Slashdot Mirror

It's not news that the media you buy for both Kindle and Zune are protected by DRM. Readers are sending in stories of some of the ramifications of that fact. First, Absentminded-Artist notes an account at Gear Diary recounting what an Amazon rep told one user about download limits on Kindle books. "One facet of the Kindle's DRM has reared an ugly head: download limitations. Upgraded your iPhone recently? Bought a new Kindle? You may not be able to reload your entire library. There's an unadvertised flag: 'You mean when you go to buy the book it doesn't say "this book can be downloaded this number of times" even though that limitation is there?' To which [the rep] replied, 'No, I'm very sorry it doesn't.'" Next, reader Rjak writes "DRM is a bad idea, poorly implemented. One of the many many valid reasons to drop Zune and its marketplace is the DRM validation error you see below. The vast majority of the music I had purchased last year is completely gone. There's no refund, the music doesn't exist on the service anymore, the files are just garbage now. Here's the error (screen capture): 'This item is no longer available at Zune Marketplace. Because of this, you can no longer play it or sync it with your Zune. There might be another iteration of it available in Zune Marketplace.'" Update: 06/23 00:28 GMT by KD : The Gear Diary blog has been updated with what may be more definitive information from Amazon on how the Kindle DRM behaves.

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "If a regular 'country lawyer' like myself had taken a case like the RIAA's in Capitol Records v. Thomas-Rasset to court, he or she would have been laughed out of the courthouse. But when it's the RIAA suing, the plaintiffs are awarded a $1.92 million verdict for the infringement of $23.76 worth of song files. That's because RIAA litigation proceeds in a parallel universe, which on its face looks like litigation, but isn't. On my blog I fantasize as to how the trial would have ended had it taken place not in the 'parallel universe,' but in the real world of litigation. In that world, the case would have been dismissed. And if the Judge had submitted it to the jury instead of dismissing, and the jury had ruled in favor of the RIAA, the 'statutory damages' awarded would have been less than $18,000."

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "With all the turmoil and internet censorship in Iran making it difficult to get an accurate picture of what's going, security researchers have found a way to locate gaps in Iran's filtering by analyzing traffic exiting Iran. The short version is that SSH, torrents and Flash are high priorities for blocking, while game protocols like WoW and Xbox traffic are being ignored, even though they also allow communication. Hopefully, this data will help people think of new ways to bypass filtering and speak freely, even though average Iranians have worse things to worry about than internet censorship, now that the reformists have been declared anti-Islamic by the Supreme Leader. Given the circumstances, that declaration has been called 'basically a death sentence' for those who continue protesting." Reader CaroKann sends in a related story at the Washington Post about an analysis of the vote totals in the Iranian election (similar to, but different from the one we discussed earlier) in which the authors say the election results have a one in two-hundred chance of being legitimate.

Political Observer writes "Jörg Tauss, a member of the German Parliament (Bundestag), left the Social Democratic Party (SPD), which is part of the coalition government, and announced that he is joining the German Pirate Party (Google translation; original German article). Tauss resigned from the SPD after all but four of the party's members voted for a new censorship law, which passed the parliament on Thursday. The law, which aims at reducing child pornography, introduces an infrastructure for DNS-based content blocking and is the subject of major criticism from Internet users. In March 2009 Tauss became the subject of investigations by the German police for possession of child pornographic material. He said he had this material only for research as part of his role as a member of parliament. Investigations are still continuing."

evw writes "The Wall Street Journal reports that Steve Jobs had a liver transplant two months ago (subscription required, alternative coverage is available based on the WSJ's report). He is on track to return to work at the end of June. 'William Hawkins, a doctor specializing in pancreatic and gastrointestinal surgery at Washington University in St. Louis, Mo., said that the type of slow-growing pancreatic tumor Mr. Jobs had will commonly metastasize in another organ during a patient's lifetime, and that the organ is usually the liver. ... Having the procedure done in Tennessee makes sense because its list of patients waiting for transplants is shorter than in many other states.' There are no residency requirements for transplants."

mcmoodle writes "Bozeman, Montana has decided that they don't want applicant personal information after all, citing a worldwide backlash on the issue: '"Effective at noon today the city of Bozeman permanently ceased the practice of requesting that candidates selected for positions under a provisional job offer to provide their usernames or passwords for candidates' internet sites," said Chris Kukulski, Bozeman City Manager. ... Kukulski says after a 90 minute staff meeting held earlier today, officials decided asking applicants to provide their passwords to sites such as Facebook or MySpace, "exceeded that which is acceptable to our community." Kukulski apologized for the negative impact the issue has generated from news organizations and blogs around the world.' I didn't have any doubt this would be immediately squashed. Now I'm just curious as to how many personal accounts they actually went through!"

On Tuesday, we discussed news that four US Senators would be looking into the exclusivity deals between carriers and cell phone makers. Apparently, they didn't like what they heard. Reader Ian Lamont writes with an update: "The Federal Communications Commission is planning on launching an investigation into exclusive handset deals between mobile carriers and handset makers. In a speech on Thursday, acting FCC Chairman Michael Copps said the agency 'should determine whether some of these arrangements adversely restrict consumer choice or harm the development of innovative devices, and it should take appropriate action if it finds harm.' It's not hard to imagine who might be targeted — at a separate Senate Committee on Commerce hearing on Thursday, much of the discussion centered on AT&T's exclusive deal to carry the iPhone. AT&T claimed 'consumers benefit from exclusive deals in three ways: innovation, lower cost and more choice,' but carriers and senators from states with large rural populations disagreed, saying that their customers had no choice when it came to the iPhone — it's not available because AT&Ts network doesn't reach these areas. One panelist also brought up the Carterfone precedent (PDF), which concerned an 'electrical acoustic coupling device' that a man named Tom Carter developed in the 1950s to let field workers make phone calls using a radio transceiver connected to AT&T's phone network. AT&T, which was then a monopoly, claimed no foreign devices could be connected to its network, but lost when it challenged the Carterfone in court. The result spurred innovation such as the fax machine."

An anonymous reader writes "There have been past claims by Adobe and others that development on Linux is a jungle, particularly with regards to audio. However today, the author of the popular 'The Sorry State of Sound in Linux' has posted a follow up showing Adobe's claims to be FUD, as well as being a good update on where OSS and ALSA are holding today, and why PulseAudio isn't a good idea."

eldavojohn writes "While a lot of people are wondering if commercial spaceflight will ever make it, Spaceport America is holding its groundbreaking ceremony today. You can watch it live at their site at 11am MST. The spaceport is aiming for a diverse clientele, including the delivery of small national security purpose satellites into Earth orbit as well as research and development for scientific purposes. After getting their FAA license and securing funding, the 27 square mile development project has officially begun. The target date for completion is the end of 2010 — let's all hope for success in the milestone goal!"

eldavojohn writes "While a lot of people are wondering if commercial spaceflight will ever make it, Spaceport America is holding its groundbreaking ceremony today. You can watch it live at their site at 11am MST. The spaceport is aiming for a diverse clientele, including the delivery of small national security purpose satellites into Earth orbit as well as research and development for scientific purposes. After getting their FAA license and securing funding, the 27 square mile development project has officially begun. The target date for completion is the end of 2010 — let's all hope for success in the milestone goal!"

eldavojohn writes "While a lot of people are wondering if commercial spaceflight will ever make it, Spaceport America is holding its groundbreaking ceremony today. You can watch it live at their site at 11am MST. The spaceport is aiming for a diverse clientele, including the delivery of small national security purpose satellites into Earth orbit as well as research and development for scientific purposes. After getting their FAA license and securing funding, the 27 square mile development project has officially begun. The target date for completion is the end of 2010 — let's all hope for success in the milestone goal!"

alphadogg writes "Google has reserved 1 million phone numbers with Level 3, signaling that it may finally be ready to roll out its long-anticipated Google Voice service. The free service, announced in March, lets users unify their phone numbers, allowing them to have a single number through Google Voice that rings a call through to all their phones. Sources could not say when the 1 million numbers may be assigned. Level 3 has been supplying Google with phone numbers since the introduction of Google Voice, so the 1 million numbers are an indication Google is close to adding a significant number of users. A public launch has been anticipated since Google said in March the service would be 'open to new users soon.' One early user said: 'I've only been using Google Voice for a few months, but it's completely changed the way I use voicemail and communicate... When it goes public, I think the rush to grab Google Voice numbers is going to be stunning. I know some of my friends check the Google Voice page almost every day to see when they can grab a number and get started using it.'"

AnInkle writes "The question of whether modern video games represent art and the persistent attempts to censor controversial content in games have been discussed here at length. Now, a blogger at The Tech Report makes the case that censorship of violent and sexual images and themes in video games is precisely what inhibits video games from maturing artistically beyond a nascent form. He cites a historical comparison between video game and film production, as well as geo-cultural comparisons of film production in the US vs. Europe and of video game development in the US vs. Japan. Are these comparisons apt and the assertions valid, or might the embrace of video games as a legitimate art form be limited for entirely different reasons?"

AnInkle writes "The question of whether modern video games represent art and the persistent attempts to censor controversial content in games have been discussed here at length. Now, a blogger at The Tech Report makes the case that censorship of violent and sexual images and themes in video games is precisely what inhibits video games from maturing artistically beyond a nascent form. He cites a historical comparison between video game and film production, as well as geo-cultural comparisons of film production in the US vs. Europe and of video game development in the US vs. Japan. Are these comparisons apt and the assertions valid, or might the embrace of video games as a legitimate art form be limited for entirely different reasons?"

