Slashdot Mirror

An Anonymous Coward pointed to a story on the AP wire, writing: "Why does the FBI and US government have problems with this merger? Is there some sinister wiretap access deal between the current US ISPs ? [From the article:] 'An NTT spokesman told the Journal a pending U.S. government review of the deal is a response to FBI and Justice Department concerns that law-enforcement agencies maintain access to Verio's Internet structure to obtain wiretaps and serve subpoenas for information. ... In telecommunications deals, the FBI has asked for assurances that only U.S. facilities be used to handle U.S. traffic. The FBI has insisted the companies employ U.S. citizens to handle wiretapping activities.'" A fellow-traveling A.C. points to coverage on CNNfn. Does this bother anyone?

Project Gamma writes "Techserver reports about how being lazy just got easier. Too lazy to read the directions on that TV dinner? Soon you may not have to. Your microwave oven will do it for you with the swipe of the package bar code across a special sensor." Okay, fine, but will it E-mail me when it wants me to stir it?

Project Gamma writes "Techserver reports about how being lazy just got easier. Too lazy to read the directions on that TV dinner? Soon you may not have to. Your microwave oven will do it for you with the swipe of the package bar code across a special sensor." Okay, fine, but will it E-mail me when it wants me to stir it?

Doran writes "The U.S. Dept. of Defense is showing off its new $15,000,000 Computer Forensics Lab and it looks like they'll be using a Beowulf cluster to gleen as much info as possible from the computers they confiscate. Here is the story from Nando. An interesting aside is that they seem to be using Clinton's 'approval' last week to allow sale of more powerful encryption software as a justification to ask for $80,000,000 more for the Center. " Beowulf cluster mentioned, but not Linux, oddly enough.

An anonymous reader wrote in to tell us that "Scientists at North Carolina State University's Solid State Physics Laboratory say they have built a camera that can take pictures of anything that emits ultraviolet light." And we'd like to announce an update to the RobCam: I think Hemos and I will be wearing a lot more white.

SEWilco writes "As Slashdot readers know, today's date abbreviated as 9999 may cause problems in some older computers. So far only one report of a Tandy problem. 9s-day no problem in New Zealand and Hong Kong, Guam OK and USA still has electric power on 9/9/99. But seriously, folks, today is a big day for numerologists, pagans, and Nostradamus. So far today the NASA Near-Earth Object Program has not seen a comet coming to hit us. But what is so special about the Era of Alexandria 7491 anyway?"

slambo writes "Nando Times is reporting today that Swiss scientists have discovered a way to turn a superconductor into an insulator by applying an electric current to it. " Almost zero details in the story itself, but the whole idea really appeals to me. Anyone have more details about it?

Tramm Hudson writes "In this Reuters article, Diamond Multimedia states that they are making 10,000 units a week and are still behind demand. Otherwise a fairly standard news report -- "Users love MP3, industry hates it". " I've found that they skip terribly at 128kbits, but less then that and they are tolerable. The first portable mp3 player than can store 5+ hours of music at 128kbits and not skip will do well. Until then, the Rio is a beta test for the real revolution. When the real deal is here though, the Rio will have made sure that we have lots of MP3s to choose from.

SysAdmin writes "I read an AP report in my hometown paper that says the gov't just accused Microsoft of faking a video which shows how performace suffers in Windows98 after the government's IE-scrubber is run. " I try to avoid posting articles like this, but this is pretty significant-some of other sites are talking about perjury charges and such being brought against the lawyers. Additionally, another bit was sent to us by El pointed an article in which MS lawyers were contradicting themselves, as a MS patent claimed that Web browser are seperate from the OS. Lastly, the Canadian province of Alberta has decided to sue Microsoft, amongst others, for Y2k conversion costs-thanks to colonel for that one.

