Slashdot Mirror

slaker writes "Salon.com has a review of Bob Young's new book "Under the Radar", as well as some commentary on the spectacle of developers versus business-types." Several interesting comments on the article. Hafta add the book to my TODO queue (course since its behind Snow Crash and The Diamond Age it might be awhile, what with my hours and hours of freetime)

dkm wrote to say that IBM has declared their intention of making the Thinkpad 600E named as Red Hat Linux "compatible". Sounds great, right? Well, the fun part is that while IBM wants to get named compatible, the bloody modem still won't work with Linux. Marvelous-compatible, but not really. Apparently they'll be "taking steps" as time goes on to get the modem working. disclaimer:Hemos owns shares in red hat

Lorgo_Numputz writes "Salon Magazine has an article on an MP3 crackdown in progress, with an interesting stab at a solution. (And RIAA thinks they have it bad in the U.S.). It's not a "crackdown" in the U.S. sense, with lawyers and courts, but rather an appeal to the public's sense of fairness. But it's an interesting tactic, and whether it works or not, it's certainly a nicer way to deal with online music piracy than the RIAA's.

oneeyedman writes "Maybe this will give support to the people who think that Linux is a communist plot. Salon has an item about an article called Anti-Microsoft 'subculture'" that ran in the China Youth Daily. In this reading of the situation, Linux users are angry peasants rising with pitchforks aimed at Microsoft's "hegemony." "

LinOx wrote in to send us a a link to a nice little story about penguin computing. Talks about VC and more. Nice little article.

Kodi wrote in to tell us that MozillaZine is holding a vote for the new Mozilla throbber (free membership required). Also the LinuxWorld Expo call for papers deadline is July 6. They're also doing a $25k award for a community program at the show. hzo wrote in to note that you can now hack furby with your Palm V. cpfeifer has noted a Yoda Got Milk parody. rhet sent us a web based jar-jar-gonizer if you aren't overloaded with the wretched beast. Kurt Weinschenker wrote in to tell us that the 99 Darwin Awards nominees are online. S|ack noted that you can now get adminspotting t-shirts. Scorpeye sent us an article about Bachelors in the Silicon Valley and comments about eligible bachelorettes in NY and LA... hmmm... Finally, some articles about the Andover.Net acquisition of Slashdot: Here's Upside, wired (thanks Evro) Salon (thanks Super_Oogie). There were a few more too, but after I've read two I realize I say pretty much the same stuff each time anyway, so its hardly interesting ;)

spiffy1 writes "A group of Japanese electronics corporations, (Mitsubishi, Sumitomo, and Matsushita) have developed a 5mm by 9mm by 6.5mm robot. These robots will be used to inspect and repair power plants without need for shutdown. They can zoom between tiny pipes and wires at the rate of 2mm per second, lift nearly 1 gram, and link up with other robots to accomplish bigger tasks. "

Andrew Dvorak wrote to us with Andrew Leonard's latest Salon piece about the in-progress Mindcraft II testing. Interesting reading-and the difference between the OSes is evident-Linux sent hacks, MS marketers.

cpt kangarooski writes "Well, an enterrising reporter over at Salon has found that certain blue comments in some Linux source code may make it eligible to be censored in Australia. Take a look here " Mmm...fun with censorship. Congrats go to Jamais Cascio (known as cynical around here), Slashdot reader, and author of the Salon article.

Paul wrote in to point us to the GNU Jobs Page. ^BR wrote in to say that the may issue of Daemon News is out for your BSDies out there, and CaVi wrote in to say that the Linux Gazette is out (sorry that these took so long to announce... moving was a bitch). Bitscape sent us a Salon story about Coding in Vampire Mode. Mikesch noted that www.palmcolors.com is selling colored Palm Pilots rsn. Looking for new backgrounds? President John F. Kennedy wrote in to tell us that the Volume 7 of Propoganda is up. And for those who are curious, he actually did send me beer! robert@budzynski.ddns.org sent us this art gallery with fodder and dayeight sent us a photomosaic picture for you Lara Craft Perverts out there. HighJack noted that the latest version of JWZs X Screensaver distribution contains a new one that looks like those funky falling charachters from The Matrix. And finally for some crazy fun stuff, dave sent us hilarious proof that Star Trek is Satanic, and chrisd sent us one of the best ebay auction items in recent memory. Psst-this is Hemos. It was Rob's birthday on May 10-he thinks he escaped. E-mail him and tell him how much you love him.

