Slashdot Mirror

jfruhlinger writes: "The San Francisco Chronicle ran this story about the very first laptop, and the fact that it's still in use by non-hobbyists. It's biggest selling point is apparently its indestructable nature."

jfruhlinger writes: "The San Francisco Chronicle ran this story about the very first laptop, and the fact that it's still in use by non-hobbyists. It's biggest selling point is apparently its indestructable nature."

ewhac writes "The San Francisco Chronicle is reporting that Geologist Luigi Piccardi will present a paper in Edinburgh, Scotland, today which asserts that sightings of the Loch Ness Monster can be explained as surface disturbances caused by seismic tremors. Loch Ness sits on an active fault, and eyewitness sightings of the monster correlate closely with recorded seismic activity. Don't expect the search for Nessie to be called off any time soon, however. (Can anyone out there with a good fluid dynamics model run an earthquake simulation on Loch Ness and see what happens?)" Maybe this makes more sense than the temperature explanation, but anyway you gotta love the fake photos.

ewhac writes "The San Francisco Chronicle is reporting that Geologist Luigi Piccardi will present a paper in Edinburgh, Scotland, today which asserts that sightings of the Loch Ness Monster can be explained as surface disturbances caused by seismic tremors. Loch Ness sits on an active fault, and eyewitness sightings of the monster correlate closely with recorded seismic activity. Don't expect the search for Nessie to be called off any time soon, however. (Can anyone out there with a good fluid dynamics model run an earthquake simulation on Loch Ness and see what happens?)" Maybe this makes more sense than the temperature explanation, but anyway you gotta love the fake photos.

Glurx writes: "The US Army commissioned a report so they could explore how the biotechnology revolution can enhance their ability to execute their missions on battlefields in the next few decades. The SF Chronicle has a story about it. You can read the report here."

loosenut writes: "The SF Chronicle has a lengthy article about the disposal or recycling of old computers, many with toxic components. If you are like me, you probably have a couple of 486s and Pentiums sitting in a closet somewhere. What is to become of these ancient beasts?" Read to the end of the article and it notes that Europe is planning to force manufacturers to recycle their products at the end of the product's lifespan.

update() writes: "The SFGate has an article on Eazel. It's the usual color-by-numbers piece (embedded MP3 playing; Andy Hertzfeld is a genius) but with one new piece -- without new funding, the company has a month to go before running out of money." Particularly given that Eazel's beautiful desktop is in the new Mandrake 8.0, and scheduled to appear on several other companies' desktops, it would be a shame if the company should dissolve now. I wonder if some of the big names (Red Hat, VA, Mandrake, SuSE) could invest together to keep Eazel going at least for now -- they all stand to benefit. And would a PayPal account for donations be unreasonable?

Logic Bomb writes: "Freedom of speech comes up quite a bit on Slashdot. How would you like to browse through a massive historical record of another modern free speech movment? According to an article from the San Francisco Chronicle, the archive located at UC Berkeley of records related to the 1964 Free Speech Movement has been digitized in its entirety and is available on the web for anyone to look at. It comes to over 35,000 pages of documents, not to mention digitized version of fliers and photographs. Much of the Slashdot readership, including myself, was born long after this amazing period in history ended. Archives such as this one allow those currently fighting for free speech to make connections to the past and even garner ideas to reuse. Read the article, then browse the archive."

Observations made by the Hubble telescope have produced evidence that the universe is full of "dark energy", stuff that has mass but does not emit nor block light, and that a disregarded theory first postulated by Einstein about "negative gravity" is actually valid. If true, this would provide firm evidence that the universe will not collapse in a "big crunch" but will expand indefinitely. See the SF Chronicle, New York Times, MSNBC, or CNN for stories (the Chronicle story is the best, IMHO). For background information, you may want to check out the cosmology FAQ or more information about negative gravity. (Update: 04/04 11:03 AM by michael : A couple of people have pointed out that this write-up is inaccurate; I'm not going to try to correct it, but read the comments for more information.)

