Slashdot Mirror

New submitter Guppy writes "A previous story reported widely in the media, and appearing both on Slashdot and XKCD, described a novel cancer treatment, in which a patient's own T-cells were modified using an HIV-derived vector to recognize and kill leukemia cells. In a follow-up publication (PDF), a further development is described which allows for a nearly unlimited choice of target antigens, broadening the types of malignancies potentially treatable with the technique (abstract)."

HerbieTMac writes "Political science professor Francis Fukuyama builds and flies his own personal surveillance drones. His current model requires ground visibility but he is working on the HAM license that would allow fully remote operation. His YouTube videos (video 1 , video 2) are particularly impressive." I had no idea that Francis Fukuyama had such technical interests.

polymath69 writes "According to The Times Online, genetically modified microbes have been developed capable of turning surplus material such as wood chips, sugarcane, or others, not into ethanol, but into a substance which could substitute directly for crude oil. They claim it could be sold for about $50/bbl, and the production process would be carbon negative."

kbielefe writes "The Transportation Security Administration has sent out a call to laptop bag manufacturers to produce a laptop bag that could pass through airport screening without having to remove the laptop. The TSA will perform testing starting at the end of May, with the end result hopefully being a TSA stamp of approval that will reduce the hassle for a lot of us. According to the article, 'The key is for TSA screeners to be able to view the laptop in a single X-ray image, so the laptop would not need to be placed in a separate TSA bin.'"

DaphneDiane writes "Blizzard announced that they are suing one of the heavily spamming gold sellers, Peons4hire. Peons4hire had recently been spamming players in World of Warcraft with multi-line messages advertising their power leveling and gold selling business. With the advent of the recently released 2.1.0 patch Blizzard made it easier to report and block these spammers. I've noticed a large decrease in spam while playing since the patch. It used to be that I would get nearly a dozen spams a night but I barely have seen any since."

DaphneDiane writes "According to the Times Online Apple Computer successfully defended themselves vs the suit brought by Apple Corps." If you are looking for background on the case we had talked about it earlier. I'm just relieved that the battle of two bazillion dollar companies turned out well. Phew. And, of course, Apple Corp has filed an appeal already.

brainburger asks: "In the UK, Tony Blair has recently lost a parliametary vote to allow the police to hold terrorist suspects for 90 days without trial. One of the justifications the police gave for the extension from 14 days to 90 days was that they need the extra 76 days to decrypt the computer hard-drives of suspects. This has been seen by some as the only compelling reason to allow 90 days. The time-limit has been extended to 28 days instead, but Tony Blair insists 90 days is required. Are there really any encryption systems that cannot be cracked in 28 days, but which can be cracked in 90? Aside from the not-much-discussed issue that the police can no longer interrogate a suspect after they are charged, I suspect the police meant unencrypted machines. What do you think?"

discHead asks: "Presently I work for a transcription company. We received an interesting medium that we're having trouble identifying. It looks like a 3.5-inch floppy, but just the magnetic disc itself--no plastic shell, not even a metal hub in the center. It's punched with a small center hole and an additional wedge-shaped hole nearby (but in a different position and smaller than the rectangular hole in a standard floppy's metal hub). It's foil-stamped with a 3M logo and a serial number, but 3M referred us to Imation and Imation is stumped. Our only other clues: we're told it's an analog(!) audio recording and that it dates back to about 1985. Our Google research has yet to turn up anything. Anyone know what in tarnation this thing is and what we can do with it?"

plimsoll writes "Hot on the heels of the original cash register running Linux, dumpster-diver Aaron Benoy has implemented his own GNU/Linux POS project with a twist: Ruins in ASCII, a late IBM 4694 removed from its case and reloaded with Linux to become a self-described 'video sculpture' showcasing 'an infinite loop of 180 distinct 7-second long video clips of various abandoned, ruined or otherwise vacant buildings and infrastructure' on its 9-inch paper white phosphor terminal display. Southern geeks can see it unveiled tonight at the Atlanta Underground Film Festival."