Quite a number of people wrote in to alert us to the Salon story about the Mindcraft survey. Andrew Leonard, does a great job of tracing the trail, including the information about how Mindcraft is asking for help from Linus, but is not apparently giving him the information that he needs. Ah, the joys of industry. Mindcraft has agred to re-do the tests, with Linus' help, as aforementioned, but is continuing to be...less then forthcoming about the tests. Meanwhile, Microsoft is trumpeting the original study.

Matt Welsh sent us a link to a Salon story on Why Linux Needs Help. It features a lot of truth, and poses the simple question, can free software geeks write software for dumb users? Has a spiffy penguin graphic and a lot of good points (most of which aren't new to us, but they are well written).

robin sent us a link to an article that says that Richard Stallman might soon be working in the Gates building at MIT. Bill is donating $20e6 to the CS Labs, and the new building is expected to be named after him. The FSF started in the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science, and RMS still works there. "

Sandman wrote in to tell us that this morning Salon has released an article that talks about several Interesting Developments in the Open Source World resulting from the increase in money available to the movement. The most interesting comment is the bit about the colaberative effort between VA, Red Hat and LinuxCare on the new "LinuxSoft" company. Is there a Pink Floyd concert going on outside my window?

kruegz writes "Here's an article in Salon about the new Matt Groening (creater of The Simpsons) animated show on Fox. Futurama t akes place in the year 3000 and has lots of spoofs of sci-fi as well as that Simpsons aesthetic we all know and love. In the year 3000, our era is known as "The Stupid Ages" which sounds about right. " This article is just my excuse to ask what people are thinking of the show? I'm gonna watch it just 'cuz its Groening.

kruegz writes "Here's an article in Salon about the new Matt Groening (creater of The Simpsons) animated show on Fox. Futurama t akes place in the year 3000 and has lots of spoofs of sci-fi as well as that Simpsons aesthetic we all know and love. In the year 3000, our era is known as "The Stupid Ages" which sounds about right. " This article is just my excuse to ask what people are thinking of the show? I'm gonna watch it just 'cuz its Groening.

Richard Finney sent us a link to an interesting story at Salon about Microsoft's PR surrounding the trial. Its a pretty interesting little bit I'd say. Pretty much sums it up- things are going so hot for Bill & Co.

James Green writes "Salon Magazine have published this article on the subject of patents. It discusses the legal issues fairly extensively, talking of what "obvious" can mean, and interviews the owner of the patent for pay-per-view over telecommunications lines. An interesting read, if not earth-shattering stuff. "

Later today, Slashdot will be giving out its awards for the LinuxWorld Expo- brace yourself. To help tide you over, we have several stories about the show. The first is from FWMiller who sent us a Salon Article about the event. TheMystic sent us a yahoo headline page from the show. and Mtn_Dewd sent us a CNN Story and a wired story.

Zippy the Pinhead writes "Salon has responded with Slashdot-like speed to Bruce Perens' announcement with this article. Also, just below that item is an article entitled "Linux bandwagon starts to groan", about the flood(?) of Linux-port annoucements. "

Zippy the Pinhead writes "Salon has responded with Slashdot-like speed to Bruce Perens' announcement with this article. Also, just below that item is an article entitled "Linux bandwagon starts to groan", about the flood(?) of Linux-port annoucements. "

Smack writes "Ebay didn't pick up their Cool Site of the Year award (just like Slashdot). So someone else picked it up for them, and now they're auctioning it off on Ebay itself! The price is already up to $130.00. What beautiful irony..." God bless the Internet. Now I'm beginning to wonder where my CSoTY trophy ended up... Update: 02/03 03:34 by CT : Wired picked up the story a little bit ago. They don't know where our trophy is either *grin*

Kodi writes "Salon Magazine posted an article on the glory associated with contributing to the Linux kernel. " I remember the first time I had a patch accepted into an actual open source project- It's a good fealing. (Equally wierd is installing a distribution and seeing your apps in there, and installing a binary of your own software *grin*). You might enjoy this bit- the kernel definitely has its own super-prestige associated with it.

Kodi writes "Salon Magazine posted an article on the glory associated with contributing to the Linux kernel. " I remember the first time I had a patch accepted into an actual open source project- It's a good fealing. (Equally wierd is installing a distribution and seeing your apps in there, and installing a binary of your own software *grin*). You might enjoy this bit- the kernel definitely has its own super-prestige associated with it.

