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"Some innovative colleges, in partnership with private investors and a small number of philanthropies, are experimenting with a new financing model called 'income share agreements' or 'ISAs,'" reports Yahoo Finance: With an ISA, instead of assuming a fixed debt obligation, students simply agree to pay an affordable percentage of their future income over a set time period, subject to an overall cap. High earners will have larger payments than low earners, but all will have an affordable payment, based on what they will actually be making. Importantly, when the college is providing some or all of the funding for the ISA, its return will be aligned with its students' post-college earnings, giving it economic incentives to make sure its students both graduate and find jobs. The college is, literally, invested in its students' success...

With ISAs, there is no principal or interest. Thus, they are much better suited for low income students as their financial obligations never exceed their ability to pay... In a recent paper commissioned by the Manhattan Institute, we looked at the small but growing number of colleges and universities offering ISA programs. Indiana's Purdue University launched the first such program in 2016. About a dozen other institutions have now followed suit, including Lackawanna College in Pennsylvania, Clarkson University in New York, and the University of Utah. Most of these pioneers offer ISAs to students as an alternative to non-subsidized federal loans, though a few are offering them as a complete substitute for borrowing... A common feature of all these ISA programs is that they require payments only when the graduate meets a certain income threshold. All impose time limits and caps on the total amount that needs to be repaid, though they differ widely in where they set those caps and limits.

mmell writes: University of Utah scientists have created a prototype electronic lens which uses several technologies to customize the lens optics focusing on whatever the wearer is looking at. [Just like] the "oil lenses" in Frank Herbert's Dune series of novels, the electronic lens (a transparent LCD) can have its index of refractivity modified by application of a small electric current. While I can conceive many uses for this technology (in spacecraft instruments, webcams/Handycams, handheld binoculars and telescopes for example), these were developed as a replacement for the progressive lenses -- a.k.a. bifocals -- which are worn by many with less than perfect eyesight. Many eyeglass wearers don't tolerate bifocals well and I wonder if the adaptive optics in this prototype could relieve them of the need to carry multiple pairs of glasses? Whether they prove cost effective for the role of eyeglasses or not (and I can see no reason why they shouldn't), the applications for this technology seem quite diverse and potentially even revolutionary. I wonder how long it will be before these are more than just a prototype?

One of the many ways self-driving cars will impact the world is with organ shortages. It's a morbid thought, but the most reliable sources for healthy organs and tissues are the more than 35,000 people killed each year on American roads. According to the book "Driverless: Intelligent Cars and the Road Ahead," 1 in 5 organ donations comes from the victim of a vehicular accident. Since an estimated 94 percent of motor-vehicle accidents involve some kind of a driver error, it's easy to see how autonomous vehicles could make the streets and highways safer, while simultaneously making organ shortages even worse. Slate reports: As the number of vehicles with human operators falls, so too will the preventable fatalities. In June, Christopher A. Hart, the chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, said, "Driverless cars could save many if not most of the 32,000 lives that are lost every year on our streets and highways." Even if self-driving cars only realize a fraction of their projected safety benefits, a decline in the number of available organs could begin as soon as the first wave of autonomous and semiautonomous vehicles hits the road -- threatening to compound our nation's already serious shortages. We're all for saving lives -- we aren't saying that we should stop self-driving cars so we can preserve a source of organ donation. But we also need to start thinking now about how to address this coming problem. The most straightforward fix would be to amend a federal law that prohibits the sale of most organs, which could allow for development of a limited organ market. Organ sales have been banned in the United States since 1984, when Congress passed the National Organ Transplant Act after a spike in demand (thanks to the introduction of the immunosuppressant cyclosporine, which improved transplant survival rates from 20-30 percent to 60-70 percent) raised concerns that people's vital appendages might be "treated like fenders in an auto junkyard." Others feared an organ market would exploit minorities and those living in poverty. But the ban hasn't completely protected those populations, either. The current system hasn't stopped organ harvesting -- the illegal removal of organs from the recently deceased without the consent of the person or family -- either in the United States or abroad. It is estimated that, worldwide, as many as 10,000 black market medical operations are performed each year that involve illegally purchased organs. So what would an ethical fix to our organ transplant shortage look like? To start, while there's certainly a place for organ donation markets in the United States, implementation will be understandably slow. There are, however, small steps that can get us closer to a just system. For one, the country could consider introducing a "presumed consent" rule. This would change state organ donation registries from affirmative opt-in systems (checking that box at the DMV that yes, you do want to be an organ donor) to an affirmative opt-out system where, unless you state otherwise, you're presumed to consent to be on the list.