kbielefe writes "On Wednesday, flight testing began on the X-50A dragonfly canard rotor wing unmanned aircraft. For those of you not familiar with the dragonfly, its rotors work like a helicopter for takeoff, hovering, and slow-speed manouvering, and then lock into place like a fixed-wing aircraft for cruising. The X-50A's reaction drive makes it "much lighter, simpler and more affordable to operate and support than traditional rotorcraft." And the technology is scalable to larger, manned vehicles. Truly a revolutionary aircraft, with a multitude of potential military and commercial applications." There are some more photos and artwork.

damiangerous writes "American chain Ritz camera has begun offering disposable digital cameras for $10.99. The price includes 4x6" prints and a Photo CD of the camera's 25 photo memory. Pictures can be deleted, but there's no LCD."

Vultan asks: "Now that I'm finally a proud homeowner, I'm looking to integrate my video, audio, and computer hardware. Specifically, I'd like to be able to listen to Internet radio throughout the house (or at least through my main stereo unit), and transmit video from my computer to my home theater in a separate room. I've done my share of googling, and I'm drowning in options. Wired vs. wireless, RG6 vs. CAT5e, digital vs. analog, line level vs. speaker level (for audio), etc. What kinds of technology do Slashdot readers use or recommend?"

Wanker writes "Previously on Slashdot we read about an Oregon bill that would require government agencies to consider Open Source software in addition to whichever software they would normally consider. Unfortunately, House Bill 2892 is getting stalled by "stiff opposition" from such unsurprising places as Microsoft. All you Oregon Slashdotters, it's time to call or write your representatives."

Kris_J writes "Highlift Systems may have found a second location for the anchor of their space elevator -- Perth, Western Australia. Apparently we have the calm waters and international airport that it needs, amongst other things. Slashdot has covered this company's efforts before: Oct 9, 2002 and, earlier, August 13, 2002, but it's worth discussing again since '[recent funding] has been given momentum by the Columbia shuttle disaster.'"

softsign writes "Reading this story in this month's IEEE The Institute, I found that IEEE-USA quietly published two position papers asking the US Congress to re-examine and/or clarify sections of the DMCA last year. The papers - developed by the organization's Intellectual Property committee - specifically cite concerns over the chilling effects and misuse of the DMCA against researchers and ISPs. Initially, the IEEE was pretty wishy-washy about the DMCA, but it seems that they've been listening to their members and have developed a pretty strong anti-DMCA, pro-innovation stance. Including an enlightened view on Fair Use rights!"

Lumpish Scholar writes ""The Sims Online" was one of the most anticipated releases of 2002; but (according to this Los Angeles Times story in the Baltimore Sun, "'The Sims Online' sold 105,000 copies, or only about a quarter of the initial shipment in December," and (as quoted in this article in the New York Times), "the company's president, John S. Riccitiello, said the number of subscribers was half what Electronic Arts expected." (Check out Google News for more articles, and a registration-free partner link to the New York Times story.) Meanwhile, the game's customer reviews at Amazon.com have an average rating of only two (out of five) stars."

Sandstorm writes "Electronic Frontier Finland ry has an interesting article about a proposed law in the Finnish parliament on liabilities in public communications. Among other alarming things, the proposed law would require all web publications to have an editor-in-chief, who would have a criminal responsibility for all material published in his publication. That would include discussion on web boards and force editors on sites like /. preview and censor all comments before displaying them."

HerbieTMac asks: "I graduated a few years ago (AB '00) from a decent school. Having worked my myself quite nearly to death, I am now the proud owner of two bachelor's degrees in Economics and Public Policy. I also have put in a couple of years working as a Computer Science TA for the masters program. Being older and arguably wiser, I find that I don't really like where I am going and instead want to pursue a PhD in physics. The problem is that most PhD programs require an undergraduate degree in physics first. Or at least a significant amount of classwork in the field. Most of my physics knowledge has come from self-study and bumming class notes from friends. I'd love to go back to school and do the work for the AB but most schools won't accept applications for a second (in my case third) bachelor's degree. Has anyone else decided that they really didn't want to work with the first degree? How did you go about convincing a school that you are a good bet? Or even to let you do some preparatory course work?"

