Slashdot Mirror

rocketjam writes "The Union of Concerned Scientists, an independent organization which includes 20 Nobel laureates, issued a statement accusing the Bush administration of distorting scientific fact and supressing findings to fit administration policy decisions on the environment, health, biomedical research and nuclear weaponry. They also issued a 37-page report detailing the accusations. Bush's science adviser, John Marburger, called the report biased and said he was troubled that some very prestigious scientists had signed the statement. Numerous complaints from the scientific community about the administration's scientific policy-making prompted the The Union of Concerned Scientists to begin investigating the issue last summer. As an example, the group noted the panel that advises the Centers for Disease Control on lead poisoning had been prepared to recommend strengthening regulations due to new findings on lead toxicity, but had their recommendation rejected by the administration and two panel members replaced by individuals with ties to the lead industry." Other articles: Sydney Morning Herald, New York Times, The Guardian.

Chris Gondek writes "There are various articles about the Stolen Windows Source Code, but today it is confirmed that an FBI task force hunted for a cyber-criminal who posted on the internet source code for Windows which says 'I can confirm that the Northwest Cybercrime Task Force was investigating, FBI spokeswoman Robbie Burroughs said. The posted program is part of the source codes, or blueprints, for Windows 2000 and Windows NT 4.0, according to the company.' "

An anonymous reader submits A Perth, Western Australian company called CyberKnights has told SCO ANZ's MD to detail its IP claims or face legal action for fraud. SCO has just released licenses for Australasia and claims enquiries by several companies already."

pafischer writes "Several Australian and UK websites are running articles on this story. I'm shocked that I heard it on the Baltimore rock radio station news, but don't see it on any of the big US new websites. 'Clioquinol, developed 100 years ago, can absorb the zinc and copper compounds that concentrate in the brains of Alzheimer's sufferers before dementia sets in, the study found.' Read all about it at ABC Radio AU, The Sidney Morning Herald, and The Age." Of course, the pathology of Alzheimer's is far from fully understood.

inode_buddha writes "This article describes SCO's recent letters to its UNIX licensees, asking them to certify that they '...are not using Unix code in Linux.' It also notes another set of letters '...outlining additional evidence of copyright infringement to a subset of 1,500 global Linux users that SCO first contacted in May about copyright infringement.' There's also a decent breakdown of the company's balance sheet and some quotes from company officials. I hope to see one of those 'other' letters; could anyone post it? SCO better have asbestos underwear." Ask and receive: idiotnot adds "Here's the article from the Sydney Morning Herald. Here is a PDF Copy of the letter." "Yours truly"?

David Gerard writes "Forget the industry shills' spin - the numbers prove that, for Australia, CD-Rs and MP3s are not hurting record sales in the slightest - based on a recent Australian Record Industry Association survey. It would be interesting to see what the numbers for the US or UK say."

circletimessquare writes "Queensland, Australia is well-known as one of the most important sources for opal in the world. Apparently Queensland has another untapped source of opal recently discovered in its backyard, except this source is not the providence of geology, but biology. A native weevil of Queensland grows opal on it's back shell! Implications for research into nanotechnology, biotechnology, and photonic computing are implied in the article. The journal Nature is publishing the more rigorous scientific write-up of the findings."

CowboyRobot writes "Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization just launched the Mantis, a 'low-cost, intelligent small helicopter'. SMH reports that 'Within a decade armies of tiny helicopter drones will monitor traffic, inspect buildings for maintenance problems, map bushfires, look for faults in powerlines, and join search-and-rescue missions.' This is much larger than the Seiko flying robot reported last month, but the Mantis should be truly autonomous."

zCyl writes "An article at SMH describes a large fiber optic network called the National LambdaRail, which has completed 1,084 out of a planned 16,000 kilometers between major universities and research institutions. Upon completion it should transmit 400 Gbps and stretch across the continental U.S. Access to the network will be intentionally restricted to scientists and researchers only 'for research and experimentation in networking technologies and applications'."

