote: "... but this would set a terrible precedent implying that links have to have a certain amount of ads."

Keeps popcorn out of your keyboard, at least. smashed writes: "After being slashdotted and geekaustin'd and touted for being the first theater with wireless access .... I went to see Spider-Man tonight at the Alamo Drafthouse North in Austin. Apparently you can't have 'electronic devices on' during the feature. I was warned if I didn't shut down my laptop I had to leave by some girl that worked for the theater. The world's first Cyber-Theater my ass. Nice try, but apparently wireless users are absolutely not welcomed there when a movie is playing. I'm very disappointed. I couldn't even have my PocketPC with wireless NIC on while the movie was on. Was I taking off down the runway on an airplane? What's the point?"

Wouldn't you like a mainframe in the closet? Writing in regards to this posting on Linux on mainframes, rudy writes: "Your reference was to the first one in the series, the second one has been up for about a week and the third, and last, one in the series will go on late this week or early next."

CoffeeNowDammit writes "Care to watch other people play Pong? You may be able to do so with the debut of G4, a new US cable channel (via participating Comcast cable providers) devoted entirely to video-gaming. G4 will air a marathon of Pong.. 24 hours a day.. see ball, see ball bounce.. for an entire week. Story is here . What a country." This has got to be a joke, right? A fake press release? Please, tell me it's a joke.

hyrdra writes: "This story on CNN seems to indicate the intentions of the nine remaining states in the ongoing anti-trust case against Microsoft: to produce a stripped down version of Windows that will allow 3rd party vendors to insert components such as browsers, media players, and IM clients. While this may not be news, Microsoft's defense is. Microsoft defends the solution by remarking Windows was not designed to be a modular system, and the current operating system is highly dependant on core technologies like IE and Windows Media Player. Removing them would result in a slower, much-less user friendly Windows that would be a support nightmare."

krugdm writes "Gamespot is reporting that The Sims has now sold 6.3 million copies and has overtaken Myst as the best-selling PC game ever." My Sims lie dormant awaiting a wine that can breath life into them once again. I just have been too busy to reboot.

tacocat writes "An article in the The Christian Science Monitor talks about the changing use of the Internet. They cite a report from The Pew Internet and American Life Project that talks about people Getting Serious Online. The study is continuation of people they have been following already and found that people are using the Internet more often for serious matters and issue of utility, rather then just for fun."

rtphokie writes "Apple is doing something it swore it wouldn't do when it began opening its 28 retail stores according to a C|Net article: stocking its own shelves first. The author made random calls to Apple stores and Apple retailers to support the claim."

rtphokie writes: "C|Net is reporting that Amazon.com and Barnes&Noble.com have settled the over 2 year old lawsuit over the expedited ordering process known as '1-Click' ordering on Amazon's site and 'Express Checkout' on Barnes and Noble's. Details of the settlement are (of course) unavailable."

WallytheWalrus writes "Today's Minneapolis Star-Tribune is carrying an article about the installation of a wireless network throughout Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, the first of five such airports across the nation to get a uniform wireless network system. The system, which cost only $250,000 to install, will be free to business travellers passing through the airport (who have the correct hardware), and available through a number of kiosks throughout the airport. One can only hope this is the first step towards bigger and bolder public wireless network projects."

Ardax writes: "Looks like Borland is going to be releasing C++ for Linux, according to this InfoWorld article. We'll be seeing more details at LinuxWorld in NY next week. The article doesn't mention whether this will be C++ Builder for Linux, or 'just' a command line compiler. No matter what, this is a sweet thing. I wonder how it will compare to gcc? (I wonder if it will be able to compile the kernel? :-) ) If it's the whole C++ Builder shebang, I wonder if there will be an Open Edition? Borland's Community site has a blurb about this. There's no comments at the Borland community yet, but some interesting commentary might pop up there."

ImaLamer writes: "A C|Net News story is reporting that HP has announced they have made breakthroughs that 'help turn out powerful computers that fit on the head of a pin with room to spare.' Also in the article, that the patent announced Wednesday, will produce no two chips that are the same. 'Each one will be customized for a particular function,' says Stanley Williams, the chemist on the team. The work was done by himself, Phil Kuekes, a computer architect, and James Heath, a UCLA professor. The chips use nanowires and the chips are said to be even less than the size of bacterium. Sounds cool enough. The biggest part of the breakthrough isn't the chips themselves, but that HP plans to be able to 'fix' chips which come out with imperfections, thus saving money on an already cheap process."

