Slashdot Mirror

Kurt writes "A team from the University of Michigan is proposing an economic solution to spam. Instead of relying on technical solutions or government regulations, they use a sender warranty system. In some cases, they argue, it can even be superior to a perfect filter with zero cost, and no errors. Their working paper is available at SSRN. With the caveat that some infrastructure is necessary (isn't it always?), they also claim their approach restores control to the recipient, halts spam, and creates a marketplace for valuable information exchange."

Bryce writes "Here is a detailed review of the new Sony Clie PEG-NR70." Kurt the Pope picked one of these up in Japan and I have to say that it is an amazing PDA. Brilliant screen, and that cool flip open design with a mini keyboard. When I can get one that speaks English, it could be my next PDA (my iPaq died!)

MiTEG writes "CNN is carrying an article about IRC and how it aids "hackers" with their mischief. There are some alarming quotes from Bruce Schneier, CTO of Counterpane Technologies, such as "people who are anti-big-corporation are going to be more likely to use something like IRC"." Yeah, if they ever hung out in our chatroom, they'd lock us all up for abusing Kurt the Pope.

7213 noted that the Tradewars site has announced "Tradewars, Dark Millennium", which presumably will be a MMORPG ^[?] RTS based on the terrifyingly addictive game that I used to write scripts to play my turns for me in middle school. Screenshots and descriptions are available, but its gonna be vapor for a long time I'm sure. TW2002 is really where I met Hemos, Nate, and Kurt The Pope. God I loved that game.

dwlt writes "I'm sure lots of people have sent this already, but take a look at the story on videogames.com for the full scoop on Nintendo's Game Cube (gotta catch 'em all!), and Game Boy Advance. The controller is kind of crazy, though..." Let me tell ya about the countless hours spent in the geek houses drinking and playing Mario Kart 64: Kurt The Pope is a wildman under the influence of alcohol, and the new one looks cool.(thanks to those of you who wasted no time in submitting a new Slashdot icon too ;)

With a planned move to San Francisco next summer, last week saw San Jose's last Linux World Expo, at least for now. The future as always is stubbornly uncertain, but it's impressive that the serendipitous combination of Free tools (from GNU) and a Free kernel (from Linus) has inspired enough interest and prosperity to excite a larger group of people each year. If you've not had the chance to attend one of these expositions, we hope this article will give you a flavor of what it's like. Note: Here are a few pictures from the floor (Day 1 & Day 2) contributed by Sensei^); do you have any cool shots to link to in comments?

First, the prelude: If you've worked on the pre-show aspects of anything from a high-school play to a LAN party, you know all those booths, displays, people and computers don't materialize by themselves. For several days before the show floor opened on Tuesday, forklift crews zipped cargos of wooden, fiberglass, plastic, aluminum and steel cases from moving trucks to exhibit spaces. These contained banners, snap-together modules, computers, lighted signs -- and Yes, more gratis logo-imprinted toys than you can wave a TuxTops LED light at.

Spiderwebs of CAT-5 and electric cord (run beneath the show floor) sprouted from the centerpoints of many booths, with strands for each computer to be connected to the Net during the show. Rolls of padding and carpet came next, then the slow assembly of display booths. These ranged from no-nonsense fabric partitions that housed companies like TuxTops and Sendmail (and legions of volunteers from PerlMonks, the Simple End User Linux project, Flightgear, and many others), to elaborate constructions with motorized signs, projected lasers and huge illuminated logos. Note: Slashdot (the site) was put together last week mostly from the comfy chairs of the PerlMonks booth.

The "C" (as in conference) part of LWCE got started on Monday, and for the days that followed, attendees got instruction -- on everything from Linux security to evangelizing Free software to their bosses-- in half-day doses. Meanwhile, the setup work continued into the wee hours, as exhibitors raced the clock to make sure that at least their signs, if not their networks, were up for the next day. And at the OSDN booth (home of the red-carpeted Slashdot stage and beanbags), prep work included stacking thousands of boxed distributions of Debian, and attempted to pawn a few copies off on every passer by.

Tuesday morning, at a shade before 10:00, visitors willing to miss Michael Dell's keynote began to stream into the halls, on a quest to find new distros, old friends, and swag. It's amazing what companies will give away in order to snag a little nook in your brain. Besides the usual trinkets (keychains, T-shirts, stickers) and the distributions that a Linux show would be empty without, booth visitors were handed everything from knives (Sendmail) to cute monkeys (Helixcode) to embarrassing pictures of themselves (BSDi), as well as too many toys with embedded LEDs to bother counting. Rather than a full swag accounting (which would only annoy those unable to attend), let me just say that you won't hurt for toys when the chance presents itself. (CT:I just wanted to note that VA gave away 2300 pounds of shrink-wrapped boxed Debian. Like 5000 copies. It was beautiful)

The things on display around the LWCE floor were more interesting than the toys, though. (And unlike a museum, most were available for hands-on demonstration, not hidden behind glass.) Indrema showed a prototype player (not in the sleek black box you see on their Web site, but still sporting that cool blue LED) hooked up to a HDTV display, playing a very fast game of Quake. (CT:Actually it was an HDTV demo, they promised the real deal will be less vaporous before I have children) In the Intel booth were server clusters populated with quad Itanium processors, demonstrating failover when one system was rudely but intentionally shut down. The amazing-like-emacs-is-amazing Flightgear project showed a really nice looking demo which is enough incentive by itself to invest in a better video card for my system so I can play with it.