An Anonymous Coward pointed to this San Francisco Chronicle story about San Francisco's wireless networks there for the taking, set up for convenience but left open to anyone with an 802.11 card to grab packets, and in many cases, hop on the networks themselves. Sometimes that's intentional, other times it's not. The article mentions some of the well-known public wireless projects consume.net and Seattle Wireless, but what about your city? It would be interesting to find out and map where else folks have found (or founded) pockets of free bandwidth.

Celestius writes "This press release from NASA Ames states that 'An international team of researchers has discovered compelling evidence that the magnetite crystals in the martian meteorite ALH84001 are of biological origin,' and moreover that these crystals are not only older than any previously known form of life, but were also definitely formed before the meteor fell to Earth. Skeptics remain, of course, as quoted in this article from today's Chronicle, but suffice to say, NASA seems pretty confident." There's also a report on the BBC as well.

RFL asks: "SFGate (site of the San Francisco Chronicle) has this feature article describing the unexpected deaths of local Internet Service Providers after they are taken over by large telecommunication companies, leaving the customers totally forgotten. Only after giving it a moment of thought did I realize that a lot of those small ISP's, the ones with those cool cool domain names, were in fact gone. These were the mom and pop services of the Internet, and they provided excellent customer support. I even remember being able to talk to my ISP's administrators on IRC. So is it now fair to say that we have lost yet another battle against those evil corporations?" As it is with most companies that get swallowed up by larger entities, the increase in customer base usually means a decrease in customer support and personal-touch that made earlier ISPs so successful. Is there still room for the small-time ISP in today's market or has dial-up Internet become solely the realm of big-time providers?

RFL asks: "SFGate (site of the San Francisco Chronicle) has this feature article describing the unexpected deaths of local Internet Service Providers after they are taken over by large telecommunication companies, leaving the customers totally forgotten. Only after giving it a moment of thought did I realize that a lot of those small ISP's, the ones with those cool cool domain names, were in fact gone. These were the mom and pop services of the Internet, and they provided excellent customer support. I even remember being able to talk to my ISP's administrators on IRC. So is it now fair to say that we have lost yet another battle against those evil corporations?" As it is with most companies that get swallowed up by larger entities, the increase in customer base usually means a decrease in customer support and personal-touch that made earlier ISPs so successful. Is there still room for the small-time ISP in today's market or has dial-up Internet become solely the realm of big-time providers?

Strider- writes: "Early on the morning of Feb. 5th, a group of Canadian Engineering students from the University of British Columbia accomplished their annual prank: hanging a Volkswagen Beetle off of some structure, usually a bridge. However, to celebrate the 20th aniversary of this annual event, they went for the creme de la crem, la piece de resistance: They hung the Beetle off of San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge."

Logic Bomb writes: "From the San Francisco Chronicle's story: 'Molecular action film highlights potential of nanotechnology.... Close to four years in the making, the grainy black-and-white movie stars an enzyme called helicase, chugging along brightly lit tracks of fluorescent-dyed microbial DNA.' Wow. The movie is actually sort of anti-climactic, but you can see clearly a brightly-fluorescing molecule moving along a string of smaller ones. It's quite something." I don't see a link to this movie, but the story is pretty captivating even so.

tavern writes: "San Francisco is going to start rolling blackouts today! I can see the headlines for the Onion tomorrow, 'United States Declared a 3rd World Nation'" The article reads like something out of Atlas Shrugged -- parts shortages and clogged intakes for power plants' cooling water are contributing to the energy strain. However, from this piece, it seems like the (intentional) blackouts remain potential rather than actual. Can anyone out thataway comment on the power situation as it affects you? (I'd be out buying a UPS right now ...)

ewhac was one of several to inform us that Yahoo has knuckled under. Their auction site will now start using "computer software," which as we all know is infallible, to roboban auctions of Nazi and Klan items (see SFGate's story or CNN's story). France wanted its countrymen kept away from these items, and since Yahoo couldn't block the French, they blocked the stuff. Cigarettes, switchblades and used underwear are also forbidden, but it seems only the hateful stuff gets autoblocked. "Photons have neither morality nor visas" my ass. Just wait until every one of the planet's sovereignties gets a proscripted category of its own -- will I be able to sell paintings by John Wayne Gacy? Wounded Knee medals? Confederate flags? The world's full of offensive knickknacks, Yahoo, have fun banning it all.