WallytheWalrus writes: "According to this article from today's Minneapolis Star-Tribune, the Minnesota State Commerce Department is investigating the fairness of Qwest DSL subscribers being switched over to MSN (as a part of the two companies' new "friendly strategic alliance"). A group of DSL service competitors have alledged that it's unfair that Qwest subscribers aren't being told of other ISPs available, and that if they do switch to MSN, switching out is overly complex and expensive. Can you smell the legal precdent abrew?"

rtphokie writes "The oft - rumored expansion of Microsoft's Xbox from a gaming console to a more full featured entertainment hub is taking a little more shape. A C|Net article tells of a HomeStation device which is claimed to be slated for a fall release. In addition to Xbox game compatibility and DVD functionality, it is reported to have TiVo/UltimateTV like PVR functionality as well as WebTV like email and web surfing capabilities. This "report" comes on the heels of the announcement of the Moxi Digital set-top MoxiMedia Center which was named "Best of Show" at the recent Consumer Electronics Show."

rtphokie writes: "The flurry of announcements coming form the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas has started with RealNetworks ' anouncement that it had struck deals to include its technology in an array of microchips and devices, including TiVo PVRs. This is the latest move in an effort to expand from the desktop to consumer devices."

brett42 writes "Some students at Berkeley wrote a python program that connects to the Gnutella network and maps out connections between nodes in real time. " I gotta say thats pretty smooth. Hopefully future gnutella clients will incorporate something like this just for the time wasting potential of watching the graph wiggle while seeing what porn others are searching for.

Hollinger asks: "Earlier this summer, I bought a brand-new Samsung 8500 PCS phone. It looks great, sounds great (more on that in a sec) and is very small. However, I have one problem. I thought that my new apartment was in the middle of a PCS deadzone. However, friends with other model phones (less expensive, mind you) can get a good, clear signal. This leads me to wander about the signal strength of my own phone. I've been shopping around to see if anyone has reviewed any of the 'Internal Antenna Boosters' that I've seen ads for, but I can't find any. Has anyone on Slashdot tried one of these? Do they work, and if so, how well?"

LordDavon asks: "I have been trying to find a good video conferencing solution for Linux. The main issue is that my family and many friends are subjects under the Microsoft tyranny and use Microsoft NetMeeting. Although it is a nicely featured application (Whiteboard, VNC, File Transfer, etc...), I am failing to find a comparable application for Linux. Is there a single, low cost, multi-platform application that can compete?" While I'm not so sure about the existence of a whole suite of Open Source applications that can compete with NetMeeting, are there apps that are usable solely for video conferencing? We touched on this exact question two years ago, we also talked about shared whiteboards as well, although a bit more recently. Are any of you out there using Linux (or any Unix clone for that matter) in Video Conferencing? If so, how?

kwertii writes: "The Washington Post reports new evidence that there is a black hole with the mass of 2.6 million suns at the center of our galaxy. The Chandra X-Ray Observatory happened to be looking at the presumed site of the hole at the moment it absorbed a comet, blasting x-rays off into space as a byproduct. The implication is that the Milky Way is slowly spiraling down into a giant galactic drain..."

kdgarris writes: "Kohan: Immortal Sovereigns, a real-time strategy game is now available for Linux from Loki. The announcement is not yet on their website, however. A demo was made available earlier this month."

Troy Baer writes: "SGI and the Ohio Supercomputer Center (OSC) have announced the installation of the first cluster using Itanium processors. The system consists of 73 SGI 750 nodes, each with two Itanium 733MHz procs and 4GB of memory, connected by Myrinet 2000 and Ethernet. Software includes Linux/ia64, SGI's ia64 compiler suite, MPICH/ch_gm, OpenPBS, and Maui Scheduler."

jeffredd writes: "Two researchers at Cornell are predicting high-temperature, nearly resistance free, superconducters made of an exotic combination of silver and fluorine. The main thrust of their theory seems to revolve around the fact that even though fluoroargentates have not been found to have superconducting properties, they are very similar to oxocuprates which set the high-temp record back in 1993. This is for the hard-core physics buffs. You can read the details here"

krugdm writes "According to this article, Palm is expected to announce that it will be modifying its OS to run on faster ARM processors instead of the current Motorola Dragonball processor."