Both Helixcode and Eazel made their first LWCE appearance this time around, exciting for those filling their anti-FUD cannon for the perpetual "Linux is tough to use" argument. The Eazel folks showing off Nautilus seemed to be all but cackling as they showed off the smoothness of the zooming information available for documents and the cool music-integration abilities it contains. It would have been cool if they'd had some sample CDs, but they promise a developers' release soon. (CT:They also promised .deb's, but I'll believe it when I see it. The UI was awesome, I just hope that someone hacks in something like the GUI command line in EFM)

Considering that Sun was showing off the GNOME desktop on Solaris (hinting at its inclusion in stock Solaris systems sometime very soon, too) and that the GNOME project itself was not only in one of the small booths against the wall but the subject of a big announcement -- about the advent of the GNOME Foundation -- it looks it's showing up everywhere. Happily, there seems to be no shortage of room for window managers right now: the KDE folks were also there not only in their own booth, but showing up in software demonstrations all over the floor, as SuSE, Caldera and others demonstrated the very slick KDE 2.0. (Can't we all just get along, anyhow?)

SuSE, by the way, was the only distributor I noticed showing off Linux on Apple hardware, and their current distro was sweet and fast on a G4. Beyond the curious lack of Apples, and the obvious ubiquity of x86 machines, there were machines based on everything from microcontrollers to StrongArm, MIPS, Alpha, Itanium ... even the IBM S/390s which have gotten attention for the ridiculous number of concurrent Linux systems they can support.

For all the cool hardware and cusp-of-reality, bleeding-edge distros, it's interesting that the announcement which seemed to generate the most buzz of the entire show was the long-awaited release of Debian's Potato. Considering the reputation that Debian has for intelligent upgrading, stability, and diligence in guarding the license of the software which makes it up, it's not as surprising as it might otherwise be that Debian's new release made people sit up a bit more than the newest offerings from the large commercial distros.

(CT: Also extremely impressive was the Pocket Linux booth, where they actually had iPaq's running Linux. The first dude that demoed the box to me was very nice, but what I really wanted to see was X11 running on it ... oddly enough, I encountered one of his cohorts in the bar later that night who showed it to me: X, xeyes, xterm, and twm running on an iPaq. When they get the wireless action going on these things I'm totally there ... I'll just need to hack minimalist interfaces onto pronto and my MP3 player software and use the thing as a portable X terminal on the local 802.11 wireless lan. Yum.)

Oh, and there were people on the floor as well -- close to 20,000, all told. I met some folks I've known previously only through IRC, and quite a few I might never have otherwise encountered.

It's interesting to see in the space of a few hours many of the smart people who you may experience vicariously through writings, speeches, code, art or IRC chatter -- and it also belies the idea that software celebrities of the Free software world are becoming celebrities of the traditional variety, since everyone from ESR to Jon "maddog" Hall (and Linus himself) are willing to talk to anyone who catches up with them long enough to say hello. The atmosphere (especially outside the mondo corporate-castle booths) is mellow and accomodating, and suprisingly so even within most of those castles. There were undoubtably personality conflicts at work, but it seems like most people have the good grace to deal nicely with each other for these few days at least.

At the close of each day, people shuffle out to drop laptops, T-shirts and bags of stuff at their hotels, then thousands of them show up to parties sponsored by companies from AMD to Red hat to VA, which are full-blown events in themselves. Mandrake's party, for instance, had go-go dancers in cages, which may be the most bacchanal thing I have ever witnessed. Ironically, though, many coders couldn't attend even events sponsored by their own companies, or thrown in the honor of their projects, because of strict carding policies. Wouldn't a chem-free party or two be a thoughtful way to include people?

(CT: This has been a consistent problem for several years. Although I know at "Someones" party (no names *grin*) they weren't carding, and I recieved many a happy note from fellow attendees proclaiming that they were able to get in. The parties themselves weren't bad: the OSDN/Potato release party was fun, with San & Zak spinning the tunes (next time we'll force CowboyNeal to scratch for us under threat of death). They had 2 buildings: one was a pool hall, where we tormented The Pope for nearly an hour, carefully distracting him, and then returning his balls to the table. He never noticed. We also met up with Nitrozac from After Y2k, and I snuck accross the street to the Eazel party for a bit, and got to meet Dave "You might remember me from cheat codes in some first person shooter" Taylor.) Attendeees mostly filed out for flights or drives home Thursday and Friday, but some are still in San Jose for the Intel Developers Conference, or otherwise enjoying the Northern California weather. It's a strange familiarity that many of them will feel when the next big conference rolls around, to see many of the same fellow attendees or workers -- of course, by the time the next big conference happens, perhaps we'll all be too excited by the release of 2.4 to notice.

FWMiller writes: "Theres a bunch of new screenshots up on Samsung's new PDA, the YOPY. This thing looks really slick, emulating the Windows CE user interface quite closely." The images are in a tgz, and they look real. They demo an addressbook, and MP3 player and other apps that apparently would ship with the nifty Linux based PDA. I still haven't seen a ship date (or an english version of the software for that matter ;) so I'm not holding my breath too hard. Although after playing with Kurt The Pope's Jornada, I'm dying to see what they can do.

jsinnema writes: "According to Andy Surber (CompanionLink) at PDA Buzz Royal, Royal is trying to put as much into the Linux powered Royal daVinci as possible and still reach the target price range of $199-249. As memory prices change on a regular basis, so does the final specs. As it sits now, they are heading towards a product with 16 ROM and 32RAM (subject to change). The device should also have a compact flash slot, which could also provide additional memory. The product will be based on the Tosiba MIPS processor." Looks very vaporous right now, but if its real, it looks sweet. Kurt the Pope just got WinCE based HP Jornada 548, and now I'm super impressed with PDAs again (although it is only 12-bit color and was until recently advertised as 16). Between this DaVinci or maybe the Yopy, hopefully we'll have a Linux PDA soon too.