The actual terms of service forbid: "any item which, in Yahoo!'s sole discretion, is inflammatory, offensive, unlawful, harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, tortious, defamatory, vulgar, obscene, libelous, invasive of another's privacy, hateful, racially or ethnically objectionable, or otherwise inconsistent with the spirit of Yahoo! Auctions." It's the robo-enforcement that's new.

Dennis Bottaro writes: "The ruins of the two cities lay virtually undisturbed 30 feet beneath the surface of the bay, Herakleion and Menouthis are now being revealed as among the most exciting finds in the history of marine archaeology."

sulli writes ; "If it doesn't kill you first, it may get you a Nobel Prize. The fugu (puffer fish), best known for being a delicacy in Japan despite being poisonous if improperly prepared, has a very short genome (400M base pairs) compared to that of humans (3.5B base pairs). Says a sushi fan at DOE: "[W]henever researchers have gone into the fugu and looked for human genes, by and large they've found them." Info from a related project in the UK is here."

sulli writes ; "If it doesn't kill you first, it may get you a Nobel Prize. The fugu (puffer fish), best known for being a delicacy in Japan despite being poisonous if improperly prepared, has a very short genome (400M base pairs) compared to that of humans (3.5B base pairs). Says a sushi fan at DOE: "[W]henever researchers have gone into the fugu and looked for human genes, by and large they've found them." Info from a related project in the UK is here."

Perseus_Moebius writes "Neither Cisco nor Microsoft paid a single dollar in federal taxes last year! if there was any doubt we have a federal government run by corporations this should end it. read the article on SF Gate. " Pretty scary. Apparently they get to write off stock options.

Perseus_Moebius writes "Neither Cisco nor Microsoft paid a single dollar in federal taxes last year! if there was any doubt we have a federal government run by corporations this should end it. read the article on SF Gate. " Pretty scary. Apparently they get to write off stock options.

Logic Bomb writes: "The San Francisco Chronicle has an interesting article about measuring website traffic. This is kind of an obnoxious issue, but it means everything to commercial websites seeking investors. Apparently the figures reported by the sites themselves through analysis of server logs are often much higher than the ones given by firms like Media Metrix (whose numbers I see all the time in articles from Cnet and the like). The basic dispute is over whether sampling, a la Nielsen, is appropriate for the web. It seems counterproductive to purposely use an innacurate statistical measure when exact counts are readily available, but I can't imagine many things easier to fake than a server log. Anyone have a good idea about how to approach this?"

A reader writes "Annoy.com, the web site that pushes the first amendement envelope, has emerged victorious in their most recent court ruling. Haven't heard of the case? That's not surprising. The magistrate's gag order covered not only the details of the case, but also the very existence of the case. Read details in this SF Gate Article or this annoy.com release."

Logic Bomb writes: "The San Francisco Chronicle is running a story about the way Olympic officials are fighting counterfeit 'official' Olympic merchandise. Invisible ink containing DNA strands from an unnamed Australian athlete is used to write on almost everything sold -- that's around 50 million items. A team of 'logocops' then travels around Australia, using scanners to check merchandise at random. Over 120,000 items have already been identified as counterfeit and seized. The story has more details." Sounds like SF, but then ... flying cars aside, plenty of humans now have radio phones and organs they weren't born with. There are some other interesting applications named toward the end of the article, too.

sashae sent us a story about google. Google has been my search engine of choice for years now, and this is an interesting window into what's happening back there. I find it interesting that people angrily submit stories constantly about Google "selling out" whenever something that looks like it might generate revenue appears. That means more than a lot of people realize: it means people care. So many Web sites are so bloated with ads that already can't be taken seriously. Google is special: I'm not opposed to seeing ads on it (frankly I'm amazed they made it this long considering the kind of bandwidth and hardware they need) I just hate seeing ads the way the vast majority of mainstream sites do it (hundreds of little banners everywhere blurring the lines between content and commercials). And hell, they run Linux.