XBS writes "David Bowie told a British newspaper Thh Guardian that he is for MP3s. Bowie said, it could change the entire idea of what music is -- and that isn't so bad. Bowie's record label may not approve of his public endorsement of the enemy, but he doesn't seem to care. As he writes, "You don't have to stay with a record company forever. I get bored of those interminable situations." You can read more at Salon- it's a little ways down the page, but its worth quick read if you're into Bowie or MP3s.

An anonymous reader wrote in to say that Salon has an article called has Microsoft Peaked? Check it out if you're looking for something to read while all the Christmas Cheer settles into your digestive system.

Vryl sent this latest Salon article our way. It's a well-written story about Google.com a new search engine, brought to us by a couple of Stanford grad students (sound familar?). However, the cool part-besides being run off of a Linux box-is how well it searches, and the relevancy of the returned pages. Check it out.

StirFry writes "Today's Salon includes this piece detailing the subtle and sometimes not-so-subtle spin Microsoft gives to computer history/events in Microsoft Bookshelf 98. Relevant quote: "The launch of Microsoft's magazine Slate is considered to be worthy of an entry in 1996; a brief listing of major nonfiction literary releases for 1995 concludes with Bill Gates' tome "The Road Ahead"; and the launch of MSNBC is deemed worthy of a separate entry - marking it as one of the world events from 3 million B.C. to 1997 deserving of special note"

Josh Baugher wrote in to say that Salon now has a swell Index of their articles on Free Software and Open Source. It includes several articles that have been mentioned here, several others that weren't, and even the one on Slashdot. Worth checking out if you've got time to read.

Chris writes " Salon is running a good article on Eric Allman. Full history of sendmail, how it works..etc Also talks about Sendmail Inc going commericial, yet still producing a free version. "

Chops-Frozen-Water wrote in to send us a link to a Salon article about the guy who create Mario, Zelda, and pretty much every other Nintendo super mega hit. check it out. Miyamoto is a genius. This is a pretty sweet little piece about him.

The Sunday Times reports that Israeli military sources revealed that Israel is developing an ethnic biological weapon that targets Arabs, in particular Iraqis. William Cohen, US defence secretary has confirmed the existence of such research, and an Israeli parlementarian has dennouced it. The British Medical Association and the UK biological defence establishment Porton Down have confirmed such weapons are feasible but very difficult to make. During Apartheid, South Africa had a similar program targeting black people. Wired has a summary if you do not want to register. update Topic changed to News because Einstein would not have condoned the development of such weapons. update (for Dec 2) Salon gives the US military view (not possible), and Scientific view (theoretically possible, practically would encounter many difficulties). update (Dec 21) Omri Schwarz believes he knows where this article came from. This is his explanation. I hope he is right.

1. A year and a half ago, the British Medical Association commissioned a report on the feasibility of genetically selective weapons. The only BMA official to talk of this is Dr. Vivienne Nathanson. In the press, she didn't even mention the Middle East. In fact, her concern involved Scottish clans. (Would the McAllisters do this to the McGregors?) The report is due in January (hopefully) and Dr. Nathanson promised to email me a copy.

2. Two years ago a science fiction story was published in the Hebrew press. Then Jane's wrote a report claiming Israel was making an ethnic bullet and the parallels behind the story and the sci-fi short were too strong to ignore. The Jerusalem Post then reported that Jane's reported on the "ethnic bullet", then the London Times reported that the Jerusalem Post reported that Jane's reported, and then news media all over began reporting this story, each time citing one of the first three as the source. The Jerusalem Post's story is too full of biology bogons to be believed, and since it is a reprint of Jane's story, translation from Hebrew to English cannot be the cause (the Jerusalem Post is an English paper and I can't find a copy of Jane's anywhere, nor can I afford an online copy.) Apart from a mention of Dr. Nathanson, not one paper even tried to gain verification of this story other than from the first three, even though of the three only Jane's was an original story.