Loquis was the first of seven billion readers to submit this story about the I Love You Virus and the UK. Its not really a virus: its a trojan that proclaims its love for the recipient and requests that you open its attachment. On a first date even! It then loves you so much that it sends copies of itself to everyone in your addressbook (slut!) and starts destorying files on your drive. Course they estimate that it's infected 10% of the UK. Pine/Elm/Mutt users as always laugh maniacally as the trojan shuffles countless wasted packets over saturated backbones filling overworked SMTP servers everywhere. Sysadmins are seen weeping in the alleys. Update: 05/04 03:12 by CT : My Roommate Kurt "The Pope" DeMaagd has written a better summary of the trojan and more importantly a HOWTO fix it. Windows users only ;) Requires registry hacking, so its not for everyone.

Loquis was the first of seven billion readers to submit this story about the I Love You Virus and the UK. Its not really a virus: its a trojan that proclaims its love for the recipient and requests that you open its attachment. On a first date even! It then loves you so much that it sends copies of itself to everyone in your addressbook (slut!) and starts destorying files on your drive. Course they estimate that it's infected 10% of the UK. Pine/Elm/Mutt users as always laugh maniacally as the trojan shuffles countless wasted packets over saturated backbones filling overworked SMTP servers everywhere. Sysadmins are seen weeping in the alleys. Update: 05/04 03:12 by CT : My Roommate Kurt "The Pope" DeMaagd has written a better summary of the trojan and more importantly a HOWTO fix it. Windows users only ;) Requires registry hacking, so its not for everyone.

Every year I pick a new years resolution and ever year it doesn't come true. This year I've opted to set my sights low so I can greatly increase the chance of suceeding for once. This year my resolution is to continue converting oxygen into carbon dioxide. Read on to learn what resolutions RMS, ESR, Jon Katz, CowboyNeal, Mandrake and others have for the year 2000.

Jason Haas from LinuxPPC has the following resolutions: "248x768 @ 85 Hz, Merge my world domination plans with Linus's tree, Kawasaka W650:It will be mine (a Virago would be ok), Restart akido, and mv competition to /dev/null

Jon Katz , Slashdot's favorite gasbag says " I wish for Walt Disney to thaw himself out, climb out of his Cryogenimatronic Vault, show up at Walt Disney World and wreak havoc on the corporate weenies who desecrated EPCOT, his model city of tomorrow. Maybe join with the Seattle protesters and touch off a war against corporatist weenies everywhere. "

Emmett Plant is the latest editorial addition to the Slashdot Authors roster. His resolution is "to start a company called 'EmmettLinux,' which will be responsible for creating no product whatsoever. We will employ a highly-paid staff of fifty people who will show up every day and start throwing money into a furnace. I hope to IPO by March and use the cash to hire 2,000 more moneyburners and open an office in Hong Kong. I will leave soon after, selling all of my stock and retiring to the Bahamas."

Chris J. DiBona , Linux Community Evangelist for VA Linux Systems, President of SVLUG, and Grant Chair for LI, has resolved the following: ".Sleep is high on my list, but I really just like to have more time to read, this year has been pretty hard-core. I'd also like to spend more time learning power supply electronics, dc-dc transformers and such. I'm already pretty good with the digital side of things, but this is a big gap in my knowledge. Can I give more than two? I'd also like a puppy. A puppy with an X10 Cam mounted on its collar so I can put a "puppy cam" online."

Rusty Russell , kernel hacker and mad genius wishes to Learn to cook. Or trade kernel code for food. Or buy a fire extinguisher.

Eric S. Raymond is perhaps better known simply as esr... and if you don't know who he is, well, ouch. He resolves to " Catch up with my email and cut down on my traveling. It's nice to be needed, but 50% time on the road is getting ridiculous..."

Raster aka "That Enlightenment Guy" who is the only living person with more typos than me resolves simply to use procmail to allow more sleep time.

Mandrake resolves "I really need to start taking better care of my body. I haven't really worked out in about a year - and I eat too much garbage (junk food / fast food), and I REALLY need to stop drinking coke. I go through 2liters like most people drink cans of coke. I don't think it'll happen any time soon - but hopefully I'll at least be a little healthier by the end of the year."

Trae McCombs , aka X, aka MC, aka 'That Linux.com guy' resolves to "Learn to eat more foods, Incorporate working out into my lifestyle, Work less than 14hrs a day, Be kinder to others, Listen more, Talk less, Learn to code, Read more, Keep true to my ideals..."

Scott Draeker , the President of Loki Entertainment Software resolves to release a first tier Linux game which is not available for windows. Hard to argue with that one.

Kurt DeMaagd , aka The Pope, aka Rob's Roommate and the BSI number cruncher has the following:

1. Combat bimetallism and establish the gold standard for currency.
2. Negotiate the DeMaagd-Hay-Pauncefote treaty, allowing the U.S. to unilaterally construct an isthmian canal.
3. Establish an American protectorate in Cuba.
4. Suppress the Boxer uprising.

Mind you if you look closely at Kurt's resolutions, you might notice that they look strikingly similiar to President William McKinley's adminstration's high points. I'm going to have to up kurts medication.

Illiad , creator of the ever popular User Friendly comic strip says "I resolve to only take responsibility for those choices that I have control over. That means I have to give up on the idea of educating the technically-resistant, the doublespeak-inclined, and the village idiot."

Richard M. Stallman , founder of the Free Software Founding and the GNU Project gave us suggested resolutions for Slashdot readers: They are 1. Do not install any non-free software your computers and 2. Do not buy from Amazon until they stop using software patents for aggression.

CowboyNeal , the man, the myth, the legend. The guy who responds when users can't figure out how to login. The guy who maintains the slashboxes. And the guy who inhabitants the living room in the Geek Compound, resolves that he shall "Shower Every Week, whether I needs it or not." All of the co-workers in this office who have orafactory functionality thank him. It doesn't matter to me much either way.