OrangeHairMan writes "Google.com is being sued by SearchKing.com because Google "purposefully devalued his companies' and his customers' web sites, causing his business to suffer financially." There's a page on SearchKing.com's site too." Does anyone besides me find this hilarious? My favorite part is that the name of the site is "Search King".

Russellkhan writes "The Register is running a story about a new RedHat kernel patch that cannot be explained to U.S. citizens or others in the U.S. because of DMCA restrictions. The illegal explanation is hosted at Thefreeworld.net, a site created specifically to deal with these DMCA issues."

Codeine writes: "Tom Lyons argues persuasively that the incumbent competitors might be incapable of delivering an utility IP network. Competition in such commodity markets encourages the breaking of connectivity, ``Connectivity is the fundamental service of the Internet, yet it is connectivity that suffers first when network providers compete for users and services.'' Thus he proposes the Institute for the Promotion of the Internet Protocol Utility."

Codeine writes "Presentations to the Technical Advisory Council (TAC) of the FCC by Vanu Bose "Software Radio: Enabling Dynamic Spectrum Management" and by David Reed "How wireless networks scale: the illusion of spectrum scarcity." Counterintuitive results from multiuser information theory, network architectures, and physics: Multipath increases capacity, Repeating increases capacity, Motion increases capacity, Repeating reduces energy (safety), Distributed computation increases battery life, Channel sharing decreases latency and jitter. Highly recommended presentation suggesting that the cost of spectrum management by "exclusive property rights" mandated by the State outweighs the advantages we could obtain from a new model that acknowledges physics and the 70 years of receiver development since the regulatory model was adopted at the time of the sinking of the Titanic."

Dephex Twin writes "According to a NYTimes article: due to lack of 3rd-party support for Microsoft's "Persona" (originally codenamed "Hailstorm"), the company has been forced to dump the project. It seems the companies didn't like having a middleman between them and the consumers. As a person worried about the future with .NET, this is a bit of a relief."

Grech asks: "I work for a US federal agency that replaces its workstations and attendant software every 3-5 years. At the moment, the environment for most workers consists of an OS, an office suite, a UTS60 emulator, and an X Server. Logic seems to say that when all this gets ripped out and replaced in a year or so, it could be done cheaper with Linux, but a case will have to be made, and a strong one. I've got the arguments, but I need the numbers and the anecdotes to back up such a huge project."

alteran writes "CERT has released a paper (PDF) analyzing changes in DOS attack methods. The new twist-- crackers are increasing getting into routers rather then servers and home PCs. The volume of noise a router could generate absolutely dwarfs what a computer could do. And unlike compromised servers, compromised routers could actually screw up the infrastructure of the Internet, not just blast people with packets. Worst of all, router administators appear to be even sloppier than their server counterparts in securing their machines."

Last week you asked Sam Lantinga , developer of the Simple DirectMedia Layer (SDL) about SDL and other issues related to gaming. He's responded with answers about the SL port to Sony Playstation, game audio, DirectX, his new job at Blizzard, and more. He even drops some hints about some interesting gaming developments to watch out for.

Out-of-the-box Linux 3D support?
by phutureboy

This may be more of a question for everyone else than for Sam (but Sam can feel free to answer also :) I'm not a big gamer, but I would play some if it weren't such a bitch to get the proper libraries working under Linux. Last time I tried was about 6 months ago... After following some really complicated directions and compiling umpteen obscure drivers I finally got SDL and hardware-accelerated OpenGL working. I had to disable it and revert to my previous versions, though, because it locked up my system a lot during games and made X pretty unstable. Anyway, my question is this: is multimedia support for Linux getting any easier to install? Is it possible that someday I will be able to install a distribution and have it automagically configure hardware 3D support, install SDL, etc.? Or is Linux multimedia still too much in the toddler stages?

