Slashdot Mirror

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.

VirtualAdept writes: "The candidates' views came out in the debate last night on the issue of Internet content. Essentially it boils down to the fact that Bush favors putting a filter on all computers paid for by public money (libraries, schools, etc) and Gore favors ISPs having a 'parents' protection page every time 95 percent of the pages come up' as well as 'a feature that allows parents to automatically check, with one click, what sites your kids have visited lately.' The relevant quotes are on the third page of the Posts's debate coverage, about 1/4 of the way down on my window. Here is the start of the Washington Posts's debate coverage." Very few issues hit as close to home as this one.

tsetem asks: "We have an application where we have to deliver 7 PC's running Linux, all capable of doing higher-end OpenGL Accelerated graphics, being rack mountable, and being able to fit into a trailer. My plan was to get either a 1U or 2U system, or a complete PCB with a decent graphics card on it. I've been looking all over the Web, and on various websites to see if there are any Slimline PCs that are capable of running high-end Video Cards (like Matrox, 3dfx, or NVidia). All of the systems I've seen are the Intel, C&T, or some other chip which is fine & dandy for 2D, but 3D acceleration isn't there. Has anyone run across a 1U or 2U system, with a high-end video chip built into it, or with an AGP slot so I can use my own?"

Joe Moloughney was the first of several folks to point out that an emergency hearing is scheduled for 19:30GMT (3:30 Washington time) regarding disclosure of information about the FBI's Carnivore data surveillance system. The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) filed suit (pdf) and were granted the hearing because their request for details on how Carnivore works (under the Freedom of Information Act) have not yet been acted upon. [Updated 11:45GMT by t] voodoogumbo writes with an updated from Fox News that "[t]he courts declined to unwrap Carnivore."

one2boo writes: "I guess watching countless hours of Star Trek has paid off for Mounir Laroussi, an electrical and computer engineer at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Va. Space.com writes: 'Laroussi has literally put plasma on the table: devising an apparatus that creates a mini-plasma inside a Plexiglas cube by passing an electric current through helium gas via specially calibrated electrodes.' This advance in 'Plasma Shields' will allow the shielding and cloaking of satellites and spacecraft. Low-temperature plasmas could one day also make possible an entire new generation of miniature lasers and ultra-low-energy fluorescent light tubes. You can read more on this story here." And for some reason, the relatively low power requirements remind of me of the guts of the Improbability Drive.

Goat Milk? asks: "I was just wondering if someone knew why on most electronic devices it states that it must not create unwanted interference, but also say they must accept any unwanted interference. Why must they accept it? Who does it benefit for my hardware to accept interference?"

Vantage asks: " A recent project of mine has run into a snag. I am looking for something that would alow me to extend the reach of some phone lines out to the parking spaces of a truck stop. www.smartrunk.com almost does this, but the cost is very high. Around $50,000. Does Slashdot know of any better solutions?"

Cliff Martin writes: "zap2it.com has a story mentioning that there are several candidates for Mulder's replacement. Mulder will only be appearing in 11 episodes in season eight." OK, normally I wouldn't mention something like this, but one of the names on their list of folks who've tried out for the part is... Bruce Campbell? I don't envy Carter these days: no matter what he does, the fans are gonna be pissed. Personally I'm happy that there's gonna at least be another season of the show!

Davor Buvinic asks: "In my spare time I like to study about GUIs. Recently,I was amazed with the new design that I saw in the previews of the future MacOS X, until I discovered in theWeb that things like file dialogs attached to windows dated from the earliest prototypes from the Apple Lisa (July 1981). My question is: Is there any news in GUI design? The newest design I probed was Rob Pike's ACME user interface for programmers. Is anybody (individual or research center) working in a new GUI design? I mean a GUI for the mainstream, no immersive virtual 3D environments, that probably need a powerful Silicon Graphics to run." Have we done as much with the GUI as we possibly can, or are there other reasons behind the lack of technical innovation in most desktops?

macsen writes " Yet another company gives into Chipzilla's memory mongers, and it doesn't bode well. Hitachi appears to be going for an upfront settlement, and an agreement to drop litigation between the company and Rambus. Two companies in less than a week, and the Third Law of Thermodynamics begins to take hold. See what Tom's Hardware has to say." Check out a more informational original link. This is most ungood - see the first folding, as done by Toshiba last week.