An anonymous reader writes Computer scientists have developed Linux based software that not only detects and eradicates never-before-seen viruses and other malware, but also automatically repairs damage caused by them. If a virus or attack stops the service, A3 could repair it in minutes without having to take the servers down. The software then prevents the invader from ever infecting the computer again. "It's pretty cool when you can pick the Bug of the Week and it works." (Here's a paper with more details.)

An anonymous reader writes Computer scientists have developed Linux based software that not only detects and eradicates never-before-seen viruses and other malware, but also automatically repairs damage caused by them. If a virus or attack stops the service, A3 could repair it in minutes without having to take the servers down. The software then prevents the invader from ever infecting the computer again. "It's pretty cool when you can pick the Bug of the Week and it works." (Here's a paper with more details.)

An anonymous reader writes Even though modern humans started appearing around 200,000 years ago, it was only about 50,000 years ago that artistry and tool making became popular. New research shows that society bloomed when testosterone levels in humans started dropping. A paper published in the journal Current Anthropology, suggests that a testosterone deficit facilitated the friendliness and cooperation between humans, which lead to modern society. "Whatever the cause, reduced testosterone levels enabled increasingly social people to better learn from and cooperate with each other, allowing the acceleration of cultural and technological innovation that is the hallmark of modern human success," says University of Utah biology graduate student Robert Cieri.

sciencehabit writes "Researchers have developed a camera system that shoots untouched flakes 'in the wild' as they fall from the sky. By grabbing a series of images of the tumbling crystals—its exposure time is one-40,000th of a second, compared with about one-200th in normal photography—the camera is revealing the true shape diversity of snowflakes. Besides providing beautiful real-time 3D snowflake photographs from a ski resort in Utah, the goal is to improve weather modeling. More accurate data on how fast snowflakes fall and how their shapes interacts with radar will improve predictions of when and where storms will dump snow and how much."

PerlJedi writes "A few months ago, a Tweet from Randal Schwartz pointed me to a YouTube video about 'Triangle Parties' made by Vi Hart. My nerdiness and my love of math made it my new favorite thing on YouTube. Now, with Pi Day coming up later this week, I thought it would be an appropriate time to point people to another of her YouTube videos: Pi is Wrong. The website she mentions at the end, Tauday, has a full explanation of the benefits of using Tau rather than Pi. Quoting: 'The Tau Manifesto is dedicated to one of the most important numbers in mathematics, perhaps the most important: the circle constant relating the circumference of a circle to its linear dimension. For millennia, the circle has been considered the most perfect of shapes, and the circle constant captures the geometry of the circle in a single number. Of course, the traditional choice for the circle constant is pi — but, as mathematician Bob Palais notes in his delightful article "Pi Is Wrong!", pi is wrong. It's time to set things right.'"

Zothecula writes "Engineers have used a variety of techniques to create robots that can scale walls — the Climber uses a rolling seal, while the insect-like robots from SRI have caterpillar tracks with electro-adhesive properties. While such robots generally focus on speed, adhering to the wall and deciding how and when to move, the creators of a small robot named ROCR say it is the first wall-climbing robot to focus on climbing efficiently. And it does so by using the momentum of a tail that swings like a grandfather clock's pendulum."

Reader BWJones, who is a retinal scientist, sends in this detailed analysis of the iPhone 4's "retinal display," which includes photomicrographs of the display pixels of earlier generations of iPhone as well as the iPad. Well worth a read. "... as you can see from these images of the displays I captured under a microscope, the pixels are not square. Rather they are rectangular, and while the short axis is 78 microns, the long axis on the iPhone 4 pixel is somewhere in the neighborhood of 102 microns. ... While [an earlier analysis by] Dr. Soneira was partially correct with respect to the retina, Apple's Retina Display adequately represents the resolution at which images fall upon our retina. ... [I] find Apple's claims stand up to what the human eye can perceive."