Chanc_Gorkon writes "Check this new handheld being released by Toshiba: The Toshiba Genio e550 series will be powered by a 206MHz StrongARM processor, 32MB ROM, 32MB RAM, and a 3.5?? reflection TFT running at 240 x 320 x 16-bit color. The e550 will also support industry standard Compact Flash Type II cards as well as the newest expansion technology, a Secure Digital cards for SD Memory and SDIO cards. The e550 will be 77.5 x 125 x 17.5mm in size, weigh 180grams and run 8 hours on its Lithium-ion battery. And now to the major news about Toshiba's new Pocket PC ... one version of the Genio (the e550/MD) will have an integrated 1GB IBM Microdrive! " Presumably handhelds.org will have a port fairly soon since this is fairly similiar to the iPaq. Especially exciting news about the gigabyte microdrive capable version. Suddenly a handheld usable for more then just a PDA and terminal.

krugdm writes: "NASA will be sending up a robotic spacecraft named "Genesis" which will bring back specks of solar wind in order to study what the solar system may have been like when it was first forming." According to the article, this will be the "first U.S. spacecraft since the Apollo moon ships to return samples from outer space," and the planned recovery involves a Hollywood-sounding helicopter catch of the reentry pod.

NaturePhotog writes: "CNN has an intriguing article on using Playstations running Linux to give people in developing nations access to information on health issues such as AIDS, clean water, etc. Playstations are cheap compared with PCs, hook up to a TV set, they're rugged, and could be hooked up via satellites using Globalstar phones. Ship along some of those low-cost solar panels discussed earlier on /., and you'd have a pretty sweet setup you can use almost anywhere. For serious research, of course..." And as neema points out, Sony isn't the only choice here: "Using the modem port, students from Nagoya University hooked up a homemade IDE board and installed a hard drive. The Dreamcast is running NetBSD for the Dreamcast." Here are the instructions (with schematics) on how to add a hard drive to your Dreamcast.

You may recall that when AOL and Time-Warner were permitted to merge, a few conditions were placed by the FTC. One of them is that AOL must permit a few other ISPs to offer service over all of the cable modems owned by Time-Warner. AOL lied to the regulators and said that "technical difficulties" prevented them from permitting open competition among any ISP that wanted to offer service; instead AOL will carefully choose a grand total of three other ISPs to offer service. Well, they've put in the paperwork - Earthlink, Juno, and High Speed Access Corporation. AOL is of course the nation's largest ISP; Earthlink is second; Juno is third; HSA is another huge cable modem company. AOL has financial dealings with all three - that is, they're already in bed together, partners, not competitors. You can guess that they're going to be competing *wink*wink* fiercely *wink*wink* to offer you the best price {snicker}.

Chanc_Gorkon asks: "anyone know of any EMWIN software for Linux? EMWIN stands for Emergency Managers Weather Information Network. Weathernode is a free as in beer client for windows that can accept this info. EMWIN will pick up National Weather Service alerts usually before the TV and Radio people say anything. I searched both Freshmeat and Google and saw nothing but maybe embryonic projects, not ready even for developer consumption. Further info can be found at the NWS's EMWIN page. It seems, to me, that this would be a nice thing to have on Linux since Weathernode eats resources. This program even can retreive NEXRAD images and animate them."