Jim Jagielski , aka jimjag or jim@apache.org or jim@jaguNET.com, resolves to call sleep(28800) a lot more often.

Nitrozac is the creator of After Y2k... which as best as I can tell means she's about to work herself out of a job. But regardless she says "If civilization manages to hold on to its tenuous existence, I'd like to find a cure for Agalmatophilia, and have others join me to rid the world of this illness that causes so much needless suffering. If civilization crumbles, my Post-Apocalypse Resolution is to learn how to do 16-bead graphics on my abacus, so I can continue the comic. ;-)"

And finally (thank god because my wrists are tired) is Jeff "Hemos" Bates , a man who needs no introduction (but he does need a solid smack to the head).He says "With the coming of El Ano Neuvo, I resolve that I'm going to continue my battle against the dread forces of The Krull Invasion. I think that I might also try to learn some grammar. Per'aps. And maybe I'll learn how to spell a few more words as well".

Every year I pick a new years resolution and ever year it doesn't come true. This year I've opted to set my sights low so I can greatly increase the chance of suceeding for once. This year my resolution is to continue converting oxygen into carbon dioxide. Read on to learn what resolutions RMS, ESR, Jon Katz, CowboyNeal, Mandrake and others have for the year 2000.

Jason Haas from LinuxPPC has the following resolutions: "248x768 @ 85 Hz, Merge my world domination plans with Linus's tree, Kawasaka W650:It will be mine (a Virago would be ok), Restart akido, and mv competition to /dev/null

Jon Katz , Slashdot's favorite gasbag says " I wish for Walt Disney to thaw himself out, climb out of his Cryogenimatronic Vault, show up at Walt Disney World and wreak havoc on the corporate weenies who desecrated EPCOT, his model city of tomorrow. Maybe join with the Seattle protesters and touch off a war against corporatist weenies everywhere. "

Emmett Plant is the latest editorial addition to the Slashdot Authors roster. His resolution is "to start a company called 'EmmettLinux,' which will be responsible for creating no product whatsoever. We will employ a highly-paid staff of fifty people who will show up every day and start throwing money into a furnace. I hope to IPO by March and use the cash to hire 2,000 more moneyburners and open an office in Hong Kong. I will leave soon after, selling all of my stock and retiring to the Bahamas."

Chris J. DiBona , Linux Community Evangelist for VA Linux Systems, President of SVLUG, and Grant Chair for LI, has resolved the following: ".Sleep is high on my list, but I really just like to have more time to read, this year has been pretty hard-core. I'd also like to spend more time learning power supply electronics, dc-dc transformers and such. I'm already pretty good with the digital side of things, but this is a big gap in my knowledge. Can I give more than two? I'd also like a puppy. A puppy with an X10 Cam mounted on its collar so I can put a "puppy cam" online."

Rusty Russell , kernel hacker and mad genius wishes to Learn to cook. Or trade kernel code for food. Or buy a fire extinguisher.

Eric S. Raymond is perhaps better known simply as esr... and if you don't know who he is, well, ouch. He resolves to " Catch up with my email and cut down on my traveling. It's nice to be needed, but 50% time on the road is getting ridiculous..."

Raster aka "That Enlightenment Guy" who is the only living person with more typos than me resolves simply to use procmail to allow more sleep time.

Mandrake resolves "I really need to start taking better care of my body. I haven't really worked out in about a year - and I eat too much garbage (junk food / fast food), and I REALLY need to stop drinking coke. I go through 2liters like most people drink cans of coke. I don't think it'll happen any time soon - but hopefully I'll at least be a little healthier by the end of the year."

Trae McCombs , aka X, aka MC, aka 'That Linux.com guy' resolves to "Learn to eat more foods, Incorporate working out into my lifestyle, Work less than 14hrs a day, Be kinder to others, Listen more, Talk less, Learn to code, Read more, Keep true to my ideals..."

Scott Draeker , the President of Loki Entertainment Software resolves to release a first tier Linux game which is not available for windows. Hard to argue with that one.

Kurt DeMaagd , aka The Pope, aka Rob's Roommate and the BSI number cruncher has the following:

1. Combat bimetallism and establish the gold standard for currency.
2. Negotiate the DeMaagd-Hay-Pauncefote treaty, allowing the U.S. to unilaterally construct an isthmian canal.
3. Establish an American protectorate in Cuba.
4. Suppress the Boxer uprising.

Mind you if you look closely at Kurt's resolutions, you might notice that they look strikingly similiar to President William McKinley's adminstration's high points. I'm going to have to up kurts medication.

Illiad , creator of the ever popular User Friendly comic strip says "I resolve to only take responsibility for those choices that I have control over. That means I have to give up on the idea of educating the technically-resistant, the doublespeak-inclined, and the village idiot."

Richard M. Stallman , founder of the Free Software Founding and the GNU Project gave us suggested resolutions for Slashdot readers: They are 1. Do not install any non-free software your computers and 2. Do not buy from Amazon until they stop using software patents for aggression.

CowboyNeal , the man, the myth, the legend. The guy who responds when users can't figure out how to login. The guy who maintains the slashboxes. And the guy who inhabitants the living room in the Geek Compound, resolves that he shall "Shower Every Week, whether I needs it or not." All of the co-workers in this office who have orafactory functionality thank him. It doesn't matter to me much either way.

Jim Jagielski , aka jimjag or jim@apache.org or jim@jaguNET.com, resolves to call sleep(28800) a lot more often.