gamebittk writes "In 1959, Soviet scientist Dmitri Belyaev set out to breed a tamer fox that would be easier for their handlers in the Russian fur industry to work with. Much to the scientist's shock, changes no one had expected emerged after just 10 generations. The foxes began behaving playfully, were smaller in size, and even changed color — much like dogs." Belyaev died in 1985, but the experiment continued (PDF) in his absence, and to this day provides strong evidence to parts of evolutionary theory. The experiment eventually branched out to involve other species as well.

dork writes in with word of a study that contradicts, at least for the highest-energy events, the recent conclusion that cosmic rays are probably formed in supernova remnants. The Pierre Auger Observatory in Argentina has announced that active galactic nuclei are the most likely candidates for the source of the highest-energy cosmic rays that hit Earth. The researchers found that the sources of these highly energetic events are not distributed uniformly across the sky, linking their origins to the locations of nearby galaxies hosting active nuclei in their centers. These galaxies are thought to be powered by supermassive black holes that are devouring large amounts of matter. The exact mechanism of how particles get accelerated to energies 100 million times higher than achievable by the most powerful particle accelerators on Earth is still unknown. The observatory has made 1% of its events available through a public online event display."

eldavojohn writes, "A University of Utah researcher and his team of German colleagues have shown that it is possible, using electronics, to read data stored as nuclear 'spins'. The lead researcher in the experiment was Dr. Christoph Boehme and his team's letter is available via Nature Physics (at a cost of $18 unless you are a subscriber). This is looking to be a large advance in quantum computing because prior to this, measuring the number of spins of a single phosphorus nucleus was very difficult." From the article: "The researchers used a piece of silicon crystal about 300 microns thick — about three times the width of a human hair — less than 3 inches long and about one-tenth of an inch wide. The silicon crystal was doped with phosphorus atoms. Phosphorus atoms were embedded in silicon because too many phosphorus atoms too close together would interact with each other so much that they couldn't store information. The concept is that the nuclear spin from one atom of phosphorus would store one qubit of information. The scientists used lithography to print two gold electrical contacts onto the doped silicon. Then they placed an extremely thin layer of silicon dioxide — about two billionths of a meter thick — onto the silicon between the gold contacts. As a result, the device's surface had tiny spots where the spins of phosphorus atoms could be detected."

eldavojohn writes, "A University of Utah researcher and his team of German colleagues have shown that it is possible, using electronics, to read data stored as nuclear 'spins'. The lead researcher in the experiment was Dr. Christoph Boehme and his team's letter is available via Nature Physics (at a cost of $18 unless you are a subscriber). This is looking to be a large advance in quantum computing because prior to this, measuring the number of spins of a single phosphorus nucleus was very difficult." From the article: "The researchers used a piece of silicon crystal about 300 microns thick — about three times the width of a human hair — less than 3 inches long and about one-tenth of an inch wide. The silicon crystal was doped with phosphorus atoms. Phosphorus atoms were embedded in silicon because too many phosphorus atoms too close together would interact with each other so much that they couldn't store information. The concept is that the nuclear spin from one atom of phosphorus would store one qubit of information. The scientists used lithography to print two gold electrical contacts onto the doped silicon. Then they placed an extremely thin layer of silicon dioxide — about two billionths of a meter thick — onto the silicon between the gold contacts. As a result, the device's surface had tiny spots where the spins of phosphorus atoms could be detected."

An anonymous reader writes "A Professor at Stony Brook university has quit the field of computer graphics. He claims too much importance is given to one particular conference (SIGGRAPH) and that acceptance of papers in this conference has too much importance in terms of the careers (tenure, grants etc) of a researcher. Furthermore he claims the paper reviewing for SIGGRAPH is not fair and bright and novel papers are summarily rejected because they are either not from a 'hot' field or because the reviewer does not understand the concept and is not willing to spend time understanding it. He has started a discussion forum which has comments from several big names in the field including the papers chair of SIGGRAPH 2007."

v1x writes "Researchers at the University of Utah School of Medicine have discovered that when a gene called smedwi-2 is silenced in the adult stem cells of planarians, the quarter-inch long worm is unable to carry out a biological process that has mystified scientists for centuries, regeneration."

amjith writes "An Indian mathematician, Chandrashekhar Khare, is poised to make a significant breakthrough in the field of number theory with his solution of part of a major outstanding problem in algebraic number theory. He is currently an associate professor in Mathematics Department of University of Utah. "

amjith writes "An Indian mathematician, Chandrashekhar Khare, is poised to make a significant breakthrough in the field of number theory with his solution of part of a major outstanding problem in algebraic number theory. He is currently an associate professor in Mathematics Department of University of Utah. "

amjith writes "An Indian mathematician, Chandrashekhar Khare, is poised to make a significant breakthrough in the field of number theory with his solution of part of a major outstanding problem in algebraic number theory. He is currently an associate professor in Mathematics Department of University of Utah. "