AnInkle writes "The question of whether modern video games represent art and the persistent attempts to censor controversial content in games have been discussed here at length. Now, a blogger at The Tech Report makes the case that censorship of violent and sexual images and themes in video games is precisely what inhibits video games from maturing artistically beyond a nascent form. He cites a historical comparison between video game and film production, as well as geo-cultural comparisons of film production in the US vs. Europe and of video game development in the US vs. Japan. Are these comparisons apt and the assertions valid, or might the embrace of video games as a legitimate art form be limited for entirely different reasons?"

eldavojohn writes "Unlike a lot of community support protection programs, the EFF's Patent Busting Project is starting to bear real fruit instead of just leveling the finger at offenders. The USPTO is revoking an illegitimate patent granted in 2004 that sounds like automatically assigning subdomains. Sites like Wordpress, LiveJournal, or basically anyone with generated subdomains have been doing this for quite some time. If you have some extra cash, now's the time to pony up a few bucks so the EFF can carry on as one of the few organizations genuinely protecting your interests."

phlack writes "Yahoo Games has an article describing a new mode in Nintendo's upcoming New Super Mario Bros. Wii that will allow the player to activate a 'demo' mode to get out of a hard situation. Nintendo plans on incorporating this into future games. Is this a good idea (to help relieve frustrations) or just sanctioned cheating?" They actually patented this system as well.

The Chinese government is getting ready to launch a new round of content restrictions for online games. Kou Xiaowei, a senior official with the General Administration of Press and Publication, said, "Although China's online gaming industry had been hot in recent years, online games are regarded by many as a sort of spiritual opium and the whole industry is marginalized by mainstream society." The article points out that China has already "banned children from Internet cafes and last year ordered their owners to enforce time restrictions after several cases involving obsessive players dying of fatigue after marathon game sessions." We've also seen Chinese restrictions on player-versus-player content for kids, as well as required content modifications such as removing skeletons in order for games to be sold there.

TheTinyToon writes that by a vote of 389 to 128, "the proposed censorship law to block child porn has been passed by the German government. Not surprisingly, a member of the conservative party (CDU) announced plans to also check if the law could be extended to include so-called 'killer games' like Counterstrike, only two hours after the law was passed. More [in German] on netzpolitik.org."

chrb writes "Two days ago Slashdot discussed broke counties grinding their tarmac roads into gravel. Now the Telegraph reveals plans to raze huge sections of at least 50 US cities to the ground. The resulting smaller cities will be more economical to run, and the recovered land will be returned to nature."

The first projector I remember seeing in person had three great big glass eyes (for red, green, and blue lamps) and BNC connectors. It probably weighed more than 100 pounds, and had to be carefully calibrated to align the lenses. Now, I've got a projector above my head that weighs less than a Neal Stephenson novel and has a sharper, brighter image than that monster. I've been looking into LED projectors for a few years now; in that time, I've been waiting for them to come down in price and bump up in lumens. So I was very curious about BenQ's GP1 LED projector (also known, somewhat oddly, as "Joybee"), and was happy to get a sample for review. It may seem retrograde to bother with an 800x600, 100 lumen (no missing zero there: one-hundred lumen) projector in 2009 A.D., but for the past four weeks, I've used it as my primary display, and come out happy. It has some drawbacks, but it's an impressive little device for its $499 pricetag, and I hope a harbinger of even better things to come. Read on for my take on what BenQ got right, and what rough spots stick out.

How long is a piece of string?

The Joybee itself, at approximately 5"x5"x2" (136 x 54 x 120 mm), is a bit smaller than a Mac Mini (which it superficially resembles), and with its multi-input breakout cable weighs 1.4 pounds (0.64 kg); the unwieldy but necessary AC block and power cable nearly double the weight, though, and unfortunately are not accounted for in the pouch that comes with the projector. (If you have a BenQ notebook, though, the GP1 could theoretically share its AC adapter. That assumes your laptop battery holds enough juice to churn out the content you want to project, or that you're using the projector's internal media player via the USB slot, about which more below.) A restrained round panel of touch-sensitive buttons and a thumb-friendly focus wheel are the only controls on the chassis; there are also four ports: DC power jack on one side, USB, 1/8" stereo-out, and a proprietary slot to which an octopus cable (VGA and composite) attaches on the back. The front face contains a deep-set opening for the lens, and a grill behind which sits a fan. (A matching iPod dock is advertised as being separately available; I don't have an iPod new enough to play video, and didn't have the dock to test anyhow.)

This projector won't wow you with its resolution (actually 858x600, but attached computers see it as 800x600 native) or brightness (brighter by 50 lumens than Dell's even-smaller M109S, dimmer by 50 than the Samsung P400). There are plenty of incandescent-lit 800x600 projectors available, and I've seen some on sale recently for under $400. (Those typically advertise an expected lamp life of around 2000 hours, and it's hard to find any that claim less than 1200 lumens.) So is 100 lumens bright enough?

The real answer is "It can be, depending." Whether it's enough for you is a matter of balancing your expectations, the screen or other surface it will paint, and your ability to control the light in the room: this projector is not going to overwhelm any but the dimmest of nearby lamps, but it doesn't quite require total darkness, either. I tried the GP1 out in two rooms in a big house. In a large living room with four tall, north-facing windows, the projected image (from about 10 feet away, onto a white-painted wall) only became easily viewable starting at dusk, even with the (non-light-tight) curtains closed as tightly as I could manage. It wasn't bad, though, once real darkness arrived; it might pass no videophile's test, but Ferris Bueller's blue skies were nicely blue. In a much-smaller room in the basement, with only one window and little direct sunlight, my makeshift screen was bright enough for comfortable use even during the day: no blackout curtain needed. By way of comparison, the not-yet-out H6080 from Vivitek is a 1280p LED-based projector rated for 800 lumens, still weak by current conventional projector standards — and it's expected to cost about $20,000. The extra 19-plus thousand dollars would buy some thick curtains and patience to wait for high-end LED projectors to drop in price a bit, or a whole lot of conventional replacement lamps.

I'm probably at least a few years from buying a Blu-Ray or other ultra-high definition device, so beating the 720x480 resolution of typical NTSC DVDs meets most of my movie- and Hulu-watching demands. Still, I was surprised at how good the BQ1 did at scaling down 1024x768 output from a laptop; downscaled output will never look as good as native, but in a pinch it's really not so bad: icon text at its default size, 14-pt terminal output, and typical PDFs were all quite legible. However, I've instead mostly been using the native resolution to project a Gnome desktop onto my improvised screen (posterboard panels trimmed to fit into a frame found at a thrift store) giving me a nice 46" screen — much nicer on the eyes, I found, than always staring at a laptop.

The selling points

This projector may not be meant for boardrooms or gymnasiums, but in more modest surroundings it stands up quite well. The controls are simple enough that the "get started" guide in the box is entirely visual, just a reassuring poster illustrating the steps for first use. Plug it in, supply a media source, and turn it on.

The controls clustered on the top surface of the GP1 are backlit, and arranged around the power selector. The four labeled buttons (besides Power) are sane, too: Menu / Exit; Mode / Enter; Blank; and Source. Arrow keys point up/down and left/right, for setting parameters chosen once you've entered a menu. While the opposite would be worse, I found the controls a bit more sensitive than I would have liked; it's too easy to accidentally trigger the Blank button, for instance. The power button, intelligently, must be pressed twice — the second time is to confirm that you really did mean to turn the thing off.

The built-in media player makes the GP1 considerably more versatile, if you prepare your files with its limitations in mind. Plug in a USB thumb drive loaded with JPEGs, AVI files or MP4s, and you can play the files, complete with glorious 2-watt stereo sound, without needing a computer or other active source attached. That's the theory, at least: in reality, not even all AVI or MP4 files will work. A broad selection of home movies, YouTube downloads converted from FLV with the versatile VLC, and random internet curiosities from the "misc" folder of my hard drive gave me the whole array of outcomes: some wouldn't play at all; for some sound worked, but not picture; for some, it was the picture that worked, but not sound; and for some (like a clip of my niece whacking me on the head with her toy sofa, then gleefully punching my head) it worked as hoped, to the boredom of everyone I could persuade to watch. However, a small insert that came in the box (too late for the manual, I guess) outlines the several acceptable permutations of file format and codecs (recommended: Video: MPEG-1, MJPEG Audio: MPEG-1 layer 2, PCM), so I was able to watch some Northern Exposure ripped from my DVDs and loaded onto a USB drive after setting the right parameters in Handbrake.

The kindest things that can be said about the remote are that it works, it's small, and it allows the user to easily correct for keystoning — just press a button labeled with top-heavy trapezoid, or a bottom-heavy one. The actual button layout isn't especially intuitive, in part because the controls are actually split into two sections; the top half controls the operation of the projector itself; the bottom part is for the built-in media player. Having both "Enter" and "Return" choices is probably not a great design choice, either. Like most remotes, though, the user will probably soon enough learn a groove through the actual options he finds useful, and at least there are only a few keys to get used to, because most controls (a decent array of them, from color-correction for different target surfaces to a choice of several languages) are accessed through the built-in menus. A giant remote with one button per function would defeat some of the advantage of having a tiny projector in the first place.

Since low-end projectors based on incandescent bulbs often have bulb assemblies that can cost hundreds of dollars (and fail at intervals that are hard to anticipate, however technically accurate are the listed MTBF numbers), the biggest draw for me of this device is that its light source is an LED array, which should be rugged and long-lived. While most LED life claims strike me as optimistic (has anyone actually tested a projector like this to 10,000 hours?), a light source that I basically don't need to coddle or worry about in the near-term is reassuring. The GP1 is not utterly silent (there's a small fan, and it seems to run at all times), and it gets fairly warm in use, but it's quieter and cooler than most consumer-oriented projectors I've seen, as you'd expect from a LED-based system.

Glitches and hitches: It's hard to look the gift-horse of a built-in media player app in the mouth too hard, so I view its file compatibility limits as facts of life, not problems per se. However, I've run into two actually annoying problems with the the GP1.

First, keeping the signal locked, which should be high on a projector's priority list, doesn't always work. My Gnome desktop has blinked on and off a few times, inexplicably; a "Searching all signals" message appears on screen, but it only manages to automatically recapture the signal about half the time. I blamed this at first on my computer (Toshiba laptop running an Ubuntu 9.10 alpha), but have since seen these occasional drop-outs with a MacBook Pro as well as another Linux laptop, and even while using the built-in media center software. Re-selecting the input source (an easy one-second, two-button dance on the remote) has usually worked to correct this, but sometimes the signal has been lost until I restart the attached laptop. My hope is that this is a teething problem related to early production, rather than inherent to the device. Since I've had left it running most hours of most days for a month, maybe it's just asking for a rest.