Logic Bomb writes: "A researcher at Penn State University has found a way to reliably examine your "thermal plume" -- the convection currents created by body heat radiation that carry all sorts of tiny molecules off your body's surface. While this plume certainly can be used to make pretty thermal images, the real use of this technology is through chemical analysis. Little bits of whatever you're wearing, anything you've touched recently, and skin are all present in the air around your body, and all available for analysis. The technology therefore has some pretty wide possibilities, including drug and explosives detection. Even stranger, the creator thinks such devices could be used to check for some kinds of medical conditions. A working version for use in airport terminals to check for explosives is only about a year away. That sounds fine to me, but a medical-screening version of the device hidden in the doorway at my insurance company sounds pretty scary. This is another very useful technology just begging to be abused. An article from the San Francisco Chronicle has more details and a link to the project Web site."

Logic Bomb writes: "A researcher at Penn State University has found a way to reliably examine your "thermal plume" -- the convection currents created by body heat radiation that carry all sorts of tiny molecules off your body's surface. While this plume certainly can be used to make pretty thermal images, the real use of this technology is through chemical analysis. Little bits of whatever you're wearing, anything you've touched recently, and skin are all present in the air around your body, and all available for analysis. The technology therefore has some pretty wide possibilities, including drug and explosives detection. Even stranger, the creator thinks such devices could be used to check for some kinds of medical conditions. A working version for use in airport terminals to check for explosives is only about a year away. That sounds fine to me, but a medical-screening version of the device hidden in the doorway at my insurance company sounds pretty scary. This is another very useful technology just begging to be abused. An article from the San Francisco Chronicle has more details and a link to the project Web site."

CMU_Nort writes: "The San Francisco Gate has a story about the completion of the human genome project. Apparently the University of California at Santa Cruz has put the Genome online for downloading here. I don't know about you, but I think this sort of sharing is very cool. We finally have the source for human beings. Now if only they'd GPL it."

ocipio writes "The article on sfgate.com discusses the use of FreeBSD on the largest Internet companies in the world. FreeBSD is used by Yahoo!, Hotmail, MindSpring, UUNet, and Verio. BSD will also get an indirect boost next year as Apple releases Mac OS X. Comparing the BSD family to Linux, BSDi's Rose said, "We think we have a product that's more reliable, scalable and robust for high-performance, infrastructure-grade computing." Yahoo!'s Chief David Filo agrees, noting he couldn't imagine moving to a proprietary system. "

stitzman writes: "Senator Jon Kyl, R-AZ and Senator Charles Schumer, D-NY have co-sponsored a bill that would make it possible to investigate cyber-crime without all those pesky search warrants. Here's the San Francisco Chronicle story." Frightening quote: "law enforcers would no longer need to obtain a search warrant in every jurisdiction through which a cyber-attack traveled." And in a vaguely related story, jkujawa passes along this ComputerUser article in which the National Infrastructure Protection Center frets about (but offers no answers to) the ease of launching anonymous electronic attacks.

Mike McCune writes "This article discusses how streaming video is controlled by three companies: Real, Microsoft and Apple. It discusses how open sourced video streaming software is needed. I looked around and found the start of some OS streaming software. There is a video streamer based on Darwin here and there is the start of several players here." But what about the codec patent problems? I have been told that they're the big holdup. [sigh]

mr wrote to us to point out an article on IBM in today's SF Chronicle. IBM, starting on Monday at the Internation Electron Device Meeting, will be disclosing eighteen new inventions coming out of their labs. IBM goes to so far to say that it will keep Moore's Law ^[?] around for at least another decade. The article also talks about some of IBM's recent advancements as well as describing some of the new stuff to be unveiled.