Chip asks: "Many moons ago ('85) I started a sports publication and we have been moderately successful. We finally put the entire site on the Web in '95 & have learned a little as we went along. It was much more expensive than we ever imagined & frankly we lost money keeping the site up & maintained every month. One of my subscribers introduced us to banner advertising (Flycast, DC, Burst) about nine months ago and we thought it was a God-send...at first. Now I have people complaining all the time since my site doesn't load as fast, sometimes kicks people off, and so on. I don't know what to do or who to call, every ad agency and ISP we use blames someone else. Can someone refer me to an ad agency (or software that I can use to do it myself) that delivers ads that don't slow my site down or ruin the experience for my readers? I desperately need the revenue generated but can't stand the 24/7 headaches. I know this may seem juvenile to all you "experts" but I have no clue how to fix it and don't want to go back to losing money on my site. Suggestions?"

Rob Polyn sent in a story about a new 18" LCD screen using DTI to simulate 3D. An excerpt describes the technique: "The second approach to true 3D animation is known as autostereoscopy (which DTI monitors utilize). In this method, two solid and unyielding images are produced for the user to view. These images are merged together, and if viewed by one eye, will appear to be two overlapping images, which don?t quite merge together correctly. However, when viewed with two eyes, autostereoscopy can produce vivid lifelike 3D images."

slashdoter writes: "Looks like Intel is giving up the ID number thing on the CPU. They will still have it on the PIII but the Willamette will be like the older PII. " Guess the boycott over the fiasco is at an end. Cool that Intel listens to consumers.

Matt Lupfer writes, "According to CNET, MaxSpeed, a California-based networked cash register manufacturer used at places such as Little Caesars, Goodyear Tire, CVS Drugstores and Harley-Davidson, will begin moving its product line to Linux-based systems. [MaxSpeed CEO Wie Ching] says, 'Linux is the wave of the future. And you can't beat the price.'"

lyonsj writes "NPR's Science Friday show is discussing technology patents today; it sounds like this one is going to be well worth a listen. They'll be discussing Jeff Bezos' letter about patent reform, and the bar's reaction to that letter (which everyone should read). Call in and talk about tech patents with a law professor, a guy from the USPTO, and the chairman of Aurigin Systems. " Check out NPR's website for radio stations, and you can grab the archive of the show later on.

DoenerMord writes "There's an interesting new piece which describes the story behind Apple's doomed pre-Mac system, the Lisa (aren't there thousands of these buried in a landfill somewhere?). It covers the UI, which influenced the original Mac, and just about every other GUI since. It also discusses a bit of the controversial Xerox fiasco. I especially like the comparative OS X Aqua pic at the bottom of the screenshots page. The more things change, the more they stay the same..." Update: 02/13 07:21 by E : The site is up again. Enjoy it while it lasts.

DoenerMord writes "There's an interesting new piece which describes the story behind Apple's doomed pre-Mac system, the Lisa (aren't there thousands of these buried in a landfill somewhere?). It covers the UI, which influenced the original Mac, and just about every other GUI since. It also discusses a bit of the controversial Xerox fiasco. I especially like the comparative OS X Aqua pic at the bottom of the screenshots page. The more things change, the more they stay the same..." Update: 02/13 07:21 by E : The site is up again. Enjoy it while it lasts.

Jenny Stevens writes "A group of courageous third graders and their science teacher have decided to try to correct "errors" by the mighty Smithsonian Institution. They are trying to give proper credit to Nikola Tesla (he is my favorite scientist of all time) and his inventions. They have started a campaign and have mailed hundreds of executives of major American corporations asking for donations to their campaign. They have even received a donation from the CEO of Sony Corp. in Japan. To read more, check their Web page. For an intro to Tesla and his contributions check this page."