Second, I've hit a problem that seems to go with a lot of devices that use high-powered LEDs: occasional flicker. This flickering is my most serious complaint about this device. On the same once-in-a-while basis as the signal-dropping just described (which is to say, rarely, but enough to notice in the course of constant use), the lamp will cycle through several colors and brightness levels. Sometimes this is fleeting — just a momentary change — but sometimes the image takes on a new hue and stays that way for minutes (or at least until the device is restarted). In a theater, I'd want my money back, when I'm reading a story at the New York Times' site in 2-inch letters on the wall, it doesn't bother me much.

What's not in the box:

This projector is inexpensive, and comes in a box that could hold shoes for a small child, so it's not surprising that the supplied accessories are a bit bare-bones.

You'll need a VGA extender, unless your computer is going to sit practically next to the projector — sometimes that's the most practical place for it anyhow, but a bit awkward for many set-ups. After deciding where I wanted to put the projector, I bought a VGA extension for $5 from a local used-computer dealer, so the projector could fit on a Rube Goldberg-style shelf about 12" from the ceiling and nearly touching the wall. The projector is mounted upside down, connected to a wooden panel with a 1/4" bolt to the tripod mount on the GP1's underside. Having a tripod mount is a nice touch; the projector weighs little enough that something like a Gorillapod would be a handy accessory.

You'll also need an adapter if your video source's output jacks are fancier than composite RCA or VGA; the HDMI-to-VGA adapter that came with a MacBook worked fine for me.

A USB extension cable makes it easier to swap out USB devices, especially if the projector is set just-so. Plugging a cheap SD adapter into the USB port or extension cable works fine, too; wedding or birthday pictures could be instantly reviewed on a big screen rather than by passing around a camera's 3" display.

Since these are cheapish items and not strictly necessary for little Joybee to work, it's not a complaint that they're not supplied, just a reminder.

The low-down:

In the sort of space where this projector's bright enough to use comfortably, the middlin' resolution won't stick out — the fact that a device about the size of some early consumer-level digital cameras is spitting out the image will. Projectors of this general description would be great in every dorm room, bedroom and fallout shelter; personal-size image-beamers like this (rugged, relatively lower power, with built-in playback abilities) could be the basis of OLPC-style education efforts (or field medical training, or detailed political news) in places where live lecturers might be too expensive to ship in. It's not hard to imagine some of today's "portable desktop" computers with projector beam built-right in to their chassis. Working with one 46" screen has led to fantasies of having a few more, to compensate for the limitation of SVGA resolution; perhaps a screen apiece for browser, terminal, and IM client.

Rating a product like this is difficult, but on a scale of 1-5, here's my upshot for a few obvious categories:

• Ease of use: 4 (Twitchy controls, weak remote take away from nice menus and ergonomic focus wheel.)
• Overview picture quality: 3 (Hey, it's 100 lumens, 800x600.)
• Portability: 4 (The giant AC adapter drags it down, but the thing is still tiny.)
• Features: 3 (No shame; broader media compatibility, motorized focus, and tilt lens would make it a 5, but it's not that kind of projector.)
• Overall Value: 4 (For now!)

The Joybee isn't anything like the end of the line for personal projectors (a year from now, there will surely be ones along the same lines that are brighter, cheaper, higher-res, or all three), but despite my list of gripes above, it is a glimpse (from the cheap seats) at the future, and worth checking out.

snydeq writes "Rather than view it as a game-changer, Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister sees Opera Unite as a Hail Mary bid for Opera to stay in the game. After all, in an era when even vending machines have Web servers on them, a Web server on the Web browser isn't really that groundbreaking. What Opera is attempting is to 'reintermediate' the Internet — 'directly linking people's personal computers together' by making them sign up for an account on Opera's servers and ensuring all of their exchanges pass through Opera's servers first. 'That's an effective way to get around technical difficulties like NAT firewalls, but more important, it makes Opera the intermediary in your social interactions — not Facebook, not MySpace, but Opera,' McAllister writes. In other words, Opera hopes to use social networking as a Trojan horse to put traditional apps back in charge."

darthcamaro writes "We all know that IPv4 address space is almost gone — but we also know that no major US carrier has yet migrated its consumer base, either. Comcast is now upping the ante a bit and has now said that they are seriously gearing up for IPv6 residential broadband deployment soon. 'Comcast plans to enter into broadband IPv6 technical trials later this year and into 2010,' Barry Tishgart, VP of Internet Services for Comcast said. 'Planning for general deployment is underway.'"

oh2 writes "The highest applicable Swedish court, Regeringsrätten, has ruled that IP numbers are protected (in Swedish) since they can be traced to individuals. This means that only government agencies are allowed to track and store IP addresses, leaving 'anti-piracy' advocates with no legal way to find possible copyright infringers." Update: 06/18 14:42 GMT by KD : The original linked article had been pulled due to factual errors and a new article has been posted (link replaced above). Here is a Google translation. The new article makes clear that the ruling does not affect the anti-piracy efforts of rights-holders.
Update: 06/18 15:08 GMT by KD : Behind the link below is a summary in English of the article sent in by the submitter, oh2.
This autumn Datainspektionen will start monitoring how the IPRED law is applied when it comes to disclosure of personal information. A recent verdict in the Regeringsrätten, Sweden's highest applicable court, has upheld Datainspektionens decision that IP addresses are to be considered personal information and therefore protected under law.

In 2005 Datainspektionen ruled that collecting and storing personal information online like copyright advocates were doing was a breach of the Swedish PUL, Personal information act, that regulates how and what kind of information that can be traced to a single individual that can be stored. The anti-piracy organizations were quickly granted an exemption though, that expired March 31st. Starting April 1st this year IPRED allows holders of copyright to apply to the courts for this information.

Datainspektionen will now monitor closely how any personal information acquired from the courts in this manner is used by copyright holders.

oh2 writes "The highest applicable Swedish court, Regeringsrätten, has ruled that IP numbers are protected (in Swedish) since they can be traced to individuals. This means that only government agencies are allowed to track and store IP addresses, leaving 'anti-piracy' advocates with no legal way to find possible copyright infringers." Update: 06/18 14:42 GMT by KD : The original linked article had been pulled due to factual errors and a new article has been posted (link replaced above). Here is a Google translation. The new article makes clear that the ruling does not affect the anti-piracy efforts of rights-holders.
Update: 06/18 15:08 GMT by KD : Behind the link below is a summary in English of the article sent in by the submitter, oh2.
This autumn Datainspektionen will start monitoring how the IPRED law is applied when it comes to disclosure of personal information. A recent verdict in the Regeringsrätten, Sweden's highest applicable court, has upheld Datainspektionens decision that IP addresses are to be considered personal information and therefore protected under law.

In 2005 Datainspektionen ruled that collecting and storing personal information online like copyright advocates were doing was a breach of the Swedish PUL, Personal information act, that regulates how and what kind of information that can be traced to a single individual that can be stored. The anti-piracy organizations were quickly granted an exemption though, that expired March 31st. Starting April 1st this year IPRED allows holders of copyright to apply to the courts for this information.

Datainspektionen will now monitor closely how any personal information acquired from the courts in this manner is used by copyright holders.

Vigile writes "Despite the rising excitement over SSDs, some of it has been tempered by performance degradation issues. The promised land is supposed to be the mighty TRIM command — a way for the OS to indicate to the SSD a range of blocks that are no longer needed because of deleted files. Apparently Windows 7 will implement TRIM of some kind but for now you can use a proprietary TRIM tool on a few select SSDs using Indilinx controllers. A new article at PC Perspective evaluates performance on a pair of Indilinx drives as well as the TRIM utility and its efficacy."

Aeonite writes "As the title suggests, Game Design: A Practical Approach presents a practical approach to game design — one that is almost too practical in places. The book does a good job of covering many of the foundational elements of game design (called "atoms" by the author), but in places the level of practical detail — and the heavy focus on Lua code examples — is a bit hard to work through. Readers allergic to code may find themselves skipping over swaths of text instead of actually reading it." Read below for the rest of Michael's review. Game Design: A Practical Approach author Paul Schuytema pages 416 publisher Charles River Media rating 6 reviewer Michael Fiegel ISBN 978-1-58450-471-9 summary A practical, often code-heavy guide to game design Schuytema is a game industry veteran, perhaps best known for having worked on the original incarnation of Prey back in 1998 or thereabouts. These days it seems he's employed by the University of Illinois as an Extension Specialist, and it certainly seems to have rubbed off on him, as the book is written in a very scholarly, textbook-like fashion. The preface speaks of "foundational information," and while the exciting parts of working in the game industry are mentioned as well, generally the book's subtitle ("A Practical Approach") is precisely what you get.

The book is broken into three parts. The first, the aptly (and practically) named "Introduction to Game Design," consists of six chapters, covering the basic foundational elements of game design, game design documents, coding tools and the like. The advice in the first four chapters, in particular, comes across as a bit too practical, if not downright pedantic, as the author discusses things like listening, taking notes, and reading. In chapter 4 the author even covers the merits of breathing properly, getting enough sleep and not eating junk food (good luck encouraging that at a game company; we lived on Reese's Peanut Butter Cups at Perpetual Entertainment). One wonders if the current generation of whippersnappers, just entering the industry, really needs to be told to get a good night's sleep; if so, we're in for some interesting games over the next few decades.

