Slashdot Mirror

WARM3CH writes "AnandTech tested a laptop with an AMD CPU, a laptop with an Intel CPU, and a netbook to compare battery life while running Internet Explorer 8, Opera 10, Firefox 3.5, Safari 4, and Chrome. They tested on simple web pages and flash-infested ones. IE8 had the best battery life on both laptops (followed by FF + AdBlock), and Safari had the worst battery life. On the netbook, Chrome was slightly ahead of IE8. The report concludes: 'Overall, Internet Explorer and Firefox + AdBlock consistently place near the top, with Chrome following closely behind. Opera 10 Beta 3 didn't do as well as Opera 9.6.4, and in a couple quick tests, it doesn't appear that the final release of Opera 10 changes the situation at all. Opera in general — version 9 or 10 — looks like it doesn't do as well as the other major browsers. Safari is at the back, by a large margin, on all three test notebooks. We suspect that Safari 4 does better under OS X, however, so the poor Windows result probably won't matter to most Safari users.'"

dr_agonfly writes "Despite many skeptics, a Massachusetts company is getting investor interest in developing a process to tap electric power from trees. MagCap is looking to boost the current power from just under 2 volts to a more useful 12 volts with investor funding." From the article: "Jim Manwell, director of the University of Massachusetts Amherst's Renewable Energy Resource Laboratory, questioned the potential of MagCap's plans. 'I'm wildly skeptical,' he said. 'I would need to see proof before I believed it. It strikes me as pretty questionable for a number of reasons.'"

vannevar writes: "Is that erbium-doped fiber you're smoking, or are those bandwidth crack-heads in the Ethernet First Mile Study Group turning up GigE fiber to the garage? Of course, no good deed or innovation goes unpunished, but at least someone is busting knuckles, carpal tunnels, wallets, and reputations to make Gigabit Ethernet To The Home a reality." You may remember this earlier mention of the same concept, but rather than just ideas and proposals, here are pretty pictures and delivery speeds that might even make non-Californians want to relocate.

jessemersonuy asks: "Multicasting plays an important role in the design, development, operation, and application of next generation networks that rely on the efficient delivery of packets to their destinations. Due to the advent of broadband, wireless and web-based system design technologies, it has become possible and feasible to design and construct large scale, heterogeneous and complex wireline and wireless communication networks that can support multimedia conferencing, streaming media distribution, distributed data sharing, distance learning, 'push'- oriented, and QoS for wired-cable and wired-wireless applications. Now, we have a small High Performance Computing system in our university campus and I would really like to use that system for testing multicasting applications. However, I do not know what would be the best way to use the cluster for multicasting purposes. Has anyone experimented with this before? What might be the best multicasting application to use to be able to fully utilize the power of the cluster?"

argentus was one of many to write in regarding the Children's Internet Protection Act, challenged today in Philadelphia. Read the ACLU and American Library Association press releases, or perhaps the complaint filed by the ALA or complaint filed by the ACLU. Here's a story about the case, but there's a bit more information below.

In a nutshell: a few years ago, Congress got the bright idea that libraries and schools ought to have internet connections and computers. You may be aware that for many years, there has been a tax levied on telephone service which goes to the "universal service" fund - this money is supposed to be used to fund telephone service in remote areas of the United States, to ensure that all U.S. citizens have access to a telephone. Alaska is a major beneficiary.

The universal service fund was the natural place to tap to provide funds for discounted internet access to libraries and schools, and it was. Under the new programs, schools and libraries could receives funds to purchase computers and ongoing discounts on internet access charges. The new program was called "E-Rate", and about $5.5 billion has been spent so far, and up to $2.25 billion may be spent each year. My phone bill says that I am being taxed $0.43/month/line for universal service - I'm not certain if this is constant across the United States or not. You can check your local school or library to see if they are receiving funding here.

However, the Federal Government giveth and the Federal Government taketh away. For several years running, conservatives in Congress attempted to add language which would require recipients of this funding to censor their internet access. So, internet=GOOD, uncensored internet=BAD. Senator John McCain spearheaded the drive to impose internet censorship in any institution which accepted the funds or discounts. In December 2000, the language was added to the 2001 omnibus spending bill, which was ten inches thick when Congress finally voted to approve it - thick enough that no one on earth could claim to know what actually was in the spending bill and what was not.

Although there were attempts to make the bill apply only to terminals used by minors, the final bill applies to all terminals used by anyone. The institutions receiving funding are required to block access to (at a minimum) obscene materal, child pornography, and material harmful to minors (when minors are using the terminals). Given the technical limitations of the software, it's impossible for blocking to be limited to those areas listed. Some schools and libraries will choose to reject the funding and find some other way to budget for internet access. Some will accept the funding and the conditions. Talk to your library and find out.