Peter Neves was the first of many who wrote in to tell us about an article in Salon Magazine that describes an "...analogy between MS and the Catholic Church, and Linus and Martin Luther. "

Peter Neves was the first of many who wrote in to tell us about an article in Salon Magazine that describes an "...analogy between MS and the Catholic Church, and Linus and Martin Luther. "

moonboy writes "A Salon article about the hacker who was caught using his companies spare processing power to look for primes. Cool read." You can read the story if you like. This happened quite awhile ago, but this is a nice writeup on it, with some interesting comments about how hacking has changed.

Evelyn Mitchell wrote in to tell us about a new Salon article, which is an interview with Larry Wall. Have I ever mentioned that I love Perl? Pretty good article, I like the bits about Patch.

CresentCityRon writes "It seems that companies are offering stock options instead of fair market salaires when recruiting talent. Programmers are taking the bait only to get burned by their greed and evil CEOs who fail to exercise the IPO. see this Salon story "

James sent us a link to a Salon article about RMS. It's a quite humorous piece. Pretty good all around, right down to the picture. Worth a read.

One of the more disturbing trends at the end of this century is the movement of power from governments and people to transnational corporations. For instance only 1/3 of international trade does not involve these corporations: 1/3 involves trade between transnationals, and the other 1/3 is trade internal to transnationals (Source Jubilee 2000 conference at Birmingham UK, 25th May 1998) One of the first victims is the freedom of the press. Being used to UK television which has some very hard-hitting accurate investigative journalism, and plays a very important role in keeping the government on its toes (eg: the BSE scandal), I hope that this trend will not spread.

Tim Doran was the first to warn me, but Salon Magazine has written a little diddy about Slashdot (linking through TCWWW^TM *grin*). For anyone who is arriving from Salon, Welcome. This sorta stuff kinda wierds me out, so I'm not really going to say much about it. (On the positive side, after the writing the article, the author of the article decided to get RH5.1 just to see what all the fuss is about :)

Chris Tweney writes "Theglobe.com stuck its foot in the proverbial cow flop on Monday when it sent messages to about 35,000 users -- saying "congratulations, you've been signed up for theglobe.com's VIP service!" the kicker: each message provided a username and password that would seem strangely familiar to those who had already registered at AdAge.com. Seems the folks at Advertising Age sold their user database -- including unhashed passwords and usernames -- to theglobe. I received one of these mails, and boy, was it scary. I've had to change my password at nearly every (unsecure) site I use. Like theglobe's TV spots say: "your first full-service online integrated virtual community". So well integrated you don't even have to worry about password privacy!" Salon Magazine has more.

Kristian Köhntopp wrote in to tell us that Salon Magazine has an article on TransMeta. Read here, about the company that employs Linus, has a web server (but no content), is funded by Paul Allen, and produces nothing that anybody can discern. Neato.

Kristian Köhntopp wrote in to tell us that Salon Magazine has an article on TransMeta. Read here, about the company that employs Linus, has a web server (but no content), is funded by Paul Allen, and produces nothing that anybody can discern. Neato.

Pater sent this Salon story about one of their people doing a slackware install, and the perspective of the greater computer community finding out about Linux. Down right encourgaging, I say.

Conrad Heiney writes "Salon Magazine online has an excellent analysis of the current New Republic magazine's failure to fact-check a hilariously inaccurate and completely faked story about rogue teen "hackers". " The most interesting thing to me is how the media picks certain topics, and can just go crazy with them. Films and books have Genres, and I'm convinced that commercials, as well as the news has them as well. Commercials have the 'Happy Family' genre, and occasionally the 'Clever Covering Up of Nudity' or the 'Sexy Model Convinces us to by Something' genre. Likewise the "News" has the 'Hacker' genre along with a host of others. It's no surprise that the news is as often just as fabricated as TV, Film and Commercials. Moral:I shouldn't make stuff up. Bummer, 'cuz I had this really exciting piece I wanted to run tomorrow... *grin*

Get ready to rumble as the tidal wave continues. First off, Andrew Mobbs sent us an important list of must-read RFCs. RFC2321, RFC2322, RFC2323, RFC2324, RFC2325. He also reminds everyone that ds.internic.net is no longer the canonical RFC archive. Luis Villa sent us Important news on the Java API. Gernot asked us to check This directory on ftp.gimp.org. Lastly, james sent us this one and Raj Dutt sent us this one.

A recent Salon Magazine article states that the BeOS R3 (nope-not even 1.0 yet) will ship a week earlier than its previous ship date of March 19. The new date is March 12. The PowerPC version should ship in early April. I know I can't wait!