Some of the advice here is genuinely useful and interesting, such as methods for helping inspire creative thought, brainstorming and developing memory. Chapters 5 and 6 are also more relevant to game design; the former covers game design documents, pitch docs, functional specifications, and the like, and is one of the tightest and most useful chapters in the book. Chapter 6 then dives headlong into the Lua scripting language, which is where the book's focus on game design sort of drifts sideways into the realm of game development. From this point on, the book is sporadically riddled with code examples, references to the example game on the included CD, and detailed explanations of variables, operators, functions and control structures. This is useful, if dry, but it seems to be directed more at the indie "casual game" industry where game designer, game programmer, game artist, game writer, and game publisher are all the same person.

The second part of the book, "Game Design Theory," covers high level design concepts broken down into what the author calls "game atoms". Examples include things like: having a clear goal for the player; providing subvictories to the player; allowing the player to affect the game world; making the context of the game understandable to the player; and so on. These are insightful, and easy to understand and digest, and were the entire book filled with nothing but these I would find it all the more valuable. Sadly, this section is also the shortest in the book (spanning just over 50 pages), and although later chapters in this section do manage to dive into things like player perceptions and challenges, I find myself wanting more. In covering the concept of game "flow" and losing oneself in the moment, the section does earn geek points for citing Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, whose name looks like catlike typing should have been detected. But I digress.

Part 3, approximately half of the book, is devoted to "Real-World Game Design," which moves away from "theatrical underpinnings" and into more (you guessed it) "practical" issues. Here, specific "atoms" such as UI, inventory, power-ups, puzzles, conflicts, and the like are covered in some depth, each presented with code to show how the relevant "atom" might be programmed (examples taken from the sandbox game named Eye Opener, included on the accompanying CD). In places the density of code calls to mind the BASIC game programming books I owned in the late '80s, where if I had 6 hours to type I could make a rocket blast off the top of my Apple IIe monitor. In fact, one of the most interesting comments is on page 336 where the author discusses early games on the Apple II, where "(r)eplay of the game meant going for higher scores, since a single pass through the game was maybe 20 minutes tops." Schuytema speaks as if these are games from a bygone era, but it seems to me he's basically describing the modern casual game, of which there are many, many thousands in the wild. Much of the latter material, alas, seems to drift back into the realm of the "overly practical," with the author covering storytelling atoms such as outlining, writing, revising, and working with a writer. The final chapter, "Next Steps," then presents the ever popular "how to break into the industry" section, which covers very practical, but again somewhat obvious topics such as going to school, networking, and following game websites.

Each chapter ends with a summary and a series of "Chapter Exercises" that hammer home the feeling that this book is really more of a textbook, complete with homework assignments, rather than a casual read. Even the index is almost TOO complete and practical, with entries for brief, passing mentions of Barnes & Noble and Yahoo!; I was surprised not to find an entry for Mountain Dew, since it's mentioned a few times more often in the text and seems somewhat more relevant to the game industry. The book also offers a number of "from the trenches" sidebars throughout, each featuring veterans espousing on various elements of the game industry. These are interesting and often insightful, but their overall impact is somewhat reduced considering that fully half of them (11 of 22) feature the author himself. It seems that a broader selection of insights and examples from other designers in the industry would have served to balance the book a bit more.

Also worth at least a passing mention is the issue of the postage-stamp-sized images and screenshots that pepper game books these days. Many of the pictures in this book are difficult to make out due to their clarity and size (Figure 1.1 looks like some guys from Home Depot are about to encounter the Blair Witch), but most can be puzzled through. Even then, although they generally have relevance to the subject being discussed they often don't really reinforce the concept at hand in a useful fashion: Figure 3.1 is a picture of a marble notebook and some pencils, as if the book were written in a future time when knowledge of writing materials was lost; Figure 3.4 is captioned "Use your finger as an eye guide..." and contains a picture of a book with a finger on it; Figure 10.3's caption mentions "the samurai sword" weapon in Shadow Warrior, yet the screenshot apparently depicts a grenade launcher. The capper is probably page 194, which is supposed to illustrate multiplayer gaming, but instead (as far as I can tell) depicts two mid-'90s Inside Sales reps playing Solitaire instead of phoning clients. Possibly they are car salesmen; it's not clear.

Warts aside, as a whole Game Design: A Practical Approach covers quite a lot of terrain in quite a useful fashion, and hits all the major foundational points about game design. Though it does contain quite a lot of Lua code, this is admittedly not as irrelevant as it could have been, since Lua is used in a wide assortment of games, from Far Cry to Natural Selection 2, Warhammer Online to The Witcher. The book is a few years old at this point, but it seems that it will remain relevant as long as Lua remains a viable programming language in the game industry. Left-brainers in search of a fairly crunchy and quite practical book about game design AND development (and in particular those who want to design and develop their own games, rather than work for someone else) will be quite happy with the material here. Those right-brainers more comfortable amidst the fluffier bits of the game industry, however, may find themselves checking their watches halfway through the second act.

You can purchase Game Design: A Practical Approach from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Aeonite writes "As the title suggests, Game Design: A Practical Approach presents a practical approach to game design — one that is almost too practical in places. The book does a good job of covering many of the foundational elements of game design (called "atoms" by the author), but in places the level of practical detail — and the heavy focus on Lua code examples — is a bit hard to work through. Readers allergic to code may find themselves skipping over swaths of text instead of actually reading it." Read below for the rest of Michael's review. Game Design: A Practical Approach author Paul Schuytema pages 416 publisher Charles River Media rating 6 reviewer Michael Fiegel ISBN 978-1-58450-471-9 summary A practical, often code-heavy guide to game design Schuytema is a game industry veteran, perhaps best known for having worked on the original incarnation of Prey back in 1998 or thereabouts. These days it seems he's employed by the University of Illinois as an Extension Specialist, and it certainly seems to have rubbed off on him, as the book is written in a very scholarly, textbook-like fashion. The preface speaks of "foundational information," and while the exciting parts of working in the game industry are mentioned as well, generally the book's subtitle ("A Practical Approach") is precisely what you get.

The book is broken into three parts. The first, the aptly (and practically) named "Introduction to Game Design," consists of six chapters, covering the basic foundational elements of game design, game design documents, coding tools and the like. The advice in the first four chapters, in particular, comes across as a bit too practical, if not downright pedantic, as the author discusses things like listening, taking notes, and reading. In chapter 4 the author even covers the merits of breathing properly, getting enough sleep and not eating junk food (good luck encouraging that at a game company; we lived on Reese's Peanut Butter Cups at Perpetual Entertainment). One wonders if the current generation of whippersnappers, just entering the industry, really needs to be told to get a good night's sleep; if so, we're in for some interesting games over the next few decades.

Some of the advice here is genuinely useful and interesting, such as methods for helping inspire creative thought, brainstorming and developing memory. Chapters 5 and 6 are also more relevant to game design; the former covers game design documents, pitch docs, functional specifications, and the like, and is one of the tightest and most useful chapters in the book. Chapter 6 then dives headlong into the Lua scripting language, which is where the book's focus on game design sort of drifts sideways into the realm of game development. From this point on, the book is sporadically riddled with code examples, references to the example game on the included CD, and detailed explanations of variables, operators, functions and control structures. This is useful, if dry, but it seems to be directed more at the indie "casual game" industry where game designer, game programmer, game artist, game writer, and game publisher are all the same person.

The second part of the book, "Game Design Theory," covers high level design concepts broken down into what the author calls "game atoms". Examples include things like: having a clear goal for the player; providing subvictories to the player; allowing the player to affect the game world; making the context of the game understandable to the player; and so on. These are insightful, and easy to understand and digest, and were the entire book filled with nothing but these I would find it all the more valuable. Sadly, this section is also the shortest in the book (spanning just over 50 pages), and although later chapters in this section do manage to dive into things like player perceptions and challenges, I find myself wanting more. In covering the concept of game "flow" and losing oneself in the moment, the section does earn geek points for citing Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, whose name looks like catlike typing should have been detected. But I digress.

Part 3, approximately half of the book, is devoted to "Real-World Game Design," which moves away from "theatrical underpinnings" and into more (you guessed it) "practical" issues. Here, specific "atoms" such as UI, inventory, power-ups, puzzles, conflicts, and the like are covered in some depth, each presented with code to show how the relevant "atom" might be programmed (examples taken from the sandbox game named Eye Opener, included on the accompanying CD). In places the density of code calls to mind the BASIC game programming books I owned in the late '80s, where if I had 6 hours to type I could make a rocket blast off the top of my Apple IIe monitor. In fact, one of the most interesting comments is on page 336 where the author discusses early games on the Apple II, where "(r)eplay of the game meant going for higher scores, since a single pass through the game was maybe 20 minutes tops." Schuytema speaks as if these are games from a bygone era, but it seems to me he's basically describing the modern casual game, of which there are many, many thousands in the wild. Much of the latter material, alas, seems to drift back into the realm of the "overly practical," with the author covering storytelling atoms such as outlining, writing, revising, and working with a writer. The final chapter, "Next Steps," then presents the ever popular "how to break into the industry" section, which covers very practical, but again somewhat obvious topics such as going to school, networking, and following game websites.

Each chapter ends with a summary and a series of "Chapter Exercises" that hammer home the feeling that this book is really more of a textbook, complete with homework assignments, rather than a casual read. Even the index is almost TOO complete and practical, with entries for brief, passing mentions of Barnes & Noble and Yahoo!; I was surprised not to find an entry for Mountain Dew, since it's mentioned a few times more often in the text and seems somewhat more relevant to the game industry. The book also offers a number of "from the trenches" sidebars throughout, each featuring veterans espousing on various elements of the game industry. These are interesting and often insightful, but their overall impact is somewhat reduced considering that fully half of them (11 of 22) feature the author himself. It seems that a broader selection of insights and examples from other designers in the industry would have served to balance the book a bit more.