"One can access this network from a satellite feed using equipment similar to DSS equipment (GOES 8 and 9 transmit this info), via rebroadcast if your locality or local amateur radio rebroadcasts the signal (can be picked up with scanner, and you can feed this thru a TNC, or a soundcard input) or the Internet. "

aaronhaley writes "Reuters is reporting that Vicom will be bringing Robot wars stateside to air on several of their networks. Let's hope it's closer to the real thing that BattleBots is." And lets hope they keep the sportscaster crap to a minimum, and give us more mechanical bits.

z)bandito(_X writes "Hitachi, Ltd. (NYSE: HIT), Shimadzu Corporation, Colorado MicroDisplay, Inc., and Xybernaut Corporation are working on a Wearable Internet Appliance. Looks like it runs Win CE 3.0, but if the price is right it could be a big advance for wearables getting a big manufacturing name like Hitachi in on the game. It's an SH4 processor with Type 2 Compact Flash and an 800x600 display that works with glasses. A good picture of the pretty nice looking device is here, and the specs are here." This looks like a good way to seriously injure yourself.

Chanc_Gorkon asks: "I am in need of a 3270 emulation program for telnetting to a 3270 host. So far the only thing I have found that works well is x3270, but I need a terminal mode emulator that doesn't need X11. Mostly I need this so we can have a S/390 Linux box be able to talk to another VM guest running DOS/VSE, but if it doesn't compile on S/390 it's no big deal either. I tried tn3270, but it's incredibly old and once compiled it segfaults when I press a key after trying to connect to the host. I have also tried 32704.1 and it just plain doesn't work. Anyone know of other options that I haven't tried??"

Vain asks: "I'm a student in Wisconsin who is wondering just where his career path is leading him and needs advice. I'll be graduating with a 2 year degree (in networking) this summer. A few people have suggested that the military is a great place to get not only good pay, but good money for school as well, even if it's just the guard. Should I consider joining the guard, getting a BS or MS through government funding, or stick with my 2 year for now and try to find a place in the area? I guess what I'm looking for is some techies in the military (or out) to give me a few suggestions."

Chris27183 asks: "I'm currently using MySQL with PHP on Linux, and love it very much. I'm very glad to do away with Access in favor of a database based in Unix. However, there is one stipulation. At first glance, there does not appear to be a free report writer (or even a sql to latex translator) like that of access. I'm just trying to do simple things like mailing labels and tabular lists, and it would be a great help to not have to reimport data into access to perform these seemingly simple tasks."

tsetem asks: "My company is a DoD contractor. As such, most of the code we have written in the past, and are currently writing/porting is in Ada. In the past, we have used IDE's ranging from Rational Apex (Not available for Linux yet) to Vi. What I'm wondering is is there a nice & powerful IDE for Linux? So I turn to the Slashdot Community to see who has worked with Ada, and what they feel the best development environment is under Linux. Ada may not be the most popular language, but I'm sure someone has written tools to make working with it that much easier."

"I did run across SNIFF+ and Source-Navigator. SNIFF+ is about $1500, but they appear to be ready to drop Ada support once v4.0 comes out later this month. CAS out of Germany appears to have an Ada parser & object browser to add Ada functionality to Source-Navigator, but I can't get a hold of them to see how much the parser would cost, or even a demo version."

duffbeer703 wrote to us with a ZD story regarding Transmeta's Crusoe speed and benchmarking. As we've heard the benchmarks haven't overwhemled people - but are we measuring things the wrong way? Of course emulation is slower then native chipsets - that's a given - but are the other elements of Crusoe enough to make up for it?

mkcmkc asks: "I've recently switched to my local monopoly (ugh) provider of high-speed Internet access, and discovered that their email reliability is about as good as my previous ISP's--i.e., -not good enough-. Who provides the kind of email drop that Slashdotters would drool over? I want: secure access (SSH+POP, or something as good), drop dead reliability (meaning a setup designed and administered by a sharp crew that really cares), timely status reports on outages, a shell account (accessible via SSH), an organization that has respect for the principles of privacy and liberty, and that will at least consider not just rolling over at the first subpoena (if not before). I'd certainly pay several hundred bucks a year for quality. Any suggestions?"

LLurex writes: "There's a short comment and screenshot on Ian Schmidt's Wine Page about everyone's favourite Windoze Emulator finally running Excel2000 and Word2000 (imho the only really good applications Microsoft ever published)! No more lame excuses, time to switch OS ..." The screenshot of Excel looks pretty much, well, like a screenshot of Excel. With this, two of the most persistent reasons not to run Linux appear to be fading; of course, what's to stop Microsoft from releasing versions that won't work under Wine, ever? That could be a good reason to stick with GNUmeric and pico.