Nitrozac is the creator of After Y2k... which as best as I can tell means she's about to work herself out of a job. But regardless she says "If civilization manages to hold on to its tenuous existence, I'd like to find a cure for Agalmatophilia, and have others join me to rid the world of this illness that causes so much needless suffering. If civilization crumbles, my Post-Apocalypse Resolution is to learn how to do 16-bead graphics on my abacus, so I can continue the comic. ;-)"

And finally (thank god because my wrists are tired) is Jeff "Hemos" Bates , a man who needs no introduction (but he does need a solid smack to the head).He says "With the coming of El Ano Neuvo, I resolve that I'm going to continue my battle against the dread forces of The Krull Invasion. I think that I might also try to learn some grammar. Per'aps. And maybe I'll learn how to spell a few more words as well".

So with the end of the world less than 48 hours a way, it seemed necessary that CowboyNeal, Hemos, the Pope, and myself all pile into CowboyNeal's gigantic truck thing and trek over to the local mega grocery store to prepare for the upcoming apocolypse. Click the link below to read exciting excerpts from our shopping list... if enough of you do so, then we can officially declare our purchases as tax deductable! Now we'll just cross our fingers and hope that whatever regime seizes control of michigan on Jan. 2 honors deductions from the previous government. CmdrTaco & The Pope's shopping cart

First off I needed self defense. Since it was snowing, I decided that a large snow shovel would nicely fill the 2 roles: Convenient weapon to be used against intruders aiming to steal my waffles, and after the dust settles, I can also use it to prevent the pizza man from slipping on the ice on my porch and suing me (Or worse, dropping my pizza into the snow!)

Now that I can defend myself, its time to feed myself. I made a fatal assumption: Almost all of my food purchases were microwavable. I purchased a gigantic "Feeds 8" box of lasagna. Since I don't each much, I figure it can last me a month or more. Especially because I'll probably have to it it frozen. Nothing fills you up like an ounce or two of frozen lasagna. My other major food purchase was a box of 60 microwavable waffles, a jello dessert treat, and ingrediants to make tacos on 2 seperate occasions.

Since I'm not relying on my microwave to work, I purchased a bottle of Irish Whiskey and a bottle of Vodka. The Pope opted the yuppie route and selected a bottle of Bombay Saphire gin, vermouth, and olives. The world may be ending, but he'll be having a 9 martini end of days.

For entertainment, I selected 'Hercules', the classic disney film of only a few years ago featuring Susan Egan on vocals, and the amazing Andreas Deja animating a hero instead of the mega villian for once. Again, I realize this is short sighted since my DVD player will require electricity, so as a backup plan, I purchased the most recent issue of the National Enquirer so that after the fall of civilization I could thrill to the stunning tales of George W Bush's Jr's torrid affair, as well as Shania Twain returning to her hubby following... a torrid affair.

Hemos' Shopping Cart I suspect that Meijer's, a friendly local mega-grocery-hardware-pharmacist-greenhouse-furniture-photo-store was not quite anticipating the sheer flood of people coming in for the "The Apocalypse". However, through sheer perseverance, I was able to secure the most hallowed of all shopping treasures:

6 Gallons Distilled Water. And Whiskey.

That's right - not only will I be able to keep myself drinking clean water, and brushing my teeth regularly (With my new tube of toothpaste, Item #4125056208) as well as flossing (Item #381370099183) but I'll have also have the gift of alcohol. With my natural and well known affinity to Bushmills, I'm already planning how I'll turn the Geek Compound into the Midwest's most powerful distillery. I've drawn up plans on how to convert my former burned out home into a giant high class distillery. From there, we'll extend our control of surrounding area, and parley it into control of the Greater Great Lakes area.

Yes, the power of whiskey.

While those plans are working out though, unlike Rob, I've actually purchased canned goods that I can eat. Yes, stretching from tuna fish to chicken in a can, I'll be sitting and riding on the high hog post World Wide collapse. Assuming my can opener is Y2k compliant.

I also purchased quite a number of vitamins. To understand this point, you should understand that I take about five pills per day - ginseng, selenium, a multivitamin, and a B complex. Wanting to maintain my health and girlish figure for the next thousand years, I've procured the above vitamins - in bulk. Yes, if it weren't for that damn half-life problem I'd be popping vitamins and experiencing natural organic growth for the next thousand years.

sigh But the best purchase of all is the one I couldn't put on there. I've got myself a 50 gallon drum of nanites, which I'll be using to recreate the world as I see fit. I'm thinking Teletubbies.

CowboyNeal's Shopping Cart My list is short. I've been in survival situations before (I'm referring to family get-togethers here) so I know how to make the most of a situation and be resourceful.

First up, plenty of beer. I figured I was gonna need it to celebrate the new year anyway, and if something should go awry, it'll help dull the pain in my final hours, not to mention that a broken beer bottle makes an excellent weapon for hand-to-hand combat. My choice in brew (for the inquisitive) was Bass Pale Ale.

A snow shovel. Since I moved, I've been without s snow shovel, which has been a bit of a pain since Michigan is an area that seems to attract quite a bit of snow. If the apocalypse should happen to miss me, I still think there will be snow to shovel in the next millenium. Also, it makes a wonderful weapon for self-defense, but with a much longer range than the beer bottles. (CT:The epic battles between CowboyNeal and CmdrTaco will do for shovel combat what The Highlander did for swords. Check your listings for pay per view showtimes).

Candles. And not just any candles, I got religous candles. Each one has a prayer unique to that candle. I"m not even Catholic, but I figure I may need light when the power goes out, and why not have God's help on my side? If I am gonna survive, why not do it piously? I'm already thanking God that they were priced to move.

Batteries. My usefulness for a generator could come and go, but I figure batteries will stay in style well into the next millenium. I got enough to power my flashlights and some for my discman as well. Regardless of what happens, I'm sure they'll see some use.

I didn't concern myself with food or water so much, because I figured I could just melt some of the endless supply of snow outside for water, my parent's house is just a short drive away where my father will no doubt be out killing for food first chance he gets.