Also worth at least a passing mention is the issue of the postage-stamp-sized images and screenshots that pepper game books these days. Many of the pictures in this book are difficult to make out due to their clarity and size (Figure 1.1 looks like some guys from Home Depot are about to encounter the Blair Witch), but most can be puzzled through. Even then, although they generally have relevance to the subject being discussed they often don't really reinforce the concept at hand in a useful fashion: Figure 3.1 is a picture of a marble notebook and some pencils, as if the book were written in a future time when knowledge of writing materials was lost; Figure 3.4 is captioned "Use your finger as an eye guide..." and contains a picture of a book with a finger on it; Figure 10.3's caption mentions "the samurai sword" weapon in Shadow Warrior, yet the screenshot apparently depicts a grenade launcher. The capper is probably page 194, which is supposed to illustrate multiplayer gaming, but instead (as far as I can tell) depicts two mid-'90s Inside Sales reps playing Solitaire instead of phoning clients. Possibly they are car salesmen; it's not clear.

Warts aside, as a whole Game Design: A Practical Approach covers quite a lot of terrain in quite a useful fashion, and hits all the major foundational points about game design. Though it does contain quite a lot of Lua code, this is admittedly not as irrelevant as it could have been, since Lua is used in a wide assortment of games, from Far Cry to Natural Selection 2, Warhammer Online to The Witcher. The book is a few years old at this point, but it seems that it will remain relevant as long as Lua remains a viable programming language in the game industry. Left-brainers in search of a fairly crunchy and quite practical book about game design AND development (and in particular those who want to design and develop their own games, rather than work for someone else) will be quite happy with the material here. Those right-brainers more comfortable amidst the fluffier bits of the game industry, however, may find themselves checking their watches halfway through the second act.

You can purchase Game Design: A Practical Approach from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

eldavojohn writes "The long and torrid trial of Jammie Thomas is in its second stage and in full swing. Yesterday, two major events took place: Thomas gave her surprising testimony and the RIAA was threatened for not disclosing new information to the opposing counsel. Thomas claimed she didn't know what KaZaA was before the trial started. She also admitted that the hard drive handed over to investigators was different than the one that was in her computer during the time of infringement. Her testimony from the first trial was that 'the hard drive replacement had taken place in 2004 and that the drive had not been swapped again since.' This is problematic because the new hard drive had a manufacturing date of 2005. The RIAA had its own troubles, almost losing all evidence from a particular witness when they added an additional log file to evidence without the defense being notified of it. The judge mercifully only removed that new evidence from the trial. It was related to whether or not an external hard drive was ever connected to the computer."

snydeq writes "Enterprise licensing for Windows 7 could cause major headaches and add more cost to the Windows 7 migration effort, InfoWorld reports. Under the proposed license, businesses that purchase PCs with Windows 7 pre-installed within six months of the Oct. 23 launch date will be able to downgrade those systems to XP, and later upgrade back to Windows 7 when ready to migrate users. PCs bought after April 22, 2010, however, can only be downgraded to Vista — no help for XP-based organizations, which would be wise to wait 12 to 18 months before adopting Windows 7, so that they can test hardware and software compatibility and ensure their vendors' Windows 7 support meets their needs. XP shops that chose not to install Vista will have to either rush their migration process or spend extra to enroll in Microsoft's Software Assurance program, which allows them to install any OS version — for about $90 per year per PC."

LionMage writes "Much has been made previously of how China's Green Dam software must be installed on all new PCs in China, and of more recent revelations that the software may create exploitable security vulnerabilities or even provide the Chinese government with a ready-made botnet to use for potentially nefarious purposes. (One of those prior articles even discusses how Green Dam incorporates blacklists from CyberSitter.) Now the BBC is reporting that Solid Oak's CyberSitter software may have had more than just a compiled blacklist lifted from it. Solid Oak is claiming that actual pieces of their code somehow ended up in Green Dam. From PC Magazine's article: 'Solid Oak Software, the developer of CyberSitter, claims that the look and feel of the GUI used by Green Dam mimics the style of CyberSitter. But more damning, chief executive Brian Milburn said, was the fact that the Green Dam code uses DLLs identified with the CyberSitter name, and even makes calls back to Solid Oak's servers for updates.'" Relatedly, reader Spurious Logic writes that Green Dam won't be mandatory after all, according to an unnamed official with China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

LionMage writes "Much has been made previously of how China's Green Dam software must be installed on all new PCs in China, and of more recent revelations that the software may create exploitable security vulnerabilities or even provide the Chinese government with a ready-made botnet to use for potentially nefarious purposes. (One of those prior articles even discusses how Green Dam incorporates blacklists from CyberSitter.) Now the BBC is reporting that Solid Oak's CyberSitter software may have had more than just a compiled blacklist lifted from it. Solid Oak is claiming that actual pieces of their code somehow ended up in Green Dam. From PC Magazine's article: 'Solid Oak Software, the developer of CyberSitter, claims that the look and feel of the GUI used by Green Dam mimics the style of CyberSitter. But more damning, chief executive Brian Milburn said, was the fact that the Green Dam code uses DLLs identified with the CyberSitter name, and even makes calls back to Solid Oak's servers for updates.'" Relatedly, reader Spurious Logic writes that Green Dam won't be mandatory after all, according to an unnamed official with China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

LionMage writes "Much has been made previously of how China's Green Dam software must be installed on all new PCs in China, and of more recent revelations that the software may create exploitable security vulnerabilities or even provide the Chinese government with a ready-made botnet to use for potentially nefarious purposes. (One of those prior articles even discusses how Green Dam incorporates blacklists from CyberSitter.) Now the BBC is reporting that Solid Oak's CyberSitter software may have had more than just a compiled blacklist lifted from it. Solid Oak is claiming that actual pieces of their code somehow ended up in Green Dam. From PC Magazine's article: 'Solid Oak Software, the developer of CyberSitter, claims that the look and feel of the GUI used by Green Dam mimics the style of CyberSitter. But more damning, chief executive Brian Milburn said, was the fact that the Green Dam code uses DLLs identified with the CyberSitter name, and even makes calls back to Solid Oak's servers for updates.'" Relatedly, reader Spurious Logic writes that Green Dam won't be mandatory after all, according to an unnamed official with China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

An anonymous reader sends along a Cosmos Magazine piece on the discovery by NASA's Cassini probe of vertical structures in Saturn's rings, 150 times as high as the rings are thick. The structures were seen because a once-every-15-years orientation of the rings caused vertical features to cast visible shadows. "NASA's Cassini probe has uncovered for the first time towering vertical structures in Saturn's otherwise flat rings that are attributable to the gravitational effects of a small moon. 'We thought that this vertical structure was pretty neat when we first saw it in our simulations,' said John Weiss, the paper's lead author at the Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for Operations in the US city of Boulder, Colorado. 'But it's a million times cooler to have your theory supported by such gorgeous images. It makes you suspect you might be doing something right,' he added." Update: 06/17 19:29 GMT by KD : The CICLOPS team sent a note correcting the attribution of the quote; the linked article also had it wrong, and has since been corrected.

An anonymous reader writes "Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot tells CNBC that he believes the next generation of video game systems isn't as far away as the public has been led to believe. Guillemot noted that public demand for the best machine possible, as well as coming competition from companies such as OnLive could spur Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo to roll out new systems sooner than they want. That's not good news for publishers, though, as he says games in the next generation will likely cost $60 million to create."

Michael J. Ross writes "Among the more popular and better-regarded content management systems (CMSs), Drupal is distinguished partly by its building-block approach, in which a website's functionality is built up in pieces, each of which is a module (either core or contributed). The opposite approach — using far fewer but more encompassing modules — is generally preferred by non-developers who do not relish integrating a sizable collection of modules or trying to modify the underlying code. Nonetheless, anyone who wishes to build a Drupal-based social website, can learn how to do so in a new e-book titled Drupal 6: Ultimate Community Site Guide." Read below for the rest of Michael's review. Drupal 6: Ultimate Community Site Guide author Dorien Herremans pages 140 publisher Holistic Vibes rating 7/10 reviewer Michael J. Ross ISBN 978-2839904902 summary How to create a Drupal community site using contrib modules. Published by Holistic Vibes Sàrl in 2009, the book was written by Dorien Herremans, an independent Web developer in Belgium who holds an MSc degree in MIS from the University of Antwerp, and has lectured in IT and 3D computer animation at Les Roches University of Applied Sciences, in Bluche, Switzerland. Her Drupal story is no doubt similar to that of many other Web developers: After building numerous sites in Drupal, she decided to create a new community site — in this case, Raw Vegan Dating. She was well aware that other CMSs offered fairly sophisticated modules that could be dropped into a fresh CMS installation, thereby creating a new community site instantly. But that approach generally requires one to accept the functional limitations of the chosen module, or start hacking the module's code (which for most modules is poorly written and equally poorly documented), with no guarantee that one's modifications will even work. Dorien instead opted for Drupal's flexibility, but found the development process rather difficult and time-consuming, partly because of some technical issues that arose: How can one easily create advanced profiles in Drupal? Can one add a photo gallery to each profile? Ultimately, these lead to a much broader question: Is it possible to build a feature-rich community/dating site using only core and contributed modules, without having to make any modifications to them?

Dorien set out to answer that question, in developing a new site, Drupal Fun, which is a community primarily for Drupal users who have read the book and wish to help each other. The site also offers a few tutorials on how to convert to the latest versions of modules. In making that site, Dorien utilized only available modules, with no changes, and documented each step in the process. The lessons learned from that effort form the foundation of Drupal 6: Ultimate Community Site Guide. The first three chapters constitute an introductory foundation; the next two cover user profiles; and the remaining four major chapters explain content, monetization, etc. For all topics, the Drupal Fun site is used as a case study. Even though the book focuses on Drupal version 6, and the example site is created using that version, the book does have notes on how to implement everything in version 5 as well.

In the book's introduction, the author provides a brief overview of Drupal, virtual communities, and her perspective on how to build one of the latter using the former. She states that it is easy to resort to custom modules — i.e., modules created or modified by oneself — but this contradicts one of the central tenets of the book, that a non-programmer would find it difficult if not impossible to go beyond already-available modules in building a community site (unless of course he were to outsource the development of the custom modules). In a footnote, it is incorrectly stated that "You can use the Drupal interface to write a module yourself" (page 4).