Slashback tonight with more on whether Princeton really hates open source (hint: No.), the outcome of Australia's mp3s4free.net case, the Farscape-to-return saga, and other updates to recent and semi-recent Slashdot stories. Read on for the details.

"Frankly, sometimes the guy just ... says things." An anonymous reader writes "In a recent Slashdot article, it was reported that Howard Strauss, manager of technology and outreach at Princeton University, wrote a paper bashing the open source community. Princeton has now publicly denounced this article and stated its official policy towards open source."

(I don't know that it's fair to call Princeton's response a denunciation, but the school makes clear that a) Strauss was speaking on his own, not on behalf of the university and b) that Princeton uses, likes, supports, and develops plenty of open source software.)

Oh, they're only votes! tklancer writes "Remember the voting machine failures earlier this month? Well, now Fairfax County is going to investigate the failures in (hopefully) a bit more depth. Now if they'd only start talking about adding a paper trail ..."

Lik-Sang and Microsoft, back on merely uneasy terms. D4rkUnderlord writes "For those who forgot, Lik-Sang was taken down last year by Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo for selling "Modification devices" (see CNN.com December 16, 2002). Lee sent us this article coming from a HK newspaper: [QUOTE] Have Found this tuesday in the South China Morning Post. Microsoft always get what it want Lee [/QUOTE] Read it here (scan of newspaper article). Note that lik-sang.com has been sold and put under new management last year, so nothing of these trials can or will affect lik-sang.com"

I wish people'd been this worked up about Northern Exposure. calethix writes "There's a news post over at Save Farscape regarding the return of Farscape as a 4 hour mini-series. There aren't a lot of details yet but it's supposed to air next year and has been confirmed by a solid source."

Much as I loathe and mock online petitions ... Hey, if it worked for Farscape, a television show with Alf at the wheel ... Dagrush writes "As you know, there was a slashdot story about how Saruman wa being cut from LotR:RotK. Now there is a petition to put the 7 minutes of Saruman back in the film. You can go here to add your name to the petition, as well as you comments. There are over 17000 signatures right now."

Follow the money, just don't say "terror." Best ID Ever! writes "CNN is reporting that the Policy Analysis Market is set to return, albeit without futures on 'violent events,' and without DARPA or other government involvement. As you may remember, the former DARPA project, under retired admiral John Poindexter's office, was shut down after being roundly condemned by politicians on both sides, leading to Poindexter's resignation. There seems to be a lot of interest in such 'information markets' lately, from the recently announced MIT Market to the long running Iowa Electronic Markets."

Next time they get tied to dingos. An anonymous reader writes "Australian University students Peter Tran, Charles Kok Hau Ng, and Tommy Le avoided jail when they were sentenced today. Charged with Internet piracy for running a file trade site the three copped a plea to reduced charges. Tran gets an 18-month suspended sentence and a $5,000 (Australian) fine. Ng got an 18-month suspended sentence and 200 hours community service. Le was only given community service. Needless to say the Australian record industry is complaining the three should do time, which could have meant five years behind bars. The judge ruled prison was not called for."

Thanks to the Sydney Morning Herald for their story revealing Australian road safety authorities are trying to pull the plug on Project Gotham Racing 2 for Xbox, claiming the real-life Sydney course in the game is "undoing a lot of the effort authorities are putting into road safety." According to State Labor MP Paul Gibson, chairman of the Staysafe Committee: "This game sends the wrong message to young people. It is actually glorifying speed and power. It is clearly an inappropriate depiction of speed behavior. If I had my way I would ban it." A spokesman for Microsoft responded: "It is not about driving on the streets, it is purely a racing game. The streets are blocked from other traffic and there are no pedestrians. All we are doing is taking the geography of Sydney and turning it into a race track."

An anonymous reader writes "SMH this morning is reporting that three uni students may be jailed for their creation of a music sharing web site. Ok, piracy is not a good thing, but jail is just a tad extreme, don't you think? I hope ARIA (Australian version of RIAA) are pleased with themselves. What burns me about this article is the quote: 'Counsel for the Commonwealth, Paul Roberts, SC, said Ng was well aware he was acting illegally. Not only was the site camouflaged - the web space had been let to him by a teenage boy in Perth - but Ng had co-written an essay for his information technology law course on "open source software licensing."' Not entirely sure what OS licensing has to do with music piracy."