This week, for your questioning pleasure, we have assembled a four-member panel of antitrust experts who are willing to speculate on what might happen to Microsoft next - if anything. But before you start posting questions, please hit some of the links we've provided to several other stories about the potential results of Judge Jackson's Nov. 5 Findings of Fact. (more below)

First, let's introduce our guests:

Don Weightman was the gentleman who did our Instant Legal Analysis immediately after the Findings of Fact announcement. We had many requests for him as an interview guest. So here he is.

Richard Hawkins engaged in the general practice of law for five years prior to obtaining his Ph.D. in Economics and Statistics. He is currently a visiting assistant professor of economics at the University of Northern Iowa, and practices only in antitrust and other economic issues in the law. His past includes both hardware and software development, including the mail-merge patch for LyX.

John Lederer is a retired lawyer in Oregon, Wisconsin. He is currently active in technology and intellectual property issues. He practiced in the antitrust and transportation areas and argued three U.S., Supreme Court cases.

David Niemi is a system engineer with a background in economics as well as software. He has been administering and developing for UNIX and Linux since 1987, and has been following Microsoft's antitrust adventures closely since 1993.

Next, a few selected stories about the Microsoft Saga that you may not have read:

• Findings of Fact, A Two-Themed Opus (from The Linux Show.)
• Jerry's Take On The Microsoft Decision: Wrong! (Jerry Pournelle in Byte.)
• Microsoft willing to settle antitrust case (from the Boston Globe.)
• Now bust Microsoft's trust (from The Economist.)
• Militant Microsofties Bunker mentality... (from SF Gate.)
• Don't You Sass Me, Mr. Micro-Smartypants! is a humor piece we couldn't resist including that talks about how things might go if Judge Judy was in charge of the Microsoft trial. It's from - believe it or not - The New York Times. (Free registration required to read.)

Necessary Legal Disclaimer: Although three out of our four panelists are attorneys, all they are providing here is speculation. While our panelists are smart and well-read, no one can predict the future accurately, so you should not base business or personal decisions on their answers to Slashdot readers' questions. For legal or investment advice, please arrange a personal consultation with a qualified professional.

Now Let's Get Down to Business

As usual, moderators will select the most interesting questions, and Tuesday afternoon Slashdot editors will do the final "cut" and forward 10 - 15 chosen questions to the panelists - who are all Slashdot readers, just so you know. Answers will appear Friday. So ask away!

This week, for your questioning pleasure, we have assembled a four-member panel of antitrust experts who are willing to speculate on what might happen to Microsoft next - if anything. But before you start posting questions, please hit some of the links we've provided to several other stories about the potential results of Judge Jackson's Nov. 5 Findings of Fact. (more below)

First, let's introduce our guests:

Don Weightman was the gentleman who did our Instant Legal Analysis immediately after the Findings of Fact announcement. We had many requests for him as an interview guest. So here he is.

Richard Hawkins engaged in the general practice of law for five years prior to obtaining his Ph.D. in Economics and Statistics. He is currently a visiting assistant professor of economics at the University of Northern Iowa, and practices only in antitrust and other economic issues in the law. His past includes both hardware and software development, including the mail-merge patch for LyX.

John Lederer is a retired lawyer in Oregon, Wisconsin. He is currently active in technology and intellectual property issues. He practiced in the antitrust and transportation areas and argued three U.S., Supreme Court cases.

David Niemi is a system engineer with a background in economics as well as software. He has been administering and developing for UNIX and Linux since 1987, and has been following Microsoft's antitrust adventures closely since 1993.

Next, a few selected stories about the Microsoft Saga that you may not have read:

• Findings of Fact, A Two-Themed Opus (from The Linux Show.)
• Jerry's Take On The Microsoft Decision: Wrong! (Jerry Pournelle in Byte.)
• Microsoft willing to settle antitrust case (from the Boston Globe.)
• Now bust Microsoft's trust (from The Economist.)
• Militant Microsofties Bunker mentality... (from SF Gate.)
• Don't You Sass Me, Mr. Micro-Smartypants! is a humor piece we couldn't resist including that talks about how things might go if Judge Judy was in charge of the Microsoft trial. It's from - believe it or not - The New York Times. (Free registration required to read.)