Pfhreak writes "According to the Denver Post -- Las Vegas section, a little over halfway down the page -- Microsoft will begin selling a $50 music player that will 'look and feel as good as the iPod' later this year. Yusuf Mehdi, a Microsoft VP, is quoted as saying that the player will give customers more choices than Apple." In related news, Tetsugaku-San writes "The Register has the scoop on Sony's new portable audio/visual playback device. Impressively it plays MPEG2, MPEG4, BMP, GIF, PNG, TIFF and MP3 (finally they got the message Apple was gonna whoop em!) straight out of the box. Not as good battery life as I'd like to see, but real world tests remain to be seen."

Milo Fungus writes "I've been working on a project for my biochemistry research lab that may be of interest to a few Slashdotters. We study the enzymes in an important biochemical pathway that produces (among other things) terpenes, carotenes, and sterols. I have been making a web-based tutorial to summarize our research, with animations of the proposed reaction mechanisms of the enzymes. I'm finding that SVG is a very good tool for the job because it is easy to learn (because of my experience with HTML) and the file sizes are amazingly small, even for complex animations. The files are typically ~5 KB for a g-zipped animation about 1:00 minute long, compared to 2 MB or more for a lossy-compressed video file of the same length, which is locked into a certain resolution. I have been wanting to do this project ever since I saw Hongyun Wang and George Oster's animations of ATP synthase. I would appreciate any feedback about the tutorial's usablilty, etc."

thelenm writes "Red Hat announced today that the 7.x and 8.0 distributions have reached their errata maintenance end-of-life. Red Hat 9 reaches its end-of-life on April 30. The options for those who want to stick with Red Hat are Red Hat Enterprise Linux or the Fedora Project, as described on their Migration Resource Center page. Or of course, you might take this opportunity to select another option." This day's been a long time coming, but it's finally here.

BWJones writes "iDevGames has posted a book review on Gender Inclusive Game Design that should prove an interesting read not only for game design, but also for the sociological perspective. I've long wondered why the game design community has not paid more attention to gender issues given that the gaming industry has now eclipsed the movie industry in terms of overall sales. While I am not a gamer per se, I am on the beta test teams for a couple big Mac development/porting houses. I have wondered how some of these games would appeal to different demographics and what the gender demographics were. I am sure that given the financial motives, this data is available somewhere."

BWJones writes "The Houston Chronicle has posted a story by Dwight Silverman on the ten most popular PC's of all time. His inclusions are for the most part accurate, but his rankings confuse me. For instance, he includes 'hobby' computers such as the Altair, but excludes the Apple I and his ranking of the Compaq portable PC at number one ahead of the Altair, Apple I and II, Apple Lisa and Macintosh. Interestingly, the author also skips other significant platforms entirely, such as the Amiga and Atari computers as well as skipping over the much more significant Tandy products, the TRS-80 line of computers which like the Apple I and II had built in BASIC which helped introduce many people to programming."

BWJones writes "Global security is running a fairly detailed and interesting story on E-bombs (not email bombs, rather electronic microwave weapons) taken from the IEEE Spectrum Online. We have long known (since the 1940's) about the effects that high energy weapons can have on electronic components from nuclear blasts, but this class of weapons is designed to exclusively attack electronic infrastructure. "

BWJones writes "National Geographic is running a story this month on surveillance. I received my copy today and the article is reasonably extensive (for National Geographic) and well written, covering many issues that get attention here on Slashdot both good and bad. There is coverage of what's good with the technologies (a program called Poseidon that helps ensure folks don't drown in swimming pools) and what's bad (death of privacy). In between are some additional details on backscatter X-ray and a taste of some of the security for the 2002 Winter Olympics here in SLC. I got to see a little bit more than the average person of the security during the winter games as our building was the emergency backup headquarters if anything went wrong and was routinely crawling with FBI and other folks including the Secret Service making for some interesting nights at the lab."