Chris Gondek writes "The Sydney Morning Herald has posted that Internet search leader Google has rejected a takeover bid from Microsoft in favour of selling its shares directly to the public. According to The New York Times (Login Required), Google wishes to sell only about $US2 billion worth of shares to the public."

Chris Gondek writes "The Sydney Morning Herald has posted that Internet search leader Google has rejected a takeover bid from Microsoft in favour of selling its shares directly to the public. According to The New York Times (Login Required), Google wishes to sell only about $US2 billion worth of shares to the public."

yevrah writes "Palaeontologists in South Australia have found the earliest occurance of a fossil displaying primitive vertebrate. Described as something like a tadpole that probably wriggled through the bottom of the ocean this little critter is a likely missing link between invertebrates and fish."

spaceling writes "The BBC reports reporting on research published in the Institute of Physics Journal of Micromechanics and Microengineering of the first new method of generating electricity in over 150 years. Larry Kostiuk and Daniel Kwok 'created a glass block, two centimetres in diameter and three millimetres thick, containing about 400,000 to 500,000 individual channels...[and] generated about 10 volts with a current of around a milliamp. This allowed the team to successfully power a lightbulb.'" This has also been covered all over the place.

An anonymous reader writes "A US Northern Command general thinks that with US and international military dependence on space assets (such as GPS, eyes in the sky, communications), the next major conflict will occur in the heavens. He acknowledged that the US wants to keep space peaceful, but that can't last forever, and potential threats might not care, anyway. Yes, China's recent success (or what we heard from the military secrecy) relates to this, but he also said he's not implying China is a threat, or will be."

MrClever writes "In this article over at the Sydney Morning Herald (AU), it looks as though ICANN may actually be doing something about the VeriSign changes to .com and .net TLD's. Apparently, while they have been noticably quiet, they have been reviewing community reaction and analysed data from a technical perspective. Here's hoping ICANN pull the plug on VeriSign's TLD administration rights!" And TALlama writes "RSS.com.com (dear $DIETY, will it ever stop?) is reporting that ICANN has asked VeriSign 'to voluntarily suspend the service' of wildcarding DNS, 'pending further study.' Calling it a 'service' is a little bit of a misnomer. If I punch people in the face, can I call that a service, too?"

robochan writes "According to this report in the Sydney Morning Herald, Chief Operating Officer of Symantec, John Schwarz, was quoted as 'calling for laws to make it a criminal offense to share information and tools online which could be used by malicious hackers and virus writers.' This article takes a look at the negative affects and also a couple of recent examples of "censorship legislation" backed by the COO of Symantec, and what little effect it has had on criminals, while having a substantial affect on responsible citizens."

sbszine writes "The Sydney Morning Herald is running an article about a green power plant that runs on the discarded shells of macadamia nuts. The power plant, located in Gympie, Queensland, is expected to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by around 9500 tonnes in its first year of operation."

dirtydamo writes "The Sydney Morning Herald is running an interesting story on the old debate on whether electronic devices cause problems on planes. It appears pilots are pretty much accustomed to handling weird problems with equipment, which they attribute to passengers' portable devices. More research is needed to determine whether or not this is the actual problem, but the article certainly makes me a little uneasy about modern air travel."

wampl3r writes " Eric Raymond and Bruce Perens deliver a great response to SCO's recent Letter to the Open Source Community. Their response does a good job of presenting many of the finer points we have been arguing about around here, but it's nice to see them in such a formal, well-thought-out letter." Munchola adds "Meanwhile, ComputerWire, from where McBride misquoted Perens in the first place, sets the record straight: 'In his statement McBride appears to have attributed a ComputerWire paraphrase as a quote from Perens.'" stefan points to this response to McBride's letter from Kevin Bedell, LinuxWorld Magazine's Editor. Below, find one reader's idea about the "stolen lines" SCO claims are in the Linux kernel, and one expert's claim that SCO might not know some of its own source code very well.