Lockle writes "A new super explosive has been invented at the University of Chicago. It's based on an existing explosive molecule called "Cubane" but it has oxygen and nitrogen bonded to it for a bigger boom. It's called Octanitrocubane. The news release can be found at Angewandte Chemie International Edition which is a German chemistry magazine (page is in English). More detailed info about Cubane, Octanitrocubane's predecessor, can be found at a site devoted to it."

e4 writes "Remember the Slashdot article last summer on The Hacker's Diet? Well, it looks like John Walker finally gave up on maintaining his Excel spreadsheet tools. Instead, he's written a Palm-based implementation of his "Eat Watch" to make this stuff more convenient. But even if you're not ready to hack your own body (or if you don't have a Palm), the page is worth a look just to get some vintage anti-MS ranting, like 'that ever steepening spiral into the foul pit of intellectual corruption from the days of "386 Enhanced Mode" to the era of the talking paper clip.' "

Chops-Frozen-Water writes "Your horoscope for next year can be found on Salon. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll say, "Hey! I resemble that!" And remember, The Stars Are Right. " Just for the record, I am an Aries.

markhb writes "Peanuts creator Charles M. Schulz will retire to concentrate on his recovery from colon cancer. According to the announcement, the final new daily will run January 3rd, 2000; the final new Sunday page will run February 13. Following those dates, the strip will go into reruns from 1974. After 50 years of the strip, I think he's earned his rest. Godspeed, Sparky."

gub writes "Cadillac DeVille DHS and DTS 2000 models now have available Night Vision, a driver enhancement system giving you an extended view of the road ahead. Infrared technology detects thermal energy of objects beyond the range of your headlamps or hidden behind the glare of oncoming lights. The thermal images are superimposed via a HUD on your windshield. "

Tro^ble sent us an article over at ZD Net that talks about the recent Corel Fiasco that was originally covered by us yesterday. The major point is that they seem to be trying to stick to the non GPL license claiming that the release is "Beta" and therefore "Internal" so it doesn't violate anything. Insert irritated remarks here.

Wee asks: "I've got a need to monitor a bunch of Sun Solaris boxes worldwide for various load statistics. Things I need to see are disk I/O, CPU usage, RAM usage, IP traffic, etc. I need reports by the hour, day, week, month and year (as near real-time as possible). The reports have to customizable. I don't have a GUI running, so these stats need to be compiled from the console, and remotely. I can't figure out how to log system/network/load/usage statistics without loading the server in doing so. All the packages I've found so far are either limited or not appropriate in some way. I'd really like to hear how to monitor something without affecting the monitored thing. Since I need pretty precise numbers this is kinda important. I'm sure there's something somewhere that does what I need, but I can't seem to find it. If I have to use multiple tools and collate data then I will, but this wouldn't be ideal. "

Sit back and get jiggy with tonights Quickies: First up, jamiemccarthy sent us a Magic 8-Ball that claims to be operated by Legos. And if you're into those remote control legos, Paddy noted that there is new stuff on the lego website. Todays stranges item comes from Chris Henesy who sent us official NASA procedure for Viking Raids. Michael Van Vertloo sent us linkage to a webcam from the 6th floor of the Texas School Book Depositoryso you conspiracy theorists can keep an eye on it. Bogatyr noted that there now is actually a website selling stuff from the matrix. No, not the minigun, but sunglasses and stuff. tj2sent us linkage to an interview where George Lucas blaims the internet for Jar Jar sucking so badly. Mike sent us a page that tracks Strange things sold on ebay. Finally, markhb sent us a Washington Post profile of Marc Andreeson where he talks about assorted things, and even plugs Slashdot as one of his favorite sites (thanks Marc!) And finally, to bookend this Fresh block of quickies, harb sent us lyrics to the classic (cough) Will Smith Song "Men in Black" for Linux geeks.