I'm just a lowly PHP coder. I don't understand all this low-level mumbo jumbo. I just want to fire up a game every now and then and blow shit up. Is there hope for me?

Sam Lantinga: Yes, more and more distributions are starting to set up 3D out of the box. 3D on Linux is always a moving target however, so the best bet is for distribution to both include 3D detection and setup, and also to include information on how to upgrade the drivers to the latest versions.

As anecdotal evidence, Mike "Heimdall" Phillips, who up until recently worked as Q/A and technical support at Loki Software, Inc., installed Mandrake 8 on a box containing a Rage 128 video card, and the installation detected and set up 3D acceleration out of the box. He was up and running with most of Loki's 3D titles immediately.

Graphics Hardware Drivers
by m2

My question is a bit tainted by my personal opinion in this matter, but I'm sure Sam will be able to provide a different (and surely interesting) point of view.

At the risk of being a tad Linux centric, does the availability or unavailability of hardware specifications and technical documentation on graphics hardware affect a Linux game developer and why? With two concrete cases in mind, on one hand NVIDIA who provides binary drivers and "high level" documentation about their cards, and on the other hand, ATI for which there's source code for the drivers with support for half of the features the hardware offers, but neither openly accessible hardware documentation nor much "high level" docs, how do you think this can affect the future development of games for Linux (proprietary or otherwise)?

SL: From my perspective as a cross-platform game developer, the objective is to write a great game, not to have to read technical documentation on particular graphics hardware. With the improvement of the OpenGL API implementations on the Linux platform, the need for game developers to get their hands dirty with the technical details of the graphics drivers is slowly going away. IMHO, this is a good thing. :)

Now, in reality there is always a need to look at the way the driver interacts with the hardware, either to fix bugs, or to improve graphics performance. For this reason, it's a great thing to have the source code and full graphics hardware specifications available - it allows the developer to make smarter choices about graphic implementation, and results in a better game. This is true of Linux as well as Windows, and interestingly Linux is a richer field than Windows when trying to find out how hardware and drivers really interact.

In the specific case of NVidia, I've been impressed with both the quality of their drivers, and the responsiveness and commitment of the company towards Linux as a whole. While it's true that there is no guarantee that this will continue, it's very refreshing now.

What's your status with Loki?
by Mr T

Was your departure good? Daniel Vogel also left. Is Loki in a good position or did you leave because of some problem. What's the deal?

SL: My departure was good. I left because I was very interested in the opportunity to work on original game content at Blizzard Entertainment.

Loki owes me money like all the other employees, but they have stated that they will pay me back, and I am very hopeful that they will do so.

Blizzard Entertainment
by j7953

What are you working on at Blizzard? Do you get paid for continuing your work on SDL, or do you have to do that in your spare time?

SL: I am working on an upcoming unannounced title. It's great fun and I can't wait for it to be announced so I can tell people what it is that I'm working on. As for SDL, I'm still working on it in my spare time. There's a rumor of a super-elite crack team of developers working on the next generation SDL API, but I can't substantiate it. :)

Directx 8 and SDL
by drenehtsral

From playing with it, and noticing what has been conveniently removed from the documentation (but is still in the libraries), it looks like DirectX 8 is trying very hard to do away with directdraw and work purely through the 3d engine. Sprites are just 2d textured polys, etc ...

This leads me to believe that any future enhancements/optimizations/support/testing/etc ... that will happen with directx will be only on the direct3d part, and directdraw is probably going to be unsupported. Do y'all have any plans to deal with that?