Quite a number of you out there are into Lego Mindstorms, as evidenced by the number of book reviews that have been sent my way. Below are a couple of reviews, one from Kurt DeMaagd and the other from Will Ware. Click below to get their take on the O'Reilly book The Unofficial Guide to Lego Mindstorms Robots. The Unofficial Guide to Lego Mindstorms Robots author Jonathan B. Knudsen pages 247 publisher O'Reilly & Associates rating 9/10 reviewer Will Ware & Kurt DeMaagd ISBN 1-56592-692-7 summary Get the most out of your Lego Mindstorms The Unofficial Guide to Lego Mindstorms Robots Review by Will Ware

Last year, Lego released their Mindstorms Robotics Invention System. Using this, children and adults can build simple robots whose behavior can be programmed. The Mindstorms system is a major contender for Coolest Toy on the Planet.

The system contains a RCX programmable brick containing an H8/300 microcontroller, some pushbuttons, a little LCD display, and connectors for motors and sensors (light and physical contact). The user writes a program using a graphical programming language on his Windows box, and downloads it to the RCX via infrared.

Not surprisingly, substantial reverse engineering (1, 2) has been done by hobbyists, and it is possible to develop Mindstorms programs on a Linux box and to download the RCX brick from Linux.

Now O'Reilly has joined the Mindstorms fray, with a book full of fun and useful information about how to build and program Mindstorms robots. The book describes four different robots: Hank is a bumper car robot, Trusty uses light sensors to follow a line along the floor, Minerva has a movable arm, and two identical robots play a game called RoboTag. Along the way, the author discusses the physics and mechanics of robots, programming issues, and the available development environments for Mindstorms.

What's Good? There are detailed building instructions for each of the robots, showing photos at various stages of construction. The designs are simple and appear mechanically sound. There are discussion of the physics and mechanics of tank treads, steering, gears, and other things.

The book's chapters sequentially step through several different software development environments. The first chapter starts with the Windows-based RIS environment that comes on the Mindstorms CDROM. Later chapters give programming examples for NQC (Not Quite C), pbFORTH, Visual Basic, and the legOS operating system, which uses an EGCS cross-compiler to target the H8/300. There are more development platforms available, but these give a good sense of what's possible in Mindstorms programming.

The book has dozens of useful URLs, for both official Mindstorm sites and unofficial hobbyist sites. I particularly liked the fact that the author was aware of some of the recent research in robotics. For instance there is some discussion of Rodney Brooks' subsumption architecture, which is used for the RoboTag robots.

Later chapters of the book often expand on designs from earlier chapters, building more sophistocated robots in an accessible, incremental fashion. For the more adventurous hobbyist, the final chapter talks about building your own sensors and actuators, and how to connect them to the RCX.

What's Bad? Some of the photos are too dark and lack contrast. It would also have been nice if the photography had been in color, but black-and-white photos kept the book more affordable.

This book is for the casual weekend robot-building tinkerer, and it never promised to discuss real-time embedded issues in depth. Still, a few topics might have merited at least brief mention. Systems with real-time multitasking must frequently arrange for synchronization and communication between tasks, using mutexes and mailboxes and the like, which brings the possibility of deadlocked processes. Another danger is that an aggressively efficient compiler will sometimes optimize away reads and writes to hardware registers. The fix is to declare such registers with the volatile keyword.

Review by Kurt DeMaagd

While Lego Mindstorms were officially released for a teenage crowd, they have become popular with a wide variety of technically competent people in many age groups. This widespread fascination has opened up a whole new world of opportunities for using Mindstorms. At the same time, the documentation and tutorial included with the Lego kits provide very little information about how to get the most out of the sets. This book fills the void by providing several start-to-finish robot designs, software to run them, and a wealth of other tips and tricks.

After a brief introduction to robotics and how Legos fit in, the author discusses the basics of using Mindstorms to create them. Both chapters present a problem, provide step by step building instructions, provide the necessary information to program the solution, and finally go into greater detail about the Lego features used to solve the particular problem.

While the chapters did an excellent job of presenting this information in general, they fell victim to a problem that would plague the entire book: some of the building diagrams were nigh unto unreadable. Attempting to build a robot based on fuzzy black and white photographs can be quite a chore. Fortunately, none of the robots were so complex that they robots were completely unbuildable.

The first few chapters presented robots programmed with the default RIS programming environment. In chapter four and following, he shows how to program using languages such as Not Quite C, Forth, Sprit.ocx for Visual Basic--or optionally Visual C++ or another ActiveX-aware language--and legOS. Since much of these sections was documenting API's, it was certainly not the most exciting read, but it does provide concise, easily to reference documentation.

Not Quite C, as the name implies, is a C-like language that can be used to program Mindstorms robots. It overcomes many of the limitations of the default RIS programming environment, most notably the lack of variables. One of its biggest advantages is that it does not require the user to install a new version of the firmware on their RCX unit. In general, it provides an excellent balance between power and usability.

The remaining three means of programming presented in the book are fairly mediocre options. PbForth requires the user to download a new firmware version, and the language itself is very archaic in modern software development terms. Using Sprit.ocx is a viable option for people used to programming in Visual Basic or Visual C++, but the control structures are very clunky and non-intuitive. legOS, while it is probably the most powerful option, takes a significant amount of time to set up and develop applications with.

Two of the projects referenced while discussing the various programming languages were particularly interesting, both of which outlined infrared communication. The first program creates a simple remote control for controlling a robot via the IR port on the RCX. The other example, perhaps the most interesting in the book, was creating two robots who played tag with each other. These two robots also communicated with each other via their IR ports.

The last chapter, targetted toward the hard core Mindstorms users outlined how to create additional sensors for Mindstorms. It sketched out such possibilities as a passive light sensor, a Hall effect sensor (magnetic fields), and a touch multiplexor (allowing you to have more touch sensors than normally allowed on the RCS unit).