eggoeater writes "An systematic study conducted by NEC-Mitsubishi, ATI Technologies and the University of Utah has concluded that the use of multiple monitors in the workplace increases productivity. The study is discussed on Tom's Hardware, EE Times, and there's a detailed press release on NEC-Mitsubishi. For those of us who use multi-monitors, this is not shocking. But maybe now that it's official, IT managers will view it as a good investment and not just for gamers."

segment writes "It has been 14 years since two little-known electrochemists announced what sounded like the biggest physics breakthrough since Enrico Fermi produced a nuclear chain reaction on a squash court in Chicago. Using a tabletop setup, Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann, of the University of Utah, said they had induced deuterium nuclei to fuse inside metal electrodes, producing measurable quantities of heat. That was the opening bell for one of the craziest periods in science. Cold fusion, if real, promised to solve the world's energy problems forever. Scientists around the world dropped what they were doing to try to replicate the astounding claim." The linked AP story (carried on SFGate.com) is about the Tenth International Conference on Cold Fusion, which took place in the last week of August.

BWJones writes "Apple has now made their public source license 2.0 free. From the release "The Darwin team at Apple is pleased to announce that version 2.0 of the Apple Public Source License has been certified as a 'Free Software License.' APSL 2.0 includes numerous changes and simplifications to make it even easier to use Apple Open Source software as part of your programs. To indicate acceptance of APSL 2.0, you can now use your new or existing "Apple ID", rather than having a separate Darwin account."" proclus adds "This is great news for Darwin-based free software projects like The GNU-Darwin Distribution and Fink. GNU-Darwin has had an ongoing discussion about this development, and annouced and end to our 'Free Darwin Campaign,' so long as Apple avoids DMCA-based legal action."

BWJones asks: "How does one represent online texts to best convey information to the reader as there are a number of issues related to online textbook reading and interpretation that are quite different from reading a standard textbook. We have a site dedicated to retinal vision education that went online a number of years ago and is due for a major rewrite/re-creation. This site was one of the original online textbooks and its design attempted to be of use in the early graphical navigation of the web. However, as the content has increased and will continue to do so, navigation has become more cumbersome. I am looking for suggestions to increase its usability while content increases and will entertain all ideas. I am loathe however, to make the browsing requirements too steep as there are folks from all over the world who access this site (about 30k/hits per day) and they do not always have the latest in computer technology."

BWJones asks: "How does one represent online texts to best convey information to the reader as there are a number of issues related to online textbook reading and interpretation that are quite different from reading a standard textbook. We have a site dedicated to retinal vision education that went online a number of years ago and is due for a major rewrite/re-creation. This site was one of the original online textbooks and its design attempted to be of use in the early graphical navigation of the web. However, as the content has increased and will continue to do so, navigation has become more cumbersome. I am looking for suggestions to increase its usability while content increases and will entertain all ideas. I am loathe however, to make the browsing requirements too steep as there are folks from all over the world who access this site (about 30k/hits per day) and they do not always have the latest in computer technology."

BWJones writes "The CD baby! site contains notes taken from the indie music meeting recently held at Apple. Interesting statistics revealed were that there are about 500k songs/week being downloaded from the iTunes Music store and that 45% of songs are being purchased as albums. Other interesting items of note are that Apple is treating everyone as equvalents in that all labels receive equal treatment with the same deal, the same agreements and you work with the same team of people. What's more is that Apple cuts a check EVERY MONTH which is huge for the smaller labels." Wired has another story about iTunes which notes that what Jobs taketh away, the community is bringing back.

Jason writes "I finally finished documenting my $4 home made electrocardiograph (heart monitor). If anyone is interested or wants to build one for themselves, please come by and take a look. Makes me wonder why medical care costs so much. :)"

Milo Fungus writes "The University of Utah announced yesterday to all students, faculty, and staff that "the University will disable network access for any machine for which a DMCA complaint has been received" from the MPAA, RIAA, or member of the software industry. The full text of the memorandum can be found here. (Please be easy on the server and set up a mirror if you can.)"

segoave writes "Lee Hollaar,Professor of Computer Science at the University of Utah has made his book Legal Protection of Digital Information availible for free download. You may remember Professor Hollaar as the lead technical expert in the antitrust suits Caldera v. Microsoft and Bristol v. Microsoft (both of which settled in favor of the plaintiffs), he submitted a friend of the court brief in Microsoft's appeal in the DC Circuit. He has also he worked on patent reform legislation, database protection, and what eventually became the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Maybe this will help convince Lawrence Lessig to make his book available for download."