And here we are. The plaintiffs -- libraries and library associations, library patrons, and people who publish content likely to be blocked -- are asserting that Congress has violated several Constitutional rights with the passage of this law. Read the last few pages of either complaint for an explicit listing of their claims. These are hard claims to make - the court system has often upheld Congress' power to put conditions on funding, since after all, the libraries do have the option of declining the funds - perhaps eliminating their internet access - and in that case, they wouldn't be bound by the law's requirement to censor their internet access. Funding for the interstate highway system has been tied to a national speed limit and to a national drinking age, for example.

In other words, this legal challenge is no slam dunk. This is more like a shot from half court with Michael Jordan in your face. The remedy with the greatest chance of success is pushing Congress to reverse itself and make the E-rate funds restriction-free.

hip2b2 asks: "SSL over HTTP is becoming a very popular way of securing websites for eCommerce and other forms of secure transactions. A vital ingredient of a SSL protected website is an SSL certificate. In the Philippines, most of the secure website here buy their certificates from Verisign. Why should we trust a certification authority that is located in a different country and charges and arm and a leg for a certificate instead of a local one? I can pay 349USD for a Verisign or 125USD for one from Thawte, which is not cheap here. With an exchange rate of around 48.50PHP per USD, this amount is beyond the reach of most local sites who just want to setup secure sites to try out the technology or use it for some charitable purpose. How do we expect to promote the use of SSL in our websites locally with these prohibitive costs? This problem is not limited to the Philippines, I presume that other countries could also relate to this issue." Right now, the cost of an SSL certificate is one of the prices for doing business on the internet (in addition to bandwitdh costs), but what would it take to start up another company that issues CAs, especially if you want to do it outside of the US?

"Is it a question of trust? Do local ecommerce and secure sites trust verisign more that say a local company that provides secure certificates? What confuses me is why is there no proliferation of trusted local institutional CAs? In the future, Verisign might end up being another Network Solutions.

Oh wait! Network Solutions is a Verisign company!

What are the barriers for setting up local country CAs? Right now, I presume that browser makers are the ones listing the trusted root CAs on their browsers by default. If my university were to setup a root CA how would we get netscape and the other browser makers to recognize us? or is there some sort of governing body for assigning root CAs like ICANN is supposed to be for name resolution? or could this be one of ICANN's eventual functions?"

Paul Bristow writes "I've been using a Headless Linux server at home for years and years, but I always find myself putting off doing a distro upgrade. It always means digging out the old graphics card, keyboard and monitor, dusting them off and plugging them in, just so I can have a console to upgrade on. Are there any linux distributions that will allow remote upgrades? You know, log in as root viua ssh, webmin, whatever, run upgrade prog, remotely reboot, off we go. ;-) I know I'm not the only one running a headless server, and I *know* how stable it is, but occasionally RedHat (in my case) come out with a nice new feature that I might want to upgrade for. Also, with just one server it might just be possible, but how do you upgrade a headless server farm?"

Nik posted this relevant article back in March about the PC Weasel, which sounds like a good way to do this, at the cost of a small hardware investment per box. Are there better ones?

Paul Bristow writes: "John Taschek of ZDNET has written a superbly under-informed criticism of the entire open source movement, based on the fact that Mozilla isn't offically released yet. Look at the article here to see him completely ignore apache, the kernel, fetchmail, KDE/Gnome and all the other great open source projects that make the internet possible and livable in. " Remember: If you are going to e-mail them, or respond in here, respond in a calm, intelligent manner, refuting the points they make without flaming - we all represent the Open Source Community.

Bahwi was the first to write with the news that Microsoft and the Government are still talking, at Judge Jackson's suggestion. So, it looks as if a settlement may still be reached.

Ever wonder about what you might need to wire your own house or apartment with its own LAN or home automation system? This might just be the topic for you. Royster and theguru are both looking for information as to the best ways to go about this. I'm sure there are quite a few of you Slashdotters out there who have already gone through such things and could help out these two with any issues they might have. Read on for their actual submissions.

