Slashdot Mirror

New submitter oztechmuse writes "Australian Telco Telstra is planning to trial shaping some BitTorrent traffic during peak hours. Like all other telcos worldwide, they are facing increasing traffic with a long tail of users: 20% of users consume 80% of bandwidth. The problem is, telcos in Australia are already shaping BitTorrent traffic as a study by Measurement Lab has shown and traffic use continues to increase. Also, the 20% of broadband users consuming the most content will just find a different way of accessing the content and so overall traffic is unlikely to be reduced."

rbowen writes "Nine years ago, Slashdot readers discussed what makes an Open Source project successful. The answers were varied, of course. An academic paper summarized the results, agreeing (albeit with more precision) that motivations for Open Source projects are varied. Has anything changed since then? In the era of mobile apps, social media, and Google Ad revenue, have the definitions of Open Source project success changed at all? Have your reasons changed for being involved in Open Source?"

Frozen North writes "Recently, this article in the Syracuse Post-Standard caused a stir by dismissing Wikipedia as an authoritative source, and even suggesting that it was a little deceptive by looking too much like a "real" encyclopedia. Techdirt suggested an experiment: insert bogus information into Wikipedia, and see how long it takes for the mistake to be removed. Well, I did that experiment, and the results weren't good: five errors inserted over five days, all of which lasted until I removed them myself at the end of the experiment."

Slashback with a followup on the perpetual motion DeLorean, a word on RIAA bank-account-jacking, a reminder about the fast-tracked vote on software patents in the EU, the real meaning of "high speed USB" and more. Read on below for the details.

Now even less than a week ... mpawlo writes "As reported by Greplaw, although I am still looking for further confirmation, it seems like the EU vote on software patentability has been moved from the late fall to June 30, 2003. Yes, that is in one (1) week. If you have more information and another source - please comment on this news item."

Mikael writes: "Personally, I find it somewhat disturbing from a democracy perspective that this proposal seems to be fast-tracked in the middle of the summer, when most Europeans want to focus on whether they should have strawberry or vanilla ice cream. In Sweden, we also got our Swedish version of the DMCA this week. I guess the ice cream will have to wait."

DoSthAboutIt points out that "A 'Petition for a Free Europe without Software Patents' has gained more than 150000 signatures. Among the supporters are more than 2000 company owners and chief executives and 25000 developpers and engineers from all sectors of the European information and telecommunication industries, as well as more than 2000 scientists and 180 lawyers. Companies like Siemens, IBM, Alcatel and Nokia lead the list of those whose researchers and developpers want to protect programming freedom and copyright property against what they see as a 'patent landgrab.' The whole article can be found here, including some statistics like signatories by country"

The story of Peng. mantispraying writes "Looks like the college student who settled with the the RIAA for $12,000, his entire life savings, has recouped all of his money thanks to a very generous file sharing community. Also, the search engine he created that got him in trouble is back online, for demonstration purposes only, of course."

Reader T points out that while one of the students who lost his life savings to RIAA has made it back through PayPal donations, "the other, Dan Peng, is still short about $12,000. Brother, can you spare a dime?"

I'd prefer the garrote and the stick, but hey. Mark Ferguson writes: "I attended the FTC spam forum. It seems I was on their call list :-) I parlayed that into getting several others on the panels as well. While there I spoke with bulk emailers and other industry folks. Some people defined Confirmed OPT-IN to mean you sending a confirmation that the email address was subscribed so they were doing double, confirmed OPT-IN.

My heads spins.

What I figured from what I learned was these folks truly refused to accept real definitions the Service Providers have been using for years so I decided to do a site for just this. ... Anyway, reboot, aka Andrew Cockrell myself and another built The Carrot and the Stick to explain email, define the best practices and to get people to abide by them.

Thoughts, comments and/or suggestions?"

Sooner or later, that DeLorean's going to land someone in jail. hackwrench writes "According to channel WSMV news, Alternate Energy Inventor Carl Tilley's compound was raided. Tilley was previously mentioned on Slashdot here."

Tilley had announced the then-upcoming demonstration of his perpetual-motion DeLorean.