In general, the book provides a vast array building and programming tips, tricks, and methods. He gives basic information for the person who is just starting, and introduces the advanced user to the vast network of people and product that have made Mindstorms far more than a child's toy.

Purchase this book at fatbrain.

Table of Contents

• Preface

• 1. Welcome to MINDSTORMS
• What is a Robot?
• Mobile Robots
• What is MINDSTORMS?
• What Now?
• Online Resources

• 2. Hank, the Bumper Tank
• About the Building Instructions
• Building Instructions
• A Simple Program
• Wheels
• Bumpers and Feelers
• Gears
• Multitasking
• Online Resources

• 3. Trusty, a Line Follower
• Building Instructions
• Some Tricky Programming
• The Light Sensor
• Idler Wheels
• Using Two Light Sensors
• Online Resources

• 4. Not Quite C
• A Quick Start
• RCX Software Architecture
• NQC Overview
• Trusty Revisited
• Online Resources

• 5. Minverva, a Robot with an Arms
• Building Instructions
• Programming
• Directional Transmission
• Pulleys
• Mechanical Design
• Two Sensors, One Input
• Where am I?
• Online Resources

• 6. PbFORTH
• Replacement Firmware
• pbForth Overview
• About Forth
• pbFORTH Words
• An Expensive Thermometer
• Minerva Revisited
• Debugging
• Online Resources

• 7. A Remote Control for Minerva
• Two Heads are Better Than One
• The Allure of Telerobotics
• Building Instructions
• Programming the Remote Control
• Programming Minerva
• Online Resources

• 8. Using Sprit.ocx with Visual Basic
• You May Already Have Visual Basic
• About Spirit.ocx
• Calling Spirit.ocx
• Immediate and Delayed Gratification
• Programs, Tasks, and Subroutines
• Tips
• Retrieveing the Datalog
• Online Resources

• 9. RoboTag, a Game for Two Robots
• Building Instructions
• Subsumption Architecture
• Online Resources

• 10. LegOS
• About legOS
• Development Tools
• Hello, legOS
• Function Reference
• New Brains for Hank
• Development Tips
• Online Resources

• 11. Make Your Own Sensors
• Mounting
• Passive Sensors
• Powered Sensors
• Touch Multiplexer
• Other Neat Ideas
• What About Actuators?
• Online Resources

• A. Finding Parts and Programming Environments

• B. A pbFORTH Downloader

• C. Future Directions

• Index

Kurt The Pope, most notable for his recent reviews of CodeWarrior and Code Fusion has taken time to play in a slightly different IDE ^[?] - Railroad Tycoon II Gold, by Loki. Click below for the skinny.

Rating 10/10
Buy from Lokisoft.

When I survey my life and contemplate which computer games have sucked my time away from being an otherwise productive citizen, Railroad Tycoon stands out high on the list. I spent many a summer afternoon with my friend Nate and his 286 building railroad empires while our peers were out living healthy and energetic lives. Now, Loki has released a new version of Railroad Tycoon, Railroad Tycoon Gold Edition 2, for Linux. RT2 is very similar to its predecessor, but has improved graphics, more scenarios, campaigns, multi-player support, a terrain editor and an improved and more complex financial model.

At the game's core, as the name implies, you build railroads. You ship passengers, mail, and a wide variety of other raw materials, goods and products from one location to another. If you send raw materials to a city with the appropriate industry, it will create a finished product for you to ship to another city. You have the option to select how difficult of an industrial model you wish to use. If you chose the basic, option, you can ship anything to any city and they will buy it. This obviously makes it much easier to find a buyer for your goods. Think it will be fun to ship every carload of coal in the United States to Alpena, MI? That's fine, because they'll happily pay for it. For those looking for a little more challenge or a more realistic game, you can choose an advanced model which only pays a fraction of the price for goods not demanded, or the expert level where you basically get nothing for undemanded goods.

But if you are only playing to build a railroad, you are missing the real fun of the game. If you play your cards right, it will be no time before you are making money faster than you can spend it. It is time to become a true robber baron and create monopolies that would make Microsoft drool. If you have a couple hundred thousand spare dollars, you can begin to buy up all of the industries around your railroad-though you have to be playing the most difficult industrial model to do this. While you do need to be careful to buy and hold only profitable industries, this is an easy way to earn a little money.

The real monopoly building fun, and frankly the most fun part of the game, is playing a ruthless corporate raider. RT2 has added features such as buying or selling on the margin give you that extra edge when playing the market. Thanks to the designer's decision to separate corporate funds from company funds, you can now first personally buy up a bunch of a competitors stock and thereby guarantee some votes when your company attempts to merge (or more accurately, take over) the company.

While the game concept and design are excellent, there are a couple of minor issues with the game. First, the scrolling is very slow which makes is a little bit difficult to get around the map. Second, if you choose to start a new game on a large map, it can take a little while for the computer to create the game. Both of these items, while they can be corrected with a getting a faster machine, the performance was somewhat slow for a fairly well loaded Pentium II.

Overall, this is wonderfully addictive game. There are a wide variety of difficulty levels, depending on how complex of an economy you want to play. If you are they type who would rather control the world's economy than run around through caverns shooting thiings, this game is a must buy.

Note: Railroad Tycoon II Gold, which this game is, is different from Railroad Tycoon II. As Gold implies, it comes equipped with more scenarios, and more playability.

Kurt has returned, continuing his reviews of Linux IDE ^[?] environments. After reviewing Code Fusion, he's reviewed Metrowerks CodeWarrior (for Suse). The full text of the review is below. CodeWarrior For SuSE
CodeWarrior for RedHat

• Company:Metrowerks
• Rating:9/10
• Summary:Inexpensive solution for those looking for an IDE solution.