VikingBrad writes "The Sydney Morning Herald has an article on Dr Warwick Toomey of The Unix Heritage Society claiming that SCO may not know the origin of code in System V, including claims that there is a lot of BSD software in Sys V."

Alex writes "I wondered where the 100k+ lines of copied code in the linux kernel would come from in comparison to the SCO Unixware stuff. Then a thought popped up in my head: what if they just compared linewise? All those empty lines in the code would have the same content. But how many empty lines are in the Linux Kernel Code? This small shell script counts them for you:

emptylines=0; function parse_dir () { for file in $1/*; do if [ -d "$file" ]; then parse_dir $file; else while read line; do if [ "$line" = "" ]; then emptylines=$[$emptylines+1]; echo $emptylines; fi; done

Kernel 2.4.22, yet cleaned of the code which SCO claimed was stolen, has still 733140 empty lines, probably copied and pasted by the bad, bad kernel developers from the good, good SCO guys..."

wampl3r writes " Eric Raymond and Bruce Perens deliver a great response to SCO's recent Letter to the Open Source Community. Their response does a good job of presenting many of the finer points we have been arguing about around here, but it's nice to see them in such a formal, well-thought-out letter." Munchola adds "Meanwhile, ComputerWire, from where McBride misquoted Perens in the first place, sets the record straight: 'In his statement McBride appears to have attributed a ComputerWire paraphrase as a quote from Perens.'" stefan points to this response to McBride's letter from Kevin Bedell, LinuxWorld Magazine's Editor. Below, find one reader's idea about the "stolen lines" SCO claims are in the Linux kernel, and one expert's claim that SCO might not know some of its own source code very well.

VikingBrad writes "The Sydney Morning Herald has an article on Dr Warwick Toomey of The Unix Heritage Society claiming that SCO may not know the origin of code in System V, including claims that there is a lot of BSD software in Sys V."

Alex writes "I wondered where the 100k+ lines of copied code in the linux kernel would come from in comparison to the SCO Unixware stuff. Then a thought popped up in my head: what if they just compared linewise? All those empty lines in the code would have the same content. But how many empty lines are in the Linux Kernel Code? This small shell script counts them for you:

emptylines=0; function parse_dir () { for file in $1/*; do if [ -d "$file" ]; then parse_dir $file; else while read line; do if [ "$line" = "" ]; then emptylines=$[$emptylines+1]; echo $emptylines; fi; done

Kernel 2.4.22, yet cleaned of the code which SCO claimed was stolen, has still 733140 empty lines, probably copied and pasted by the bad, bad kernel developers from the good, good SCO guys..."

xnuandax writes "Here's a salient lesson for those system security personnel who spend their time fretting over the theoretical crack-ability of their 1024 bit encryption keys. Australian Customs have recently suffered a rather unfortunate set back in their "War Against Terror" with the admission that two of their secure mainframe servers have been wheeled out of the building by persons unknown. I'll bet my $2 that the root password on those boxes was 'trustno1'."

GM OOOO writes "Sydney Morning Herald is reporting the birth of three 'supercows.' Interesting thing here, besides the potential for milk, is the fact this was done via selctive breeding and genetic selection via embryonic implantation -- not adding the gene of a sea cucumber of something to modify it to produce as it does now. Supercows - kinda reminds me of the Mootrix movie now (FEAR)."

Malfourmed writes "The Sydney Morning Herald is running a story on web based comics and how the new medium can change the traditional "left-to-right in a rectangular frame" paradigm. Concentrating on the work of Scott McLoud it also mentions geek favourites Dilbert and The Matrix, among others. Micropayments are discussed, with the article claiming that after you pay your 25 cents "most of which goes straight to McCloud, cutting out the middlemen that make it difficult for comic artists to make a living from their work, and in the process doing justice to their talents." One of the more interesting sites discussed is the Oz Comics 24 Hour Gallery, the result of a competition in which artists had 24 hours to create an original, 24-page comic. So popular was the contest that the server suffered from a veritable slashdot effect."