Necessary Legal Disclaimer: Although three out of our four panelists are attorneys, all they are providing here is speculation. While our panelists are smart and well-read, no one can predict the future accurately, so you should not base business or personal decisions on their answers to Slashdot readers' questions. For legal or investment advice, please arrange a personal consultation with a qualified professional.

Now Let's Get Down to Business

As usual, moderators will select the most interesting questions, and Tuesday afternoon Slashdot editors will do the final "cut" and forward 10 - 15 chosen questions to the panelists - who are all Slashdot readers, just so you know. Answers will appear Friday. So ask away!

Quite a number of people wrote to us yesterday about The San Francisco Chronicle running an article about robotic flies with cameras. Pretty cool looking thing - capable of flight, with four wings - although the whole steering thing still needs be resolved, apparently.

Quite a number of people wrote to us yesterday about The San Francisco Chronicle running an article about robotic flies with cameras. Pretty cool looking thing - capable of flight, with four wings - although the whole steering thing still needs be resolved, apparently.

According to this SF Chronicle story, AOL prohibits members' profiles from describing how they like to have sex with gay men, but allows descriptions of how they like to kill gay men. Hmmm. Something seems wrong here. The ACLU, NationalGayLobby.org, and HateWatch are looking into it.

Anonymous Coward writes that William Gibson was interviewed in the SF Chronicle. He talks about getting into writing, visionary status, and, of course, his new book, All Tomorrow's Parties. Anyone read that yet? I'd be interesting to hear about it.

Anonymous Coward writes "Microsoft set up an outdoor booth outside San Francisco City Hall yesterday offering to trade free licensed MS software for pirated versions. The only visitor they got was the guy picketing to have Clinton impeached for treason against 12 galaxies." Here's the SF Chronicle story about the "event." Read it and weep. Or laugh. (You choose.)

El sends "CA Gov. Grey Davis thinks it's ok for employers to monitor email without informing the employees first... thanks a lot, Grey!" Davis vetoed a bill which would have required employers to notify employees that their email, electronic files, or visits to internet websites were being monitored. California workers therefore have more protections using a telephone, where your employer must inform you if you are being monitored, than a computer.

sneakyfrog writes "Larry Ellison of Oracle made a (supposedly real this time) announcement claiming he would fund an NC effort with boxes running Linux. "

Ant sent in this SF Chronicle story about Yahoo equipping 10 San Francisco cabs with laptops and radio modems as an ad gimmick. I plan to add this feature to my limo pretty soon - and I'll run Linux, of course, which I'll bet the Yahoo cabs don't. Heh!

Dylan Greene wrote to us with a story talking about the possible suppresion of cold fusion research from those whom you would expect to. It might be inflamatory, but it's also interesting.

Manuka sent us a pretty nifty little story from SF Gate that talks about those heroes of the wodern workpace: The Sys Admin. Talks about their charachteristics, their responsibilities and the lack of respect they get sometimes. Kinda cute. And you sysadmins out there should show this to your bosses and ask for raises *grin*.

David DeGeorge writes "From the San Francisco Examiner; Rebecca Eisenberg describing the controversy over playing with the Big Boys. Most correct newspaper article I have read about Open Source. She didn't even call Stallman a genius when mentioning the MacArthur award. "

Dave Whitinger sent us this link where you can read about Intel's Lawsuit against a spammer. This is interesting because he is a former employee, spamming all the employees of his former company with information about the Human Resources dept at Intel. This is a pretty significant case in my eyes anyway.

Hetz Ben Amo pass an interesting story on to us. Have you ever wondered what goes on in all of those nice licenses and warranties when you install programs on a machine? Well, read and ye shall be enlightened into the wonderful ways that software companies get to rip the consumer out of even more money.

Our erswhile admin Jesse Shrieve sent this story our way. Great article about the growth of Linux, and being a smart online paper, also lists some of the favorite places to get. The article features a great graphic, which Jesse has happily provided for us here (large) and here (small). Check it out.

Jim Seymour writes "In Caught in their Web , the San Francisco Examiner reveals that Intel is no slouch in the "innovative marketing" department, either. "