The second chapter, titled "Setting up the site," explains the desired functionality of the example site to be created (including the site's main goal, which redundantly was also presented at the end of the previous chapter). The author explains how to install Drupal on one's local Web server. A Windows-only developer may be confused by steps 2, 3, and 8, which are specific to Linux/Unix, but not labeled as such. The expression "hidden files" (page 10) would mean in Windows any files with their "hidden" attributes enabled. But in this case the author is probably referring to a single file, ".htaccess," in the Drupal root directory, because in *nix parlance a file is considered hidden if its name consists only of an extension (such a file is not shown in directory listings by default). The chapter concludes with several figures, which should have been interspersed throughout the earlier narrative.

Any reader following the book should at that point have a working copy of Drupal in his development environment. Chapter 3 explains some basic configuration settings for the newly-installed Drupal instance, as well as how to install modules and themes. However, some of the information is presented in a potentially confusing manner, such as on page 16 when an absolute directory path in one step, is immediately followed by what appears to be another absolute directory path in the next step ("/admin/build/modules"), but is actually meant to convey a navigation path within the Drupal user interface. For a book intended for Drupal newbies, it is essential to clarify technical issues such as this one, because otherwise readers can quickly become frustrated, wondering what the author is discussing and how to follow along in their own Drupal instances. Later, a favicon is described as residing "on the top of your browser window," but that would be the browser icon; rather, favicons are next to the browser's location field and in any relevant tabs. The author briefly describes more than half a dozen modules that arguably should be included in any Drupal site, including ones for dynamic menus, spam control, and task scheduling. Links to the modules' pages — in the text and/or as links in the PDF e-book — would have been quite helpful. The Tagadelic module is recommended for generating tag clouds, including a friendlier 404 error page, using the directory path "/tagadelic"; but Figure 3.5 shows the setting without that leading slash, and a quick test suggests that it does not work. More importantly for the newbie reader, there is no explanation as to how to start using tags. This chapter — like all that follow, except for the last — concludes with a list of contributed modules discussed in the respective chapter. Given that the chapters are short, and the modules' names easily stand out, these module lists add no value and could be removed in a future edition.

In Chapter 4, the reader learns how to use the Content Profile module for making highly functional and versatile user profiles that include photo and video galleries, avatars, contact forms, social networking, map locations, personal Web pages, AdSense revenue streams, and more. Most of the instructions are straightforward, but the discussion on how to implement avatars, on page 30, should have been fleshed out (no pun intended) — with more details as to exactly what settings to make, and where. Chapter 5 extends the previous topic, by demonstrating how to enhance the new user profile content type by implementing additional functionality: image and video galleries, a site member's location on a world map, member search, and featured members. In the next chapter, the author shows how to add more text-oriented content types, using the Views, Panels, and Fivestar modules.

While the first six chapters of the book focus on how to create functionality for users, the three chapters that follow examine how to create functionality for the online community itself. Chapter 7 discusses the details of adding forums, shout boxes, buddy lists, messages, subscriptions, a newsletter, user points, user status, user activity (think Twitter), and user groups. Chapter 8 explains how to utilize Google AdSense, affiliate programs, and donations — so that site owners and members can receive some sort of financial reward for their community-building efforts. Chapter 9 covers subjects that a site builder will encounter near the final stages of site development, such as finalizing the navigation menus, providing a post-registration page, supporting internationalization and localization, customizing system e-mail messages, tuning site performance, promoting a new site, tracking a site's popularity with analytics, performing module updates safely, backing up Drupal files and database, and duplicating a site.

Drupal 6: Ultimate Community Site Guide is wrapped up with a brief chapter, an author bio, and an unnecessary marketing description of the book. Unlike most programming books, this one is missing an index — although, as an e-book, it can be searched far easier than a print book.

The list price of the book is a very reasonable €7.70, and it is currently available for €5.50. Even though it is registered under the ISBN 978-2839904902, it is currently not available from Amazon.com, because it is an e-book, and the Amazon.com Kindle is not yet available in Europe; this apparently prohibits European publishers from using it. However, the book's website makes it possible to purchase it online. That site also has more details on the book's contents and the author. In addition to the book site, the first three chapters can be previewed online, via its Google Books listing.

Like any technical work, this one has its strengths and weaknesses. Sadly, the book is marred by generally sloppy writing, with a high ratio of errors to pages. There are several errata: "to[o] much" (pages 4 and 79), "others[']" (page 5), "look[s]" (page 16), "fig 3.3" (page 17; should read "Figure 3.1"), "Imagecache_actions Module" (page 52), "eld avatar" (page 66), "other then" (page 69), "others['] contact link" (page 94), "less then" (page 117), "Clustermaps" (page 124), and ."[my]sql file" (page 128). Also, there are many instances of awkward or incorrect phrasing, such as "harmonic" (page 2; should read "in harmony"), "Skippy balls" (page 3; hint: they have nothing to do with peanut butter), "expansive" (page 4; should read "extensible"), "6-versions" (page 9), "and a while" (page 20; should read "in awhile"), "brackets" (page 26; should read "parentheses"), "200% satisfied" (page 34), "Fixfertig" (page 76), "a grip out" (page 83), and "yourbranch" (page 112). Some of these may be European expressions, though Google suggests otherwise. There are missing commas and hyphens, some punctuation marks used incorrectly, and numerous sentences split at the coordinating conjunction into separate (incomplete) sentences. The use of case and spaces in proper names throughout the book are oftentimes incorrect, e.g., "MySql" (page 10 and others), "ftp" (page 10), "cleanURLs" (page 15), "phptemplate" (page 16), "Dhtml" (page 23), "tagadelic" (page 31), "html" (page 98), and "Paypal" (page 113, etc.). Most of the PHP snippets do not have any proper code indentation. Web accessibility proponents will cringe at the table-based positioning. The book's first "chapter" is really an introduction, and should be relabeled as such. The "Acknowledgments" and "Overview" pages have the same page number. Chapter titles are not in title case, but in sentence case. The side notes, used to indicate unstable releases, are rather annoying, because each one of them is positioned so that it looks like a continuation of the narrative line to the left of it. All of these side notes — and perhaps the information in the footnotes as well — should be merged into the narrative. As of this writing, the book's site claims that the book has more than 100 screenshots, but by my count there are 87 of the them. All of these blemishes — none serious — suggest that no technical editing was done prior to publication.

However, the main problem with the book is how, at several points in the narrative, the author assumes too much understanding on the part of the reader, and does not provide enough details for the reader who is trying to implement each suggestion on his own computer and yet has never before worked with the modules in question, or even the key concepts. This problem is seen in entire sections (such as the tagging section mentioned above) and lone sentences (such as the baffling "If you want to change a preset later on, just flush the preset after making the changes..." on page 46).

But none of these weaknesses diminish the overall value of this contribution to the Drupal literature. The book largely achieves its goal of teaching the reader how to create his own Drupal-based community site, using core and contributed modules only, with no custom programming (with the exception of some code snippets stored in the Drupal database). The explanations are, for the most part, clear enough for the reader to step through the process within his own Drupal installation. Some people may fault the book as being too lightweight and lacking the in-depth discussions typical of most Drupal books. But those detractors would be missing the point: This particular title is written for a different target audience, namely, people who wish to build a new website as quickly and easily as possible, and who may not have the knowledge or time to write custom code.

With plenty of detailed instructions, and an upbeat tone throughout the presentation, Drupal 6: Ultimate Community Site Guide can serve as a useful and fast-paced beginning resource for any Drupal developer who wants to create a social media website, requiring minimal time and custom PHP code.

Michael J. Ross is a freelance Web developer and writer.

Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Michael J. Ross writes "Among the more popular and better-regarded content management systems (CMSs), Drupal is distinguished partly by its building-block approach, in which a website's functionality is built up in pieces, each of which is a module (either core or contributed). The opposite approach — using far fewer but more encompassing modules — is generally preferred by non-developers who do not relish integrating a sizable collection of modules or trying to modify the underlying code. Nonetheless, anyone who wishes to build a Drupal-based social website, can learn how to do so in a new e-book titled Drupal 6: Ultimate Community Site Guide." Read below for the rest of Michael's review. Drupal 6: Ultimate Community Site Guide author Dorien Herremans pages 140 publisher Holistic Vibes rating 7/10 reviewer Michael J. Ross ISBN 978-2839904902 summary How to create a Drupal community site using contrib modules. Published by Holistic Vibes Sàrl in 2009, the book was written by Dorien Herremans, an independent Web developer in Belgium who holds an MSc degree in MIS from the University of Antwerp, and has lectured in IT and 3D computer animation at Les Roches University of Applied Sciences, in Bluche, Switzerland. Her Drupal story is no doubt similar to that of many other Web developers: After building numerous sites in Drupal, she decided to create a new community site — in this case, Raw Vegan Dating. She was well aware that other CMSs offered fairly sophisticated modules that could be dropped into a fresh CMS installation, thereby creating a new community site instantly. But that approach generally requires one to accept the functional limitations of the chosen module, or start hacking the module's code (which for most modules is poorly written and equally poorly documented), with no guarantee that one's modifications will even work. Dorien instead opted for Drupal's flexibility, but found the development process rather difficult and time-consuming, partly because of some technical issues that arose: How can one easily create advanced profiles in Drupal? Can one add a photo gallery to each profile? Ultimately, these lead to a much broader question: Is it possible to build a feature-rich community/dating site using only core and contributed modules, without having to make any modifications to them?

Dorien set out to answer that question, in developing a new site, Drupal Fun, which is a community primarily for Drupal users who have read the book and wish to help each other. The site also offers a few tutorials on how to convert to the latest versions of modules. In making that site, Dorien utilized only available modules, with no changes, and documented each step in the process. The lessons learned from that effort form the foundation of Drupal 6: Ultimate Community Site Guide. The first three chapters constitute an introductory foundation; the next two cover user profiles; and the remaining four major chapters explain content, monetization, etc. For all topics, the Drupal Fun site is used as a case study. Even though the book focuses on Drupal version 6, and the example site is created using that version, the book does have notes on how to implement everything in version 5 as well.