SL: The next generation SDL API is leaning towards the concept of a texture manager and a plug-in architecture for operations on those textures. This should for the most part be a natural improvement upon the current design, and will lend itself well to 3D hardware acceleration. This design is for the 2D surface API though. At this point, the plan is to continue to support real 3D through the OpenGL API.

SDL and OpenAL (among others)
by Eugenia Loli

So, I was always wondering if there is going to be a 'real' integration between OpenAL and SDL. Currently, a lot of people are just using SDL_mixer which does a pretty good job for little shareware/oss games, but when it comes to commercial sound, 3D positioning and all these buzzwords, SDL needs OpenAL to break through against the goodies of DirectX has to offer.

Also, what about a wrapper against D3D? There is currently a nice integration with OpenGL, when SDL needs to use 3D acceleration, but under Windows (where a lot of SDL games already exist) most of the coders are using D3D. Also, based on the fact that D3D 8 is not as bloated as previous versions, a wrapper for other OSes could be easily achieved (IMHO).

Last question, again on the spirit of 'SDL Vs DirectX', are there any plans for more support for more input devices, like force feedback wheels etc.

Take care and thank you for all the hard work you have put on SDL the last few years. (and also greatly thank you for the BeOS port! :)

SL: Okay, there are several questions here. First, thanks for the appreciation! It should go to all the developers who have contributed to SDL and to products using it, because without them, it would not have become the great API that it is.

As for integration between SDL and OpenAL... SDL audio is fairly lightweight and designed to have mixer implementations be built on top of it. OpenAL is a heavy-weight 3D audio API. Different applications have different needs, and one audio API may suit a particular use better than another. You can always choose to use SDL for video and OpenAL for audio, or SDL for audio and another API for video, etc., you have many choices in the design of your game.

As an aside, there is support in the Linux implementation of OpenAL for using SDL as a back-end, and in fact this was used at one point to get the Linux implementation working on Windows. However, this isn't generally needed because of great native audio support.

There are no plans for a Direct3D wrapper for SDL. OpenGL works well on Linux, Windows, MacOS, and many other platforms.

Finally, yes, the device support and event model in SDL 1.3 will handle a much wider range of devices. Whether or not force feedback support will be included will depend on the state of the drivers for these devices across the range of platforms that SDL supports.

Gamecube, Xbox?
by evilMoogle

With SDL for PS2, are there any plans to do the same for the other next-gen platforms, the Gamecube and the Xbox?

SL: I don't know of any plans, but I'm sure somebody will do something as an exercise at some point. That's one of the great things about open source software. I'm constantly surprised at what people are doing with SDL.

higher level?
by magic

With X-Box supporting DirectX only (and a special version at that) and PS2 not supporting OpenGL in general, some of the utility of SDL is lost. For example, I can write a SDL & OpenGL game that compiles and runs on OSX, Linux, and Win32. But window, input, thread and audio management are the least of my problems when moving to X-Box or PS2... I have to rewrite my whole graphics pipeline!

There are, of course, some very good commercial 3D API's that will abstract over this problem. One of the strengths of SDL has been that you have abstracted over the low level and have avoided getting into the sticky business of fighting OpenGL and Direct3D for the 3D API. This also limits the utility of SDL, however, because of the lack of a solid, free API for abstracting the 3D API.

Do you see SDL moving higher up the graphics pipeline in the future, or is it your intent to continue to avoid higher level 3D calls?

SL: I like side-stepping the 3D API issue. :)

I don't plan on adding a 3D API abstraction at this point, however I'm open to the idea of getting a single working 3D API that would cover the platforms you mention. My suspicion, with my limited experience with the PS2 hardware, is that it would take longer to write a functional API that could cover the differences in platforms than it would to get a working subset of OpenGL implemented. There's a reason that many PS2 developers write directly to the hardware.

Sony Development Costs
by debrain

Sony charges stiff fees for Playstation (2) development licenses. Was one of the primary focuses of SDL a way to circumvent these fees, broaden the PS2 platform, broaden the SDL platform, or broaden Linux as a viable game platform?