My nanodots can fit inside your nanodots! Rocky Rawstern writes "I recently had the distinct pleasure to interview one of my favorite authors, Wil McCarthy. Upon completing three of his latest books - two sci-fi and one work of non-fiction - I realized that others would probably enjoy his ponderings as much as I. The questions for this interview stem from my own interest in programmable matter, and the awe-inspiring possibilities raised by Wil in his book Hacking Matter."

How to succeed (not necessarily) in business. jameshowison writes "A few months ago Ask Slashdot published Kevin Crowston's question on what makes open source software successful ... well the results are in and the paper typed. We ran the responses through a funky content analyser (called Grad Students). The metrics that academics and the industry have used for years simply don't work for OSS.

More and more it seems that we'll need to survey the number of job offers developers get and the size of the community to get at this one ..."

You sound very familiar to me. Interested Observer writes "Thanks to a slashdot article discussing false positives using Soundex I thought if Soundex can be used for something as important as "no-fly" lists then certainly we should be able to get some entertainment value out of it! See if your Soundex last name-counterparts show up in a Google News search."

A member of the USB-IF Administration writes to dispel the confusion raised by the seeming conflict between many USB products' labels and their actual data-transfer speeds:

"The source of confusion derives from the fact that USB specification revision numbers and data-transfer rates are often being used in place of the logo on consumer packaging, a purpose for which they were not originally intended. The USB-IF's recommended nomenclature for consumers is 'USB' for slower speed products (1.5 Mb/s and 12Mb/s) and "Hi-Speed USB" for high-speed products (480Mb/s), as signified in the USB logos that were introduced in late 2000. In short, consumers wishing to be certain they are getting the performance they paid for in their USB products can use the logo for clarification.

The USB-IF's naming and packaging recommendations for low- or full-speed USB products, as listed at the website http://www.usb.org/developers/packaging, state that such products can carry only the basic version of the USB logo, which simply states "Certified USB." We state clearly that manufacturers should avoid using terminology such as USB 2.0 Full Speed, Full Speed USB or USB 2.0. These formal recommendations were published to the USB-IF membership and posted on the website in August 2002.

The USB-IF is a nonprofit industry organization. We do not and cannot control how manufacturers label their products. We do work continuously with system and peripheral manufacturers, striving to provide consistency in the use of this nomenclature and the logos. The logo indicates that a product's performance against and conformance with the standard have been tested, and that the product has passed the USB compliance program.

Anyone having questions about the performance of a product should contact the manufacturer for clarification.

For a brief Q & A on this topic, please visit our website at http://www.usb.org/info/usb_nomenclature."

crowston asks: "There have been a number of discussions on Slashdot and elsewhere about how good projects work (e.g., Talk To a Successful Free Software Project Leader), but less about how to tell if things are going well in the first place. While this may seem obvious, most traditional definitions of software project success seem inapplicable (e.g., profit) or nearly impossible to measure for most projects (e.g., market share, user satisfaction, organizational impact). In an organizational setting, developers can get feedback from their customers, the marketplace, managers, etc.; if you're Apache, you can look at Netcraft's survey of server usage; but what can the rest do? Is it enough that you're happy with the code? I suspect that the release-early-and-often philosophy plays an important role here. I'm asking not to pick winners and losers (i.e., NOT a ranking of projects), but to understand what developers look at to know when things are going well and when they're not."

Overcoat writes "Interesting review on Salon of the recently published book by Milton Mueller entitled Ruling The Root. The review claims that ICANN's dominance of the Domain Name System will lead to the end of free speech the the internet: 'But what is surprising, and disturbing, is the process by which control over the domain name system has been used to extend intellectual property rights to new heights. Ultimately, the free-speech utopia of cyberspace is evolving into a domain where corporate interests have more power to control speech than they have had in other arenas.' Not sure if trademarking "yahooo.com" constitutes a really big threat to free speech, but it's still a thought-provoking article."

dfelznic writes: "The mp3 archives of CodeCon are now availble, which is news in itself. But what makes this real interesting is that they are being distributed by BitTorrent. BitTorrent allows users to download a file from multiple different people. Instead of everyone nailing one server, users get the file from other users. Furthurnet uses a similar technology to distribute legal bootlegs of concerts. The archive is available at the BitTorrent demo downloads page. As soon as I started downloading (cable modem) at around 300k I got a request for the file and began uploading at 40k. This could be the answer to the slashdot effect;) Now, who is going to be the first to complain about the use of mp3s instead of oggs?"