Jeff Glover writes "An AP wire story is out about how hot Red Hat is despite being open source, and other obstacles. More of the same that's been coming out of late, but it's nice to see. " This is about as mainstream as you can get I guess. It's a swell little typical article.

ikky writes "This problably falls into the "We've-had-enough-of-Java-in-the-past-few-days", but here we go anyways. Seems like SUN has decided that the new JDK (officially launched today) will be named Java 2. Also the link provides some insight into SUN's OSS plans for Java. Great news for OSS! And it comes just after the Jikes release... " As an aside, thanks to Jason Y. Sproul for our spiffy new Java Icon. We've been running with that crappy blob thing ever since that whole Invaders/Java thing quite some time ago. Update! S: Here's Tim O'reilly's (and others) reaction(s) to the opening (but not open-sourcing) of Java.

Geoff writes "The Techserver has an article about Chancellor Kohl campaigning via live chat in Germany. Interactive use by top policymakers in this manner is still very young, and it's interesting to watch this evolve. Pay close attention to the Chancellor's machine crashing and the deletion of critical comments. Yes, this is a true story. " So we won't be holding the next presidential election at www.vote2000.gov then? Still, it would be cool.

Geoff writes "The Techserver has an article about Chancellor Kohl campaigning via live chat in Germany. Interactive use by top policymakers in this manner is still very young, and it's interesting to watch this evolve. Pay close attention to the Chancellor's machine crashing and the deletion of critical comments. Yes, this is a true story. " So we won't be holding the next presidential election at www.vote2000.gov then? Still, it would be cool.

Cmdr. KillJoy wrote us about the Federal Trade Commision investigating GeoCities. GeoCities has been slapped by the Federal Government for misrepresenting themselves and giving away personal information to advertisers. This story is probably not going to be an isolated one, as the FTC begins to look at ISPs, and sites like this.

talon writes Some versions of the Handycam apparently have a new feature that allows you to use 'em as X-Ray specs if you use their inrared mode in daylight. Science! Proudly making comic books a reality! "

Mike Trinastich sent us something to bring a smile to your face (unless you happened to go to this school). The Story is about a kid who tried to flood someone with like 10,000 email messages, and caused his school's systems to go bannanas. Kinda makes ya wonder what spammers are are doing to ISPs when they send a lot of email and not just this dinky 5 figure stuff.

Janne Moren wrote in to tell us about this story where you can read about a Japanes plan to put a dozen air ships high up in the sky, and have them cheap wireless telephony. 1/10th the cost, and it lasts longer? How long before I can have a wireless internet connection on my laptop?

Remember all the hoopla over studies that showed a serious technical expertise shortage in the near future? Well Eugenio Sanchez sent in this story which challenges that claim. Mike Trinastich sent in this article on the same subject.

Techserver reports that companies are at long last starting to doubt the bright-eyed bushy-tailed consultants who tell them how to spend their money. How can you be sure that they are giving an objective viewpoint when their company has vested interests? This reminds me of friends who went to work for A... Consulting, after completing their biology degrees. They told me how much fun it was to tell companies what computers to install, and that this was easy as they were given a book that contained all the answers. They also explained that A... Consulting prefered non-Computer Science graduates, since CS-graduates already had made their minds about how to do things. Better start with a clean slate! All of this fits in rather nicely with companies ditching tried and tested solutions like Unix in favour of Windows.

Techserver reports that companies are at long last starting to doubt the bright-eyed bushy-tailed consultants who tell them how to spend their money. How can you be sure that they are giving an objective viewpoint when their company has vested interests? This reminds me of friends who went to work for A... Consulting, after completing their biology degrees. They told me how much fun it was to tell companies what computers to install, and that this was easy as they were given a book that contained all the answers. They also explained that A... Consulting prefered non-Computer Science graduates, since CS-graduates already had made their minds about how to do things. Better start with a clean slate! All of this fits in rather nicely with companies ditching tried and tested solutions like Unix in favour of Windows.

Dane Johnson sent us this story where you can read about a Tamagochi sitter actually opening up in Hungary. Allright, I thought I took the whole concept to far.