Anonymous Coward writes "Bringing us one step closer to becoming centrally-controlled meatbots, Japanese scientists have developed a device that produces power from the glucose in human blood. Theoretically, this technology (aka "Dracucell") could produce 100W of power. Of course, it can't produce that much power in practice since your body stupidly wastes glucose in maintaining homeostasis. The scientists propose that this devices could be used to power implanted devices. Now how many of you Slashdotters would it take to power my laptop? I'll buy the cola!"

ashitaka writes "The Sydney Morning Herald is reporting that an Open Source group has gone on the offensive in response to SCO's latest demands that Linux users must buy a Unixware license to avoid any possible future unpleasantries. 'Open Source Victoria today filed a complaint with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, asking it to investigate SCO's activities in light of 'unsubstantiated claims and extortive legal threats for money' against possibly hundreds of thousands of Australians.' I especially like the last bit: 'One feels that this whole fiasco is the IT industry equivalent of a Nigerian scam or internet extortion ploy.' Oh yeah.."

sbszine writes "The Sydney Morning Herald has a report of a bizarre sea creature that has washed up on the coast of Chile. The creature is grey, lumpy, and the size of a school bus. Scientists have ruled out the possibility that it may be a whale -- the creature is an invertebrate, and perhaps even a new species."

sbszine writes "The Sydney Morning Herald has a report of a bizarre sea creature that has washed up on the coast of Chile. The creature is grey, lumpy, and the size of a school bus. Scientists have ruled out the possibility that it may be a whale -- the creature is an invertebrate, and perhaps even a new species."

MrClever writes "The Sydney Morning Herald (Aust) is running an article about the merits of Bayesian filtering and a good plain-english description of how it works. Might be handy if you need to explain it to non-technophiles. The main thing that may be useful is a Bayesian spam filter written to drop straight into Outlook 2k/XP available here and written in Python by Mark Hammond." Math buffs might enjoy reading these pages or browsing this writeup and its many links.

The SCO must go on. Informationweek has a roundup. News.com has some analysis of the legal case. SCO reiterates their threat to revoke IBM's license. Reader hobsonchoice sends a blurb: "Also more from analysts who saw SCO/Linux code comparisons under NDA. Bill Claybrook, of Aberdeen Group Inc., says SCO changed their story to him about whether they had any "direct evidence" that IBM copied any System V code into Linux. Laura Didio of Yankee Group has answered some detailed questions about her code review process. Lastly Fujitsu Siemens have joined in the debate: they don't think SCO's case is going anywhere." One observer of the SCO case has compiled some notes about Caldera's active participation in the IA-64 project. And look on the bright side: if you follow the school of thought that all publicity is good publicity, at least this suit has gotten Linux mentioned in many places where it normally wouldn't be.

Roland Piquepaille writes "How many phone calls, emails, voicemails, memos or stories do you have to go through every day? Probably more than last year. And probably too much. This article from the Sydney Morning Herald looks at this problem of information overload and how to deal with it. Here is a quick and not well-known fact: Website content management author Gerry McGovern says that something like 70 per cent of most websites goes unread. Despite that, when putting content on the web, "rarely do we ask the question: is anybody interested in reading that?" Good point. Check this column for a summary if you don't have time -- and who has? -- to read the original article."

tachyonflow writes "Well, it's probably been around for a while, but it's new to us. The Sydney Morning Herald is reporting that astronomers have discovered a new star only 7.8 light-years from our sun. It's a red dwarf that's not visible to the naked eye from earth. I guess it's time to update those Celestia databases..."

tachyonflow writes "Well, it's probably been around for a while, but it's new to us. The Sydney Morning Herald is reporting that astronomers have discovered a new star only 7.8 light-years from our sun. It's a red dwarf that's not visible to the naked eye from earth. I guess it's time to update those Celestia databases..."