Jeff Brubaker asks: "I've always wanted to have it so that when I hit the reset button on my computer it would run "restart". I do not have a clue as how to do this and was wondering if it is even possible." This has the added advantage of allowing you to cleanly shut down the machine if you lose complete control over the console. Definitely a good thing.

Peter Hernberg writes "Linuxtoday has a interesting little tidbit from Linus about 2.3. " Talks about the last fixes in the 2.2.8 patch as well as what is happening first in the 2.3.0 series. And just a note to help curb future flamage directed towards me and my mediocre website from appearing on the kernel mailing lists: 2.3.x is the devel series kernels. Don't touch them unless you are a kernel developer, a mental patient (or both)

Jump Suit Jesse writes "It's been a long time in the making, but Be, Inc. may finally be going public. It should be interesting to see how this IPO fares before the alleged Red Hat IPO. Perhaps this cash infusion will be used for a nice propaganda campaign. "

Things have been a bit crazy: server troubles, spent some quality time in the ER after the gf got in accident (she's fine), and unusually stressful 'biz stuff (note:in utopia everyone pays their bills ontime instead of leaving us with a nearly empty checking account, a massive looming bandwidth bill, and all these unpaid invoices? I seem to be balding at an accelerated rate :) As for the images on port 81 of flotsam, I'm sorry about that- those of you behind firewalls will be glad to know that the new server will be in soon and hopefully the dust can settle. Allright, some quickies already: Toddius Maximus wrote in to tell us that Performance Computing has started a bi-monthly Linux Section Anthony Fuentes sent us an Interview with John Carmack webslacker sent us a nice little article on Pixar if you're curious what Steve Jobs' other company is up to. Wouldn't be quickies without Star Wars: James McP sent us linkage to a wired story about a Star Wars fan site featuring toy based mini movies, webslacker noted the new 12" Star Wars figures, and Dave Lowe sent us Star Wars Parody Music More cool movie stuff: patowic noted that Bruce Cambell (of Army of Darkness/Evil Dead fame) has his own web page, which features a sound bite archive And some Slashdot media sightings: Duke of URL noted that the recent Katz/Littleton stories got a mention on Suck. RKemp noted that The Economist noticed too. nene noted that an article about Slashdot appeared in Der Standard (although, with a name like that, its no surprise that it ain't English :)

Peter Hernberg writes "We, it looks like someone has found another exploit to get your PIII ID. The new story is here.. " Cyrix and AMD are looking shinier each day.

This one is a doosy. I've received various submissions from people who were looking for information on how to make their Linux box into an answering machine. I've also received submissions asking about Voice Synthesis and Speech-To-Text. I have to admit I haven't found much information on either while browsing on the net, so I'm turning the question over to you folks. However I wonder if there isn't a issue hidden here? Can Linux be used as an Interractive Voice Response(IVR) platform? If not, why not? First off, let's NOT forget the actual questions:

Metiu and Sri both want to know if a Linux box with a voice modem can be used as an answering machine.

Gextyr is looking for information on Voice Synthesis packages that are available for Linux.

This Clan AC Member wants to know if there are any applications or APIs for Linux that deal with Speech-To-Text or Text-To-Speech.

Lastly, there have been quite a few submissions asking whether or not Linux can be used as a demand fax server. Can it?

If Linux can be used for all of the things above, what's stopping it from performing as an IVR system? IVR systems are simply systems designed to use a telephone as the computer interface (using both touch tones and voice). IVR systems are used everywhere, from your voice mail, to ordering systems, and corporations are adopting more and more IVR systems for various tasks.

I've seen IVR implemented on DOS systems but most of these have moved to NT. What's preventing Linux from operating in this market? Are there existing IVR projects in progress, or is this another area where Linux falls behind?