yooden writes: "Milton Mueller shows in his study that the domain name dispute resolution system applied today has a tendency to reward providers who deliver name transfers (ie. WIPO). While the idea is not new, the study is." Since ICANN is meeting today, in a session with 10 totally unelected directors and 9 elected by business representatives and 0 elected by general internet users, to decide which new TLDs will be implemented and how (to split up the loot), it seems somehow appropriate to review their record of fair and impartial domain name handling over the past few years. Mueller analyzes disputes statistically and comes up with a few smoking guns.

yooden writes: "Milton Mueller shows in his study that the domain name dispute resolution system applied today has a tendency to reward providers who deliver name transfers (ie. WIPO). While the idea is not new, the study is." Since ICANN is meeting today, in a session with 10 totally unelected directors and 9 elected by business representatives and 0 elected by general internet users, to decide which new TLDs will be implemented and how (to split up the loot), it seems somehow appropriate to review their record of fair and impartial domain name handling over the past few years. Mueller analyzes disputes statistically and comes up with a few smoking guns.

giminy writes: "These boards from TotalImpact look pretty nifty. Each one can take 4 g3's or 4 g4's and go in a regular PCI slot -- and get this, they can run in Intel machines. They work by having a program dumped to them like a second computer. Still kinda pricey for the cards, but you can put as many of these cards in your server as you want for something super-scalable. Linux support is there, and datasheets are available." We mentioned these back in '98 but a lot has changed since then. I'm sure there are clever uses for a couple of spare CPUs in a box ;)

gatech writes "After hitting Yahoo yesterday those crackers set their sights on several more sites including CNN.com, Amazon.com, and eBay.com. Here is the story at ABCNews.com."

Comment: 02/08 23:26 by michael : So far, the best explanation I've seen for the massive network problems is here. Is it paranoid to note that we're being hit with unprecedented attacks, with no known motive, at the same time as the government is pushing for yet another expansion of their surveillance powers? People are focusing on how it's being done. Nobody seems to be asking who.

rhavyn writes "There is going to be a Copyright Town Meeting which will be discussing in particular the DMCA at the University Sheraton, Syracuse, NY. This could be a great opportunity for Central New Yorkers to get together and raise awareness of the DVD CCA case as well as the DMCA in general. There will be a question and answer period. More info is at this site. Be aware, seating is limited, you need to register before going (read, ASAP).

I can coordinate a place to meet before the show. E-mail me if you're interested in getting together beforehand. "

rhavyn writes "There is going to be a Copyright Town Meeting which will be discussing in particular the DMCA at the University Sheraton, Syracuse, NY. This could be a great opportunity for Central New Yorkers to get together and raise awareness of the DVD CCA case as well as the DMCA in general. There will be a question and answer period. More info is at this site. Be aware, seating is limited, you need to register before going (read, ASAP).

I can coordinate a place to meet before the show. E-mail me if you're interested in getting together beforehand. "

Ben Williams writes "There's an article on developer.com that claims "The decision [to open the Navigator source], heavily influenced by Eric Raymond's article "The Cathedral and the Bazaar," was quickly reached just a few days after the idea was first broached on the slashdot.org site." " I'm sure we didn't hurt matters, but I don't really think we deserve that much credit. In anycase, the article is a fairly nice summary of the whole Mozilla source thing with a few interesting tidbits that make it worth a read.

Benny Simon contributed a question that might be a bit more tangible then the last one. He writes " Macintosh 8.0 and 8.1 clients which mount volumes exported by netatalk from the Linux server exhibit strange and mysical behavior (not the dancing icons or incorrect free space reporting). What happens is that many programs (Photoshop, Illustrator, sometimes Netscape, others) crash or exit when opening or saving a file to the mounted volume. In addition, when using the open or save dialog boxes to navigate around folders on the mounted volume, response from the server is *really* slow. " His System is Linux 2.0.33 (redhat5) running on a VAResearch PentiumII/233 with 128MB ram unning netatalk-1.4b2+asun2.0a18.2 and he has no problems with MacOS 7.5.5 clients. So guys, whats the word?