molarmass192 writes "Here's the first reaction I've seen from SCO regarding the public's stance that the code they distributed under the GPL negates their claims on code in the Linux kernel. They claim that the lack of copyright notices "placed by the copyright holder" means that the GPL does not protect the unmentioned code in question. "

Chris Gondek writes "The Sydney Morning Herald has reported that one of the greatest discoveries of our time could be made under the Yorkshire moors. Deep in a Yorkshire mine, scientists are toiling to solve a cosmic puzzle that has baffled astronomers for 70 years: about 90 per cent of the universe is missing. Analyse the movements of stars and you can work out how much matter is making them swirl round in galactic islands and how much makes galaxies cluster together as they do - in other words, you can work out how much mass makes the universe look the way it does. But measurements suggest that the universe is not what it appears."

Chris Gondek writes "The Sydney Morning Herald has reported that one of the greatest discoveries of our time could be made under the Yorkshire moors. Deep in a Yorkshire mine, scientists are toiling to solve a cosmic puzzle that has baffled astronomers for 70 years: about 90 per cent of the universe is missing. Analyse the movements of stars and you can work out how much matter is making them swirl round in galactic islands and how much makes galaxies cluster together as they do - in other words, you can work out how much mass makes the universe look the way it does. But measurements suggest that the universe is not what it appears."

cranos writes "The Sydney Morning Herald is running an article comparing the XP EULA to the GPL. Basically it's just reinforcing what we already knew but it could be a nice little piece to show your PHB next time."

cranos writes "The Sydney Morning Herald is running an article comparing the XP EULA to the GPL. Basically it's just reinforcing what we already knew but it could be a nice little piece to show your PHB next time."

Sandman1971 writes "According to the Sydney Morning Herald, specialFX company ILM is now capable of doing realtime CGI, allowing actors and directors to see rough CGI immediately after a scene is filmed. Actors on the latest Star Wars film watch instant replays of their battles with CG characters. ILM CTO Cliff Plumer attributes this amazing leap to the increase in processing power and a migration from using Silicon Graphics RISC-Unix workstations to Intel-based Dell systems running Linux."

glengyron writes "The Sydney Morning Herald is reporting the success of an Australian company in developing Digital Rights Management for the next generation of mobile phones. Imagine if you could only forward email once, or not at all: these are the kind of restrictions being built into the next generaion of mobile phones. Read the article here. ODRL? Orwellian Digital Rights Language."

An anonymous reader writes "The Sydney Morning Herald has an article on spam down under. I guess it goes to show that if something that bothers us also bothers enough politicians then something may be done. Interestingly, the article discusses international co-operation wrt spam. Good thing too. With only 2% of the global economy, it'll take more than Australia to beat the spam problem. Perhaps someone should send a 'group letter' to all relevant politicians in various countries to start co-operating? :)" Update: 04/16 11:56 GMT by H : There's another article on the subject as well, running in The Australian.

Slashback is packed tonight with updates and clarifications on several fronts: read on below for, among other things, BitTorrent download stats after the recent Red Hat 9 release, the BSA's questionable statistical methods when it comes to calculating incentives and losses in the source-secret software world, and (can you believe?) yet another way to assemble an eerie pulsing light fixture.

Click on through for some impressive graphs ... . bramcohen writes "Since RedHat 9 got /.'ed last week there have been over ten thousand complete downloads using BitTorrent. Initial traffic got very high, transferring over a gibibit a second. All throughout the BitTorrent servers, run by volunteers using stock tools, held up just fine. Meanwhile downloads from RedHat Network, only available to subscribers, transferred at a crawl. The third Animatrix also got quite a few downloads. Thanks to everyone who left their downloaders running, and David Stutz and Eike Frost for setting things up."

If you exaggerate enough the first time, subsequent revisions sound like concessions. Russell McOrmond writes "An article in ITBusiness.ca includes references to the methodology of the BSA studies, and how it confuses Free/Libre and Open Source Software with piracy. There are some related articles talking about CAAST/BSA on my work weblog from the past."