This Monday, AMD will unveil the K6-3 at 400 and 450 MHz. The chip will have an on-chip 256k L2 cache, and will go in existing Super 7 motherboard. The chip will probably top out at 500 MHz shortly, but the chip should be produced into Y2K. The chip reputedly performs like Pentium *3* of equivalent clock, or even outperforms it with enough cache. People like me have a decision to make - I have a K6-2 333 with 1MB of L2 cache, and need to decide whether or not I should save up for a K7 (hopefully SMP...) or just go for it and buy a K6-3. Thank William Rhodes for the heads up

This is a bit different for Slashdot, but I wanted to post it anyway. Matt Terich writes " A few months back I was guilty of slamming the mp3 community for it's (stereotypical) lack of respect of an artist's copyright. You see, I'm in an unsigned rock band and well... was being extremely defensive (mostly against the "I can pirate music because CD's are too expensive" crowd.) Of course, I was flamed... and flamed... and flamed. There were, however, a few constructive posts from /.ers. After some serious thought I posted a few of our tunes in mp3 format at our site , and then put them up at mp3.com (to give it a try and see what happened.) Now we're getting email from people all over the country asking us for CD's and asking us to tour through their necks of the woods. It's nuts I tells ya. Anyway, just wanted to give shouts out to the site. We'll see what happens."

This is a bit different for Slashdot, but I wanted to post it anyway. Matt Terich writes " A few months back I was guilty of slamming the mp3 community for it's (stereotypical) lack of respect of an artist's copyright. You see, I'm in an unsigned rock band and well... was being extremely defensive (mostly against the "I can pirate music because CD's are too expensive" crowd.) Of course, I was flamed... and flamed... and flamed. There were, however, a few constructive posts from /.ers. After some serious thought I posted a few of our tunes in mp3 format at our site , and then put them up at mp3.com (to give it a try and see what happened.) Now we're getting email from people all over the country asking us for CD's and asking us to tour through their necks of the woods. It's nuts I tells ya. Anyway, just wanted to give shouts out to the site. We'll see what happens."

Alexander writes " You may have seen folks putting their Mac 128 or SE to use as a Macquarium. The problem is, those fish have to deal with that old motorola 68000 cpu. But no longer. Now your fish can "think different"(tm) faster than ever before! Christian Salas shows us just how easy it is to install the Macquarium G3 upgrade. Check out the benchmark scores! No mention of whether the Macquarium G3 can run LinuxPPC fish, though... " Good for a chuckle. I want one.

Troy Baer writes "There's a good article on CNN.com about the Linux Doc Project and getting help for Linux. It's honest and largely positive." This is excellent mainstream coverage.

Alex Tosheff writes "Hey, came home today and my Rio MP3 player was waiting for me on the doorstep! It's smaller than I was expecting (about 2x the size of a pager but weighs only 1/2 as much). It comes with a grey parallel pass-through with a pcmcia-type connection socket on top. It really feals like a toy :) Although the pictures have shown a fold-up pair of headphones, it really comes with the ear-bud types and a note explaining the change. As for the quality, it depends of course on the bit-rate, but the songs (ahem) I own on my system are sampled at 128Kbps and sound way better than a tape. There is an interesting chart on the box thaty I will scan and post if anyone is interested..." Those buggers look pretty sweet. Still not enough memory, but its a good step in the right direction.

Troy Baer writes "There's a news article on Dr. Dobbs Tech NetCast that sheds new light on the Beowulf debacle. It's at This article seems to be unique of all the ones I've seen in that the author appears to have interviewed Don Becker about it. As many on Slashdot have feared, it looks like the export restrictions on supercomputers may be to blame for the Beowulf software being taken down. ". They linked us back... through TCWWW^TM

Wintermute wrote in to tell everyone that it is possible to get StarCraft to run under Wine . In a word Un-be-f**king-believable . Battle.net apparently doesn't work, but single player play is fine. I haven't even seen StarCraft yet, even though my Room Mate has a CD. I think installing wine just became a priority :) Check out This Page for details on how to make it happen.