SL: Mostly the port was done as a fun toy. The intention was to broaden the SDL platform, and possibly allow the average person to write games that would run on the Sony Playstation.

End-user availability?
by DeadMeat (TM)

I brought this up before when the port was announced, but nobody knew the exact answer, so maybe I can get it straight from the horse's mouth ...

From what I understand, the PS2 Linux distro uses a proprietary, binary-only driver/library/program to allow programmers to access the PS2's graphics chip. My question is, how will this hinder end users' ability to get their hands on SDL-based PS2 games?

Does this mean they'll have to buy a copy of the $200 Linux development kit? Or are developers allowed to freely redistribute the graphics runtimes? (Or have you found some other way around this, perhaps by accessing the PS2 hardware without the binary runtime?)

I'm just afraid that most PS2 gamers (read: non-geeks) won't find SDL games too attractive if they have to buy a $200 Linux kit to play them.

SL: The SDL port runs on Sony's Public Beta of Linux on the Playstation 2. This public beta is loosely based on a derivative of RedHat Linux, and works just like any other Linux system. It boots from a memory card, but once booted, it can access the network and hard drive like a UNIX workstation. You can download software RPM archives that were built on Linux for the PS2 and install them normally. This is the way I distribute the SDL runtime packages and Maelstrom for the PlayStation 2.

Since the Linux beta is publicly available only in Japan, I'm not sure what would be included in a commercial product that would be released in the U.S..

CitizenC writes: "The OpenGL Architecture Review Board (ARB) today announced the new OpenGL 1.3 specification. OpenGL.org will host this specification shortly. In OpenGL 1.3, several additional features and functions have been ratified and brought into the API's core functionality. You can read more about the release in general in this Yahoo news story, or go straight to OpenGL.org to view the specs yourself."

alanjstr writes: "Scientific American has a feature on detecting the location of a sniper based on sound and GPS. 'From [the] data, the model estimates the trajectory, caliber and speed of the bullet, the distance it traveled and the elevation of the sniper.'"

CitizenC writes: "This Associated Press story by way of Yahoo states that starting next month, Circuit City will no longer sell 'Mature' rated games to children under 17 years of age at its stores without a parent being around. They will also begin to check ID's for young people who purchase 'M' rated games." Please check your responsibility at the door and put this helmet on, too.

alanjstr writes "Reuters is reporting that an ex-CIA director and ex-KGB man have come together and developed a new way of 'hiding' internet communications. It does this by IP hopping: 'The Invicta system uses special cards to link protected computers to a central control unit. It lets clients decide how often they wish to vary IP addresses and specify which applications may be accessed on their network.'" I've always wondered if there could be a way through software to do this. Of course, a centralized server would need to route which would be a major bandwidth bottleneck.

CitizenC writes: "Most people don't really associate the phrase "open source" or "GPL" with games. However, that is just what Galbraith Games is trying to change. Today on 3DActionPlanet, Sabre takes a look at the recently released tech demo."

morn writes: "BBC News is reporting, from a recent article in the Beijing Review, that debate is hotting up in China over the burgeoning Intenet cafe industry. Up to 15% of children in large cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou are now said to be using the cafes. The government appears to be worried, and is overseeing the installation of 'information purifiers.'" (Read More)

"In a debate published on the Beijing Review's website, Communist Party officials warned of "online heroin", saying access to pornographic sites and "illegal games" in internet cafes pose a threat to the country's younger generation, who are becoming blighted by the "online poison". It is being said that "Some teenagers are so deeply entrapped by such internet cafes that their minds are severely distorted."

Scholars are arguing against any sort of curtailing of the cafe business, but against strong words like those, do they stand much chance?"