bedessen writes "An article at NewsFactor summarizes the developments in new plastics that exhibit magnetic fields of fractal dimensions. Whereas a simple bar magnet produces magnetic fields that go from the north pole to the south pole, the fields of the new hybrid plastic sprout like branches of a cactus lined with secondary fields that resemble needles. As these fields become increasingly interlocked, they exhibit a unique kind of order. This intensely ordered structure might one day be key to storing information with a very high density. The researchers behind this are Arthur Epstein, director of the Center for Materials Research at Ohio State University, and Joel Miller, a professor of chemistry at the University of Utah. There's also this PDF overview of the subject, which is quite technical but still readable."

bedessen writes "An article at NewsFactor summarizes the developments in new plastics that exhibit magnetic fields of fractal dimensions. Whereas a simple bar magnet produces magnetic fields that go from the north pole to the south pole, the fields of the new hybrid plastic sprout like branches of a cactus lined with secondary fields that resemble needles. As these fields become increasingly interlocked, they exhibit a unique kind of order. This intensely ordered structure might one day be key to storing information with a very high density. The researchers behind this are Arthur Epstein, director of the Center for Materials Research at Ohio State University, and Joel Miller, a professor of chemistry at the University of Utah. There's also this PDF overview of the subject, which is quite technical but still readable."

tierra writes "Indiviuals writing their own games is one thing, but try building your own console. Russ Christensen, and his team put together in class, dive into the fun of using an old Nintendo system to house their customized XSA-50 Board. They also uses a XSA Extender to hook their personal console up to a monitor instead of a TV. They programmed Tetris and Space Invaders for their console using a system they call CASM."

tierra writes "Indiviuals writing their own games is one thing, but try building your own console. Russ Christensen, and his team put together in class, dive into the fun of using an old Nintendo system to house their customized XSA-50 Board. They also uses a XSA Extender to hook their personal console up to a monitor instead of a TV. They programmed Tetris and Space Invaders for their console using a system they call CASM."

tierra writes "Indiviuals writing their own games is one thing, but try building your own console. Russ Christensen, and his team put together in class, dive into the fun of using an old Nintendo system to house their customized XSA-50 Board. They also uses a XSA Extender to hook their personal console up to a monitor instead of a TV. They programmed Tetris and Space Invaders for their console using a system they call CASM."

YourHero writes: "Ohio State and University of Utah researchers have cooked up plastic that's magnetic, and even more fun, changes it's magnetic properties in response to light. It still takes a liquid-nitrogen bath (stops working above 75 Kelvin), but we should all have one of those anyway. Details at the OSU Research page." It looks like there's plenty of interest (a lot of it in midwestern universities) in plastic magnets.

flikx sent in an issue that may affect several of us in the future, especially if you happen to work in a similar environment. It's a free speech issue, and one that puts a huge question mark on just how far U.S. First Amendment rights really extend. The short version: filkx ran a weblog called "SOS," for the laudable goal of providing an open discussion forum for student government issues. He had a steadfast rule of non-censorship, which soon landed him in political hot waters with the University of Utah. A new administration steps in, the site is shut down, and filkx now faces criminal charges, expulsion and a cute twist: the university claims that the site's content is now their own property. flikx notes, "I'd like to say up front that this is a fairly large and multifaceted issue, and would also like to draw attention to a related article up on Slashcode". You can read the details by clicking on the link.

The following is written by former-Slashsite admin, flikx:

Early last fall, I personally created a Slash site called SOS under student government for my University. I did everything myself with no outside help of any sort, and entirely volunteer. I have never been paid for my efforts in any way, and never expected monetary compensation. I did not actually work for the University, but was a student in Mechanical Engineering. I created said site with the ultimate goal of providing an open discussion forum and weblog for all students of the University.

During the course of operation of the site, I fielded numerous complaints about abuse to the site, and took them in a professional manner, though steadfastly refused to censor any content on the site. Remember that many in Utah are very conservative and dislike free speech on some levels...being fairly conservative myself, I never thougtht I'd run afoul of people. The problem is that I continuously ran afoul of politics as people threatened me repeatedly due to my failure to censor the site. The abuse was minimal, especially by Slashdot standards.