It is difficult to have worked in the tech industry without having come into contact with Metrowerks. Metrowerks CodeWarrior is the dominant compiler for MacOS, with ports to Windows, Solaris, a wide variety of microprocessors, and fairly recently, Linux. The current version of CodeWarrior for Linux, version 4.0, supports C and C++, with plans for Java support in late 1999. CodeWarrior is targeted at the beginning or hobbyist programmer. While CodeWarrior lacks some of the features of its more expensive competitors, it provides a basic, low cost solution.

CodeWarrior is by far the easiest installation I have ever performed on a Linux box. I threw in the CD, answered a couple of questions, and it installed it without a problem. While I already had EGCS installed on my machine, it is a prerequisite for installation. For those who do not have EGCS installed, the CD contains a copy and the installation guide includes instructions for setting it up.

Anyone who has used CodeWarrior on any other platform will be able to easily dive straight into CodeWarrior for Linux. The interface is exactly the same. For those without previous experience, the interface is logically laid out and very usable without depending on documentation. For those who have been weaned on Microsoft Visual Studio, the interface may feel a little MacOS-like, but overall everything is well designed and very easy to use.

In addition to the standard IDE features like integrated debugging, color coded source, and simplified project management, CodeWarrior has an important advantage in that its projects are cross platform compatible. Of course, it is still up to the programmer to develop cross platform code, it at least simplified the process of migrating code between plaforms.

In spite of all of its wonderful design elements, it is not without a few annoying elements. First, whenever you create a new project, it is always named "Hello." It doesn't matter if you create a project named "foo." You still need to go under the project settings and change the Target Name manually. While this may be simply picking nits, it is a rather annoying oversight.

While CodeWarrior is targeting to individuals and relatively small projects, even some of these people have learned the wonders of using a version control system to roll back a few idiotic changes. Unfortunately, the Linux port has very poor version control abilities. Straight out of the box, there is no source control functionality. Furthermore, Metrowerks does not provide any of the necessary plug-ins to add source control to the Linux version. According to a representative from Metrowerks, they have plans to provide the necessary interfaces, but no resources have yet been allocated to the project. The specification, however, is open so that anyone desiring could create the necessary plug-in. Anyone interested in developing the necessary plug-ins should go to http://www.metrowerks.com/pdf/Plugin_API_Ref.pdf.

CodeWarrior is a low cost solution ideal for Linux developers who absolutely have to have an IDE. For users who need a lot of the extra features that make the switch from vi to an IDE worth while, CodeWarrior is somewhat lacking. These developers may wish to look to Code Fusion or other similar products with a more complete set of tools.

For the small scale individual or hobbies programmer, CodeWarrior provides a friendly environment to develop programs in. While it lacks some of the more advanced features found in other IDEs, it is a well designed program with an excellent balance of features. For a mere fraction of the cost of many competitors' products, it also is well within the range of people who are on a tight budget.

With the increasing momentum in the Linux world, more and more productivity applications have been coming out for Linux. Kurt DeMaagd, who's spent quite sometime in other IDEs, has reviwed Cygnus Solutions' "Code Fusion". Click below to read more about it.

• Company: Cygnus Solutions
• Rating: 9/10
• Summary:With the exception of a few minor annoyances, most notably in the installation process, Code Fusion provides a full range of features for an excellent price.

Cygnus is already a familiar face in the Linux world. They are known for products such as GNUPro Toolkit and Source-Navigator, as well as their support for a variety of other open source projects. Their most recent addition to their product line is Code Fusion, a product which merges and enhances the GNUPro Toolkit and Source- Navigator to create a since integrated development environment.

While there have been instances where people have had troubles installing Code Fusion, I was able to set it up and run it without a hitch. Nonetheless, there were several elements of the install process that could be improved. First, you have to enter a different directory and run a separate install script depending on which version of glibc you are running. Once the setup is complete, you then need to setup several environment variables. While this process is well documented, the risk of typographical errors and the general inconvenience warrant automating this process.

After getting past the mild inconveniences of the installation process, I started up the program and began testing. While Code Fusion comes with a couple example projects and the book has some tutorials, I decided to venture out on my own and create a new project from scratch. And what better way to test a program than to write a Hello World app. Of course, to adequately test all of Code Fusions project browsing featuers, I broke it up into 5 classes.

It took me a couple minutes to figure out how to create new files. It seemed logical to me that the Project Editor window, where you can add, move or delete files, would also let you create a file, but that option is lacking. After digging around menus, I found that the Window menu allowed to you open the Source Editor window, where you can create files.

The Source Editor window provides a variety of convenient options. As with any good IDE, it color codes all our your source. The command to build your code is just a click away. Perhaps most conveniently, it is integrated with a variety of version control programs. In general, it provides a very convenient environment for cranking out code.

Having quickly whipped up all of the classes of my Hello World app, I moved to the feature where Code Fusion really shined, the various project browsers. This feature allows you a wide variety of ways to display your program. It includes a cross reference browser, an include browser, a class browser, and a hierarchy browser.

Finally, I tested the debugging features. This includes all of the standard features expected from any debugger, such as breakpoints, watches, stack traces, etc. Unlike a majority of the debuggers on the market, the screen where you edit the code and the screen where you set break points are different. Having been reared on Microsoft Visual Studio, and given that this differs from the industry standard, this is rather inconvenient. In spite of this, I found the debugger to be generally easy to use and it sure beats using a printf every other line.

Overall, Code Fusion is a very useful product. Any software developer, with the exception of the vi-loving death-before-IDE people, will find its wide variety of features helpful. And with a price under $300, it is financially well within the reach of most individuals and companies.

List Price $299 ($207.43 at CDW)