In the book's introduction, the author provides a brief overview of Drupal, virtual communities, and her perspective on how to build one of the latter using the former. She states that it is easy to resort to custom modules — i.e., modules created or modified by oneself — but this contradicts one of the central tenets of the book, that a non-programmer would find it difficult if not impossible to go beyond already-available modules in building a community site (unless of course he were to outsource the development of the custom modules). In a footnote, it is incorrectly stated that "You can use the Drupal interface to write a module yourself" (page 4).

The second chapter, titled "Setting up the site," explains the desired functionality of the example site to be created (including the site's main goal, which redundantly was also presented at the end of the previous chapter). The author explains how to install Drupal on one's local Web server. A Windows-only developer may be confused by steps 2, 3, and 8, which are specific to Linux/Unix, but not labeled as such. The expression "hidden files" (page 10) would mean in Windows any files with their "hidden" attributes enabled. But in this case the author is probably referring to a single file, ".htaccess," in the Drupal root directory, because in *nix parlance a file is considered hidden if its name consists only of an extension (such a file is not shown in directory listings by default). The chapter concludes with several figures, which should have been interspersed throughout the earlier narrative.

Any reader following the book should at that point have a working copy of Drupal in his development environment. Chapter 3 explains some basic configuration settings for the newly-installed Drupal instance, as well as how to install modules and themes. However, some of the information is presented in a potentially confusing manner, such as on page 16 when an absolute directory path in one step, is immediately followed by what appears to be another absolute directory path in the next step ("/admin/build/modules"), but is actually meant to convey a navigation path within the Drupal user interface. For a book intended for Drupal newbies, it is essential to clarify technical issues such as this one, because otherwise readers can quickly become frustrated, wondering what the author is discussing and how to follow along in their own Drupal instances. Later, a favicon is described as residing "on the top of your browser window," but that would be the browser icon; rather, favicons are next to the browser's location field and in any relevant tabs. The author briefly describes more than half a dozen modules that arguably should be included in any Drupal site, including ones for dynamic menus, spam control, and task scheduling. Links to the modules' pages — in the text and/or as links in the PDF e-book — would have been quite helpful. The Tagadelic module is recommended for generating tag clouds, including a friendlier 404 error page, using the directory path "/tagadelic"; but Figure 3.5 shows the setting without that leading slash, and a quick test suggests that it does not work. More importantly for the newbie reader, there is no explanation as to how to start using tags. This chapter — like all that follow, except for the last — concludes with a list of contributed modules discussed in the respective chapter. Given that the chapters are short, and the modules' names easily stand out, these module lists add no value and could be removed in a future edition.

In Chapter 4, the reader learns how to use the Content Profile module for making highly functional and versatile user profiles that include photo and video galleries, avatars, contact forms, social networking, map locations, personal Web pages, AdSense revenue streams, and more. Most of the instructions are straightforward, but the discussion on how to implement avatars, on page 30, should have been fleshed out (no pun intended) — with more details as to exactly what settings to make, and where. Chapter 5 extends the previous topic, by demonstrating how to enhance the new user profile content type by implementing additional functionality: image and video galleries, a site member's location on a world map, member search, and featured members. In the next chapter, the author shows how to add more text-oriented content types, using the Views, Panels, and Fivestar modules.

While the first six chapters of the book focus on how to create functionality for users, the three chapters that follow examine how to create functionality for the online community itself. Chapter 7 discusses the details of adding forums, shout boxes, buddy lists, messages, subscriptions, a newsletter, user points, user status, user activity (think Twitter), and user groups. Chapter 8 explains how to utilize Google AdSense, affiliate programs, and donations — so that site owners and members can receive some sort of financial reward for their community-building efforts. Chapter 9 covers subjects that a site builder will encounter near the final stages of site development, such as finalizing the navigation menus, providing a post-registration page, supporting internationalization and localization, customizing system e-mail messages, tuning site performance, promoting a new site, tracking a site's popularity with analytics, performing module updates safely, backing up Drupal files and database, and duplicating a site.

Drupal 6: Ultimate Community Site Guide is wrapped up with a brief chapter, an author bio, and an unnecessary marketing description of the book. Unlike most programming books, this one is missing an index — although, as an e-book, it can be searched far easier than a print book.

The list price of the book is a very reasonable €7.70, and it is currently available for €5.50. Even though it is registered under the ISBN 978-2839904902, it is currently not available from Amazon.com, because it is an e-book, and the Amazon.com Kindle is not yet available in Europe; this apparently prohibits European publishers from using it. However, the book's website makes it possible to purchase it online. That site also has more details on the book's contents and the author. In addition to the book site, the first three chapters can be previewed online, via its Google Books listing.

Like any technical work, this one has its strengths and weaknesses. Sadly, the book is marred by generally sloppy writing, with a high ratio of errors to pages. There are several errata: "to[o] much" (pages 4 and 79), "others[']" (page 5), "look[s]" (page 16), "fig 3.3" (page 17; should read "Figure 3.1"), "Imagecache_actions Module" (page 52), "eld avatar" (page 66), "other then" (page 69), "others['] contact link" (page 94), "less then" (page 117), "Clustermaps" (page 124), and ."[my]sql file" (page 128). Also, there are many instances of awkward or incorrect phrasing, such as "harmonic" (page 2; should read "in harmony"), "Skippy balls" (page 3; hint: they have nothing to do with peanut butter), "expansive" (page 4; should read "extensible"), "6-versions" (page 9), "and a while" (page 20; should read "in awhile"), "brackets" (page 26; should read "parentheses"), "200% satisfied" (page 34), "Fixfertig" (page 76), "a grip out" (page 83), and "yourbranch" (page 112). Some of these may be European expressions, though Google suggests otherwise. There are missing commas and hyphens, some punctuation marks used incorrectly, and numerous sentences split at the coordinating conjunction into separate (incomplete) sentences. The use of case and spaces in proper names throughout the book are oftentimes incorrect, e.g., "MySql" (page 10 and others), "ftp" (page 10), "cleanURLs" (page 15), "phptemplate" (page 16), "Dhtml" (page 23), "tagadelic" (page 31), "html" (page 98), and "Paypal" (page 113, etc.). Most of the PHP snippets do not have any proper code indentation. Web accessibility proponents will cringe at the table-based positioning. The book's first "chapter" is really an introduction, and should be relabeled as such. The "Acknowledgments" and "Overview" pages have the same page number. Chapter titles are not in title case, but in sentence case. The side notes, used to indicate unstable releases, are rather annoying, because each one of them is positioned so that it looks like a continuation of the narrative line to the left of it. All of these side notes — and perhaps the information in the footnotes as well — should be merged into the narrative. As of this writing, the book's site claims that the book has more than 100 screenshots, but by my count there are 87 of the them. All of these blemishes — none serious — suggest that no technical editing was done prior to publication.

However, the main problem with the book is how, at several points in the narrative, the author assumes too much understanding on the part of the reader, and does not provide enough details for the reader who is trying to implement each suggestion on his own computer and yet has never before worked with the modules in question, or even the key concepts. This problem is seen in entire sections (such as the tagging section mentioned above) and lone sentences (such as the baffling "If you want to change a preset later on, just flush the preset after making the changes..." on page 46).

But none of these weaknesses diminish the overall value of this contribution to the Drupal literature. The book largely achieves its goal of teaching the reader how to create his own Drupal-based community site, using core and contributed modules only, with no custom programming (with the exception of some code snippets stored in the Drupal database). The explanations are, for the most part, clear enough for the reader to step through the process within his own Drupal installation. Some people may fault the book as being too lightweight and lacking the in-depth discussions typical of most Drupal books. But those detractors would be missing the point: This particular title is written for a different target audience, namely, people who wish to build a new website as quickly and easily as possible, and who may not have the knowledge or time to write custom code.

With plenty of detailed instructions, and an upbeat tone throughout the presentation, Drupal 6: Ultimate Community Site Guide can serve as a useful and fast-paced beginning resource for any Drupal developer who wants to create a social media website, requiring minimal time and custom PHP code.

Michael J. Ross is a freelance Web developer and writer.

Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

The Washington Post is running a story on the Obama Administration's attempt to get a scaled-back version of Bush's Real ID program passed and implemented. We've been discussing the Real ID program from its earliest days up through the states' resistance to its "unfunded mandate." "Yielding to a rebellion by states that refused to pay for it, the Obama administration is moving to scale back a federal law passed after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks that was designed to tighten security requirements for driver's licenses... Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano wants to repeal and replace the controversial, $4 billion domestic security initiative known as Real ID... The new proposal, called Pass ID, would be cheaper, less rigorous, and partly funded by federal grants, according to draft legislation that Napolitano's Senate allies plan to introduce as early as tomorrow. ...the Bush administration struggled to implement the 2005 [Real ID] law, delaying the program repeatedly as states called it an unfunded mandate and privacy advocates warned it would create a de facto national ID."

The Washington Post is running a story on the Obama Administration's attempt to get a scaled-back version of Bush's Real ID program passed and implemented. We've been discussing the Real ID program from its earliest days up through the states' resistance to its "unfunded mandate." "Yielding to a rebellion by states that refused to pay for it, the Obama administration is moving to scale back a federal law passed after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks that was designed to tighten security requirements for driver's licenses... Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano wants to repeal and replace the controversial, $4 billion domestic security initiative known as Real ID... The new proposal, called Pass ID, would be cheaper, less rigorous, and partly funded by federal grants, according to draft legislation that Napolitano's Senate allies plan to introduce as early as tomorrow. ...the Bush administration struggled to implement the 2005 [Real ID] law, delaying the program repeatedly as states called it an unfunded mandate and privacy advocates warned it would create a de facto national ID."