Six weeks ago, the administration censored the entire site due to the threat of legal action due to inapropriate content. The site was down for just over a week, and I was forced to implement strict posting guidelines and adopt a censorship policy for the site.

A new administration recently took over, and first on the list was to get rid of me, and the site. There's much more involved here in politics, plus scr1pt k1dd13 threats spoofed from my email and everything, but the bottom line is that the site was censored for good. The server was physically removed by the police, and the disks wiped after 'evidence' was removed. All known backups were destroyed, and they even obtained a protective order from me and banned me from the University property. I'm also suspended indefinately, and face immediate expulsion from the University. (BTW - I'm almost done with my Mechanical Engineering degree .. so this is not light by any means. If expelled, I'm forced to start over as a freshmen if I ever get into another school.)

So here's some of the problems with which I turn to the Slashdot crowd for a solution:

The administration threatened me, and had the legal team tell me that everything on the site is intellectual property of the University of Utah. Everything. That includes all stories, all comments, user accounts, even the graphic design I did. I have off-site backups of the site, and could easily redeploy the site elsewhere provided the time and hosting. I've already put 2000+ unpaid volunteer hours into the University, and they take away my work. It should be my right to operate an open discussion forum, but it seems that it's not.

What does the Slashdot crowd think about this issue? Should [or does] everything belong to my University? The only involvement the university had was hosting the site and buying the server, that's it. Obviously, the site could be moved elsewhere, and I still have a team together that could operate the site independant to the University. But as I am already being expelled and even facing criminal charges for 'computer crimes', this is far beyond your average Ask Slashdot."

Cliff: If you are interested in obtaining some context for this story, you can dig around the cached pages from SOS on Google.

flikx sent in an issue that may affect several of us in the future, especially if you happen to work in a similar environment. It's a free speech issue, and one that puts a huge question mark on just how far U.S. First Amendment rights really extend. The short version: filkx ran a weblog called "SOS," for the laudable goal of providing an open discussion forum for student government issues. He had a steadfast rule of non-censorship, which soon landed him in political hot waters with the University of Utah. A new administration steps in, the site is shut down, and filkx now faces criminal charges, expulsion and a cute twist: the university claims that the site's content is now their own property. flikx notes, "I'd like to say up front that this is a fairly large and multifaceted issue, and would also like to draw attention to a related article up on Slashcode". You can read the details by clicking on the link.

The following is written by former-Slashsite admin, flikx:

Early last fall, I personally created a Slash site called SOS under student government for my University. I did everything myself with no outside help of any sort, and entirely volunteer. I have never been paid for my efforts in any way, and never expected monetary compensation. I did not actually work for the University, but was a student in Mechanical Engineering. I created said site with the ultimate goal of providing an open discussion forum and weblog for all students of the University.

During the course of operation of the site, I fielded numerous complaints about abuse to the site, and took them in a professional manner, though steadfastly refused to censor any content on the site. Remember that many in Utah are very conservative and dislike free speech on some levels...being fairly conservative myself, I never thougtht I'd run afoul of people. The problem is that I continuously ran afoul of politics as people threatened me repeatedly due to my failure to censor the site. The abuse was minimal, especially by Slashdot standards.

Six weeks ago, the administration censored the entire site due to the threat of legal action due to inapropriate content. The site was down for just over a week, and I was forced to implement strict posting guidelines and adopt a censorship policy for the site.

A new administration recently took over, and first on the list was to get rid of me, and the site. There's much more involved here in politics, plus scr1pt k1dd13 threats spoofed from my email and everything, but the bottom line is that the site was censored for good. The server was physically removed by the police, and the disks wiped after 'evidence' was removed. All known backups were destroyed, and they even obtained a protective order from me and banned me from the University property. I'm also suspended indefinately, and face immediate expulsion from the University. (BTW - I'm almost done with my Mechanical Engineering degree .. so this is not light by any means. If expelled, I'm forced to start over as a freshmen if I ever get into another school.)

So here's some of the problems with which I turn to the Slashdot crowd for a solution:

The administration threatened me, and had the legal team tell me that everything on the site is intellectual property of the University of Utah. Everything. That includes all stories, all comments, user accounts, even the graphic design I did. I have off-site backups of the site, and could easily redeploy the site elsewhere provided the time and hosting. I've already put 2000+ unpaid volunteer hours into the University, and they take away my work. It should be my right to operate an open discussion forum, but it seems that it's not.