Royster asks: "I've just got my mortgage commitment and I'll be closing on a house this month. It's time to start thinking about wiring up a home network that's a little more extensive than the 10-base T patch cables strung across the living room of my apartment. I want 10/100 base-T and a phone jack in every room (perhaps not the bathroom). I guess I need to get some Cat-5 wire and learn how to attach and test connectors. Can I run 10/100 base T and a phone line through a single set of wires? Do I need to run conduit or can I snake the stuff through the walls? Any suggestions for sources and resources?"

theguru, looking to be a bit more ambitious, asks: "In the next year I plan on starting construction on a new home. What do my fellow Slashdotters think I need to consider when it comes to the wiring of the house? I'm talking about everything... electrical, phone, cable, home entertainment, alarm, home network, the works. I want the controllability I have now with X10, but without the ugly warts. I want to enjoy DVDs, DirectTV, cable, music, etc., from almost anywhere in the house. I want high-speed networking to almost every room. Most of all however, I want flexibility and growth. I currently have a cable modem, but I want to be able to keep up with technology for the next five years at least without any major wiring changes. Also, help me think of anything important I'm forgetting. "

Numeric writes " You know a thumb has more usefullness than just for hitchiking...A Stanford Univ. professor is developeing an all-thumb keyboard. A user will wear a glove that reads data by the user depressing "hot spots" on a glove's finger. Of course, the wearer will have to learn "thumbcode". "

Daniel Roberts wants to know about the following:: "I am running Red Hat 5.2, and I have been trying to upgrade to 2.2 since pre1. My problem is, I have read through the "Changes" file very carefully, and tried to upgrade all the needed packages... But it still won't work. I am looking for binary RPMs whenever I can, but even Raw Hide does not seem to have all the needed updates to make it work. In particular, I cannot get libc5.4.46 to work, for some reason, even though I've tried to install the binary tar version. My question is: what do I need to do to get Linux 2.2.0 working properly with a stock Red Hat 5.2 system??" Update: 02/12 03:02 by C : I've just discoveded information about "Project Tango" which may be the answer to this question. Thanks to Palin for the heads up. C :I was going to run this as another story on this, but after rereading I figure it's better if we add in this libc-5 issue from davie, who is in the process of a similar upgrade:

"I've built and installed libc-6 and it seems to be working fine. Now I need (at least according to the Changes text in the kernel source) to upgrade my libc-5. The problem is, I can't find any references on how to install a new build of libc-5 for compatability support only--I'm concerned that if I just 'configure, make, make install', I will break libc-6. I've looked at every FAQ and HOWTO I can find and there's nothing helpful. I looked at a libc-5 update RPM for RH 5.1, but I'm reluctant to guess where files go and which files need to be replaced. The libc-5 binary tarball includes fewer files than the update RPM, so I'm not sure what to do. Is there a doc online that explains how to build libc-5 and install it for compatability on a libc-6 box?"

Palin wrote in with this information...and a reliability question on the Tango Project, which looks to be the cure for this problem:

"Do you or anyone else in the Linux comunity know if the Tango Project's RPMs work? If you don't know what the Tango project is... It is a set of rpms for Redhat Linux 5.2 that provide all the necessary software (in RPM format) that one needs to install a 2.2.X kernel. I'd like to apply them...but was wondering what success others have had... The software can be found.... here and here. If it works I might be able to mirror it in the US...but I'm not going to try unless I know people have had success with it... "

Ron Harwood writes " This puppy has it's own lighting system, air circulation/filtration (and a heater), programable positioning of the seat (with memory for different users' settings), and the whole thing rotates over time - (pre programed to rotate 120 degress over 8 hours to take advantage of sunlight... perfect if you actually have windows...) Pricing starts at $8500 CDN (or about $5700 US) " It just needs a coffee iv and a waste disposal system and you'd never need to leave. If your boss loves you, he'll buy you one.

Ron Harwood was the first of probably 50 readers to submit a link to ml.org where you can read that the free DNS service is officially shutting down . That ought to break a huge number of my bookmarks.

Ron Harwood wrote in to send us a link to a nice warm fuzzy piece about Linux and Corel. Some remarks about KDE, as well as Red Hat. Its a nice little piece.

Bill White writes "A friend of mine sent me this article stating that someone already owns the Trademark to Windows 2000." Oops.

Ron Harwood writes " SmartSpace is a very futuristic workstation that British Telecom is making. Projection screen, touch-screen workspace, 3-D surround sound, built in camera -- all built around a comfy chair. Very Star Trek... " Personally, I'd prefer the brain implant, but one of these would probably tide me over until thats a bit more reasonable.

Ron Harwood writes "Okay, I know that there are about a bazillion different internet cameras out there these days... ...but here's another. It features a nice interface that allows you to 'go back in time' and look at previous pictures... or even download them in a sequence as an mpeg. link " Check it out. It's fun. On a lazy sunday afternoon.

Carlos Morgado wrote in to send us this link to a Caldera test pitting NT against Linux running Netscape's FastTrack web server. Results seem to show that Linux scales much more reliably than NT.