CitizenC writes: "The British Columbia Attorney General has now officially proposed legislation for a government sponsored classification system for video and PC games. Stomped spoke with a spokesperson with the Attorney General's office today for more infomation about the proposed regulations; read the report here." Basically, the proposed system (only proposed, note) would require video games be rated, much like movies are. Phwew! At least this is Canada! Nothing like this could ever affect us down here in the land of the free, home of -- Oh wait. Yes, it could.

alanjstr writes: "IDG News is reporting that Matsushita (aka Panasonic) has developed a floppy drive that will fit 32 MB onto a regular floppy disk. 'To increase the data capacity of a standard floppy, Matsushita's FD32MB system employs zone bit recording -- a system used to encode data onto hard disks and optical disc systems that more efficiently uses the space to record data.' The new drive also supports SuperDisks for 240 MB storage capacity. A Google Search for 'FD32MB' turned up lots of stuff in Japanese. More details and discussion are available here starting back last November." According to the article which starts that PC Market thread, "The new technology increases the number of sectors per track to between 36-53 sectors, compared with its current number of 18 sectors, and its memory capacity per track can be raised from 9.2KB-18.4KB to 27KB." Imagine what the cooler-than-heck Linux Router Project could do with these!

sirhan writes "The ACLU made a court brief today concerning the DVD CCA case. The release can be found here." There were actually a number of amicus briefs filed at the same time for this case, and now I think most of them are online. Journalists and publishers, law professors, law professors II, the Association for Computing Machinery, programmers and academics, library and public interest, cryptographers, and Arnold Reinhold. These are all in support of the EFF's appeal in the case, of course. The briefs make good reading because they attempt to convey, in a very direct and concise manner, the arguments of these various groups against the DMCA.

damiangerous writes: "This NY Times story reports the controversial decision by the American Museum of Natural History to no longer list Pluto among the planets. Although they don't actually declare Pluto's loss of planetary status outright, their newly opened planetarium classifies Pluto simply as a Kuiper Belt object. A staff member says only 1 in 10 people ask about the 'missing' planet."

PhracturedBlue asks: "There are lots of ways to encrypt a filesystem (via loopback, ppdd, CFS or CryptFS), but all of these options appear to have their faults, be it poor performance, lack of features, or not being actively maintained. So are there any other options out there, that provie quality FS encryption with reasonable performance? So, are there any other viable options, besides the ones I've found? Are there any actual benchmarks of actual performance for the viable options above (I guess the viable ones are loopback, CFS, TCFS, and PPDD)? How about systems using the AES-winner Rijndael (I know Loopback Encryption and possibly TCFS and PPDD can use Twofish, but isn't Rijndeal supposed to be one of the faster encryption methods?). I've seen the recent Slashdot article, and it didn't really address the above questions."

"First let me say that I know little to nothing about cryptography, and I wouldn't know the first thing about good vs. bad options, so any statements I make here are based on what I've read and may be completely erroneous. What I'm looking for a way to secure my (Debian) Linux laptop, since physical security is an issue (I can't keep it locked up in my house all the time). So I went out looking for a way of encrypting my filesystem.

The easiest method appears to be to install Loopback Encryption, but from what I can figure out this is a bad solution because (a) its very poor performance, and (b) there is no way to do key authentication. Another option is CFS (a quick howto can be found here), but this is also reported to have poor performance (even with blowfish, or the NFS related TCFS) and it also appears to be abandoned. (Okay TCFS may not be abandoned, but it hasn't been updated for over a year). People seem to rave about CryptFS, but this appears to be a prototype developed for a research paper that has gone no further. Of the last real options that I've uncovered PPDD (which is a device-driver rather than a filesystem) seems like it may be the most promising (though it doesn't seem to have been updated since January, and I can find no indication about testing it with the 2.4 beta kernels)."

sonnerbob noted that Yahoo is running a story about the ongoing controversy surrounding metabrowsing. This one mentions eBay of course, but others like Priceman and Ticketmaster. The long term effects of this stuff is incredibly significant: if the courts go the wrong way, it could even make things messy for the big search engines.