Tap, Tap, Tap. feagle814 writes "Recently, I saw a question on Ask Slashdot that intrigued me. The person was asking for ideas relating to building your own glowing and color-changing ball. Being the kind of person to take such a general request for comments and turn it into a personal reason for living, I quickly skimmed the description on ThinkGeek and came up with these requirements for my project:

1. It must meet the generic description of the Ambient Orb,
2. It must cost less than $50 to make,
3. It must be wireless, with at least a 30-foot range, and
4. It must be controllable by home computer.

After much deliberation, I came up with the following solution. I've included pictures and instructions, as well as a recounting of my experiences."

Not just a simulation. Olmy's Jart writes "This is a followup to yesterday's article on "Samba Exploit Discovered, Fixed". Digital Defense has posted an apology to the Samba Team for posting a complete live working exploit (not even a mere "proof of concept", but a zero day rooter) on their site for this vulnerability. The exploit has been taken down, for what that's worth now. This is being reported in an article on ZDNet AU. Digital Defense now claims that this was done without the approval of their management."

Funny, CompUSA is finally selling duplicators, too. Unominous Coward writes "According to this article, the man who planned to install CD copying machines around Australia has withdrawn from the idea. Not surprisingly, this was after a lawsuit by the music industry."

Anyone who would like to buy me one is free to do so. prostoalex writes "Sharp Zaurus deal is back at Home Shopping Network. Sharp Zaurus SL-5500 is $199, but a coupon code HSN4897 knocks the price down by 15%. With standard shipping the order comes to around $173."

We need both more Korean food and more Korean electronics. Jo "directhex" Shields writes "HEXUS.net has completed its extensive messing around with GamePark's GP32 Handheld, which recieved a mention a couple of days ago on Slashdot (and recieved the usual thrashing from members too busy to read the article but not too busy to post trashy ill-informed comments about it).

It should help to clear up a few myths about what the unit is, what it tries to do, and what it succeeds at doing. Read the review, and pass mighty Slashdot Judgement."

foobarbazquux writes "Introducing whitespace, a language designed to compensate for the "white-space doesn't count" culture of contemporary programming languages. Amaze your friends by hiding programs in your web-pages! Astound colleagues by putting a virus in your text file!" (And for those who prefer obfuscation to invisibility, Koshatul writes "This article in the Sydney Morning Herald, tells of a new programming language which 'makes it impossible to express a security vulnerability in a program's source code.'")

Cackmobile writes "The Sydney Morning Herald is reporting that some Australian scientists have been watching a gamma-ray burst. The article makes some good points about the origins of these." Update: 03/21 03:27 GMT by T : MickDownUnder writes with a link to NASA's press-releasy version, with story, pictures and animations.

Cackmobile writes "The Sydney Morning Herald is reporting that some Australian scientists have been watching a gamma-ray burst. The article makes some good points about the origins of these." Update: 03/21 03:27 GMT by T : MickDownUnder writes with a link to NASA's press-releasy version, with story, pictures and animations.

beardoc writes "The Sydney Morning Herald is running a story today about a controversial proposal to define what size a planet might be - depending on what the final definition of how big a planet is, we could end up losing Pluto (at 2300 kilometres) to the status of "asteroid" or gaining three more planets - Quaoar, Varuna and Ceres."

beardoc writes "The Sydney Morning Herald is running a story today about a controversial proposal to define what size a planet might be - depending on what the final definition of how big a planet is, we could end up losing Pluto (at 2300 kilometres) to the status of "asteroid" or gaining three more planets - Quaoar, Varuna and Ceres."

An anonymous reader writes "The Sydney Morning Herald is reporting that the Australian Broadcasting Authority (ABA), the department responsible for implementing the insane Internet regulatory framework put in place by the current government, is about to drop a number of Internet Filtering packages due to their ineffectiveness. The full article is available here. There is also news that the Minister for Communications, Senator Richard Alston (whom The Register has labeled the Worlds Biggest Luddite :) ) is awaiting a review of the law with possible changes to follow. Be afraid Australia, be very afraid!"