RazvanM writes "This is an attempt to visualize the relationships among the Linux File Systems through the lens of the external symbols their kernel modules use. We took an initial look a few months back but this time the scope is much broader. This analysis was done on 1377 kernel modules from 2.6.0 to 2.6.29, but there is also a small dip into the BSD world. The most thorough analysis was done on Daniel Phillips's tree, which contains the latest two disk-based file systems for Linux: tux3 and btrfs. The main techniques used to establish relationships among file systems are hierarchical clustering and phylogenetic trees. Also presented are a set of rankings based on various properties related to the evolution of the external symbols from one release to another, and complete timelines of the kernel releases for Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD. In all there are 78 figures and 10 animations."

David Gerard writes "Google Chrome includes Ogg support for the <video> element. It also includes support for the hideously encumbered H.264 format. Nice as an extra, but ... they're also testing HTML5 YouTube only for H.264 — meaning the largest video provider on the Net will make H.264 the primary codec and relegate the equally good open format Ogg/Theora firmly to the sidelines. Mike Shaver from Mozilla has fairly unambiguously asked Chris DiBona from Google what the heck Google thinks it's doing." DiBona responded with concerns that switching to Theora while maintaining quality would take up an incredible amount of bandwidth for a site like YouTube, though he made clear his support for the continued improvement of the project. Greg Maxwell jumped into the debate by comparing the quality of Ogg/Theora+Vorbis with the current YouTube implementations using H.263+MP3 and H.264+AAC. At the lower bitrate, Theora seems to have the clear edge, while the higher bitrate may slightly favor H.264. He concludes that YouTube's adoption of "an open unencumbered format in addition to or instead of their current offerings would not cause problems on the basis of quality or bitrate."

We've had a few readers send in updates on the chaotic post-election situation in Iran. Twitter is providing better coverage than CNN at the moment. There are both tech and humanitarian angles to the story, as the two samples below illustrate. First, Hugh Pickens writes with a report from The Times (UK) that "the Iranian government is mounting a campaign to disrupt independent media organizations and Web sites that air doubts about the validity of the re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the nation's president. Reports from Tehran say that social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter were taken down after Mr Ahmadinejad claimed victory. SMS text messaging, a preferred medium of communication for young Iranians, has also been disabled. 'The blocking of access to foreign news media has been stepped up, according to Reporters Without Borders. 'The Internet is now very slow, like the mobile phone network. YouTube and Facebook are hard to access and pro-reform sites... are completely inaccessible.'" And reader momen abdullah sends in one of the more disturbing Ask Slashdots you are likely to see. "People, we need your urgent help in Iran. We are under attack by the government. They stole the election. And now are arresting everybody. They also filtered every sensitive Web page. But our problem is that they also block the SMS network and are scrambling satellite TVs. Please, can you help us to set up some sort of network using our home wireless access points? Can anybody show us a link on how to install small TV/radio stations? Any suggestion for setting up a network? Please tell us what to do or we are going to die in the a nuclear war between Iran and US." Update: 06/14 18:32 GMT by KD : Jim Cowie contributes a blog post from Renesys taking a closer look at the state of Iranian Internet transit, as seen in the aggregated global routing tables, and concluding that the story may not be as clear-cut as has been reported.

Eurogamer has a story about how the design of motion-control input devices has evolved over the years, ranging from the Nintendo Power Glove and Sega Activator up to modern devices like the Wii Remote and the upcoming projects by Sony and Microsoft. Now that the technology has caught up with the ideas, EA CEO John Riccitello said he expects motion-control gaming to rapidly expand, eventually occupying half the total games market. He said, "We almost invested to create a platform extension like that for some of the games we're working on. We're very pleased, frankly, that it showed up at Microsoft, because I'd rather them pay for that. They can leverage it better, and we can build software. But I felt the market wanted that technology and I'm glad it's coming."

Eurogamer has a story about how the design of motion-control input devices has evolved over the years, ranging from the Nintendo Power Glove and Sega Activator up to modern devices like the Wii Remote and the upcoming projects by Sony and Microsoft. Now that the technology has caught up with the ideas, EA CEO John Riccitello said he expects motion-control gaming to rapidly expand, eventually occupying half the total games market. He said, "We almost invested to create a platform extension like that for some of the games we're working on. We're very pleased, frankly, that it showed up at Microsoft, because I'd rather them pay for that. They can leverage it better, and we can build software. But I felt the market wanted that technology and I'm glad it's coming."

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The RIAA's first trial verdict having been tossed out last year, the RIAA is coming back for a second round starting Monday. This time the trial will be in Minneapolis, rather than Duluth, and the defendant will have a team of pro bono lawyers on her side. But perhaps the most important new development is that this time, the 'technical' evidence garnered by MediaSentry and 'explained' by the RIAA's expert witness Doug Jacobson, will not get the free pass it got the first time around. In the 2007 trial in Capitol Records v. Thomas, no objection was made by defendant's lawyer to the MediaSentry/Doug Jacobson 'evidence' upon which the RIAA relied, and the evidence was admitted without objection. This time there will be no free ride, as defendant's tech-savvy lawyers have already filed a list of objections to the RIAA's proposed exhibits. Most notably, they attack the 'technical' materials submitted by MediaSentry and Dr. Doug Jacobson under Rule 702 of the Federal Rules of Evidence, which requires evidence based on 'scientific, technical, or other specialized knowledge' to be based on sufficient facts or data, to be the product of reliable principles and methods, and to be the result of those principles and methods having been applied reliably to the facts of the case. If the evidence fails to meet those standards, it is inadmissible. This judge has already shown acute awareness of these principles in deciding which subjects the defendant's expert could and could not address. This should be interesting."

ravjen writes with news that "Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis AG said they have successfully produced a swine flu vaccine weeks ahead of their expectations. The vaccine was made in cells, rather than grown in eggs as is usually the case with vaccines." This announcement came just a day after the World Health Organization declared H1N1's spread to be a pandemic. The vaccine has not been tested in humans yet, so the first batch is set to be used in clinical trials and pre-clinical testing. If all goes well, the new production method would allow Novartis to get the drug to market in large quantities by this fall. Other drug companies, such as Baxter International, have confirmed that they're in "full-scale production" of H1N1 vaccines as well.

The NY Times is reporting on the Associated Press's decision to distribute the investigative journalism of four nonprofit groups. This ought to benefit both struggling newspapers, which have cut investigative staff, and the nonprofits where, we can hope, many of those laid-off journalists are plying their trade. It's refreshing to see this kind of forward thinking coming out of an organization not normally known for its progressiveness. "Starting on July 1, the A.P. will deliver work by the Center for Public Integrity, the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University, the Center for Investigative Reporting, and ProPublica to the 1,500 American newspapers that are A.P. members, which will be free to publish the material. The A.P. called the arrangement a six-month experiment that could later be broadened to include other investigative nonprofits, and to serve its nonmember clients, which include broadcast and Internet outlets."

We've discussed the supervolcano beneath Yellowstone a few times here (not going to blow, 2004; going to blow, 2008). Now scientists are pondering whether a large area of conductive material beneath Mt. St. Helens might contain enough magma that the area could be classed a supervolcano. The jury is still out on this one. Reader nhytefall sends us a New Scientist progress report. "Magma can be detected with a technique called magnetotellurics, which builds up a picture of what lies underground by measuring fluctuations in electric and magnetic fields at the surface. The fields fluctuate in response to electric currents traveling below the surface, induced by lightning storms and other phenomena. The currents are stronger when magma is present, since it is a better conductor than solid rock. ... [M]easurements revealed a column of conductive material that extends downward from the volcano. About 15 km below the surface, the relatively narrow column appears to connect to a much bigger zone of conductive material. This larger zone was first identified in the 1980s by another magnetotelluric survey, and was found to extend all the way to beneath Mount Rainier 70 km to the north-east, and Mount Adams 50 km to the east. It was thought to be a zone of wet sediment, water being a good electrical conductor. ... [Some researchers] now think the conductive material is more likely to be a semi-molten mixture. Its conductivity is not high enough for it to be pure magma.. so it is more likely to be a mixture of solid and molten rock."

We've discussed the supervolcano beneath Yellowstone a few times here (not going to blow, 2004; going to blow, 2008). Now scientists are pondering whether a large area of conductive material beneath Mt. St. Helens might contain enough magma that the area could be classed a supervolcano. The jury is still out on this one. Reader nhytefall sends us a New Scientist progress report. "Magma can be detected with a technique called magnetotellurics, which builds up a picture of what lies underground by measuring fluctuations in electric and magnetic fields at the surface. The fields fluctuate in response to electric currents traveling below the surface, induced by lightning storms and other phenomena. The currents are stronger when magma is present, since it is a better conductor than solid rock. ... [M]easurements revealed a column of conductive material that extends downward from the volcano. About 15 km below the surface, the relatively narrow column appears to connect to a much bigger zone of conductive material. This larger zone was first identified in the 1980s by another magnetotelluric survey, and was found to extend all the way to beneath Mount Rainier 70 km to the north-east, and Mount Adams 50 km to the east. It was thought to be a zone of wet sediment, water being a good electrical conductor. ... [Some researchers] now think the conductive material is more likely to be a semi-molten mixture. Its conductivity is not high enough for it to be pure magma.. so it is more likely to be a mixture of solid and molten rock."

snydeq writes "InfoWorld's Martin Heller finds Silverlight 3 gaining ground on Adobe Flash, Flex, and AIR in all the areas where Silverlight 2 had lagged. No longer do developers need to build desktop WPF apps based loosely on corresponding Silverlight RIAs, as Silverlight 3 adds the ability to install Silverlight apps on the desktop, update them in place, detect Net connectivity state changes, and store data locally and securely. Moreover, solid Expression Blend 3 and Visual Studio 2010 betas provide developers with much improved tools to create Silverlight RIAs. '"I do not expect many Adobe shops to give up their Flash, Flex, and AIR for Silverlight 3. I do expect many Microsoft shops to do more RIAs with Silverlight now that it's more capable and to create lightweight browser/desktop Silverlight 3 applications where they might have fashioned heavier-weight Windows Forms or WPF client applications," Heller says.'"