What does the Slashdot crowd think about this issue? Should [or does] everything belong to my University? The only involvement the university had was hosting the site and buying the server, that's it. Obviously, the site could be moved elsewhere, and I still have a team together that could operate the site independant to the University. But as I am already being expelled and even facing criminal charges for 'computer crimes', this is far beyond your average Ask Slashdot."

Cliff: If you are interested in obtaining some context for this story, you can dig around the cached pages from SOS on Google.

Last Friday we solicited questions for Robert Watson, hard-core FreeBSD and TrustedBSD developer. His answers (below) are breathtakingly deep and instructive. Whether you're "just curious" about BSD or a FreeBSD user who wants to see what's going on with the inner circle of developers, you'll want to spend the time it takes to read everything here, and possibly even send Mr. Watson a brief "thank you" email.

OS X based on FreeBSD
by Kevinv

OS X's Darwin is based on FreeBSD. How good a member of the Open Source movement has Apple been? Have they contributed anything back to the FreeBSD project (code/money/t-shirts/etc...)?

Robert:

The easy answer is that Apple is involved in the open source community, and appears to be strongly committed to releasing their own software as open source, and contributing changes back to other projects whose software they use. Clearly, they're fairly embroiled in their upcoming release process at this point, but I'd expect more news on this front in the future.

They've had a strong presence at various technical conferences, including the BSD Conference in Monterey last year, and they're helping to sponsor and are participating in the Open Packages project. I've visited Apple on two occasions to discuss both FreeBSD and TrustedBSD work with them, and had the opportunity to meet with many of the people in their Core OS Group. While I don't know everything they've been up to, I can speak to their shipping me two iMacs so I could explore the operating system and look at porting some of the TrustedBSD work to it, and must say that

I'm very impressed.

One thing I think the FreeBSD project should do is select a liaison to work with Apple to help them understand our development model better, and help integrate back changes made to Darwin. Especially in light of all the changes coming in FreeBSD 5.0, it's important that we work together to prevent substantial divergence between our source trees (where possible) allowing us to continue to exchange features in the future. I have to give Apple a big thumbs up, and hope they keep up the good work!

what do you do for *money*??
by gskouby

While perusing the mailing lists for -hackers, -stable, -current, etc. etc., I often wonder what people like yourself, Mike Smith, Greg Lehey, and the other core members do to pay the bills.

Unless something has changed recently with the BSDi takeover, I can't imagine that the FreeBSD project keeps the food on the table. So how about a little insight into your and the other core members "real" jobs. (As if there is such a thing as a "real" job). But anyways, thanks for all the hard work for little pay!

Robert:

Ahh, the perils of capitalism. Needless to say, all core members enjoy employment in some form or another. Some work with companies that pay them to work on FreeBSD (including BSDi), others do independent consulting on (among other things) FreeBSD; others still work on utterly unrelated areas. Since the question was raised, I'll talk a little about what I do, and how it does relate to FreeBSD.

I work for NAI Labs, a research organization that is now associated with PGP, Inc -- about 100 full time researchers doing advanced research and development for the likes of DARPA, other government agencies, industry, and internal research and development. If you don't recognize the name, we used to be the Advanced Research and Engineering (ARE) division of Trusted Information Systems (TIS). At NAI Labs, I'm a Research Scientist in the Network Security research group, and have worked on a variety of projects including securing DNS (DNSsec), DHCP security, active network security, and denial of service research. While most of my work (right now) is relatively unrelated to FreeBSD, we hope to change this in the relatively near future, identifying funding for work on FreeBSD and TrustedBSD, as well as porting work to OpenBSD, and work on Darwin. Other examples of operating system security work on open source here include Software Wrappers and Low Watermark Mandatory Access Control. One of the great things about working at NAI Labs is the opportunity to participate in cutting edge security research, and the opportunity to set your own direction. All in all it's a really nice place to work, and I recommend it highly--in fact, we're actively hiring at this point, so if you're interested, feel free to fire off a resume to rwatson@tislabs.com.

Of course, companies can greatly benefit from employing a FreeBSD developer, as they have the opportunity to influence development of the operating system (subject to the common sense of the developer and consensus of the project as a whole, needless to say). Many FreeBSD developers, looking at the committer community as a whole, are employed to do what they would like to be doing anyway: working on a section of the system that interests them.

TrustedBSD and NSA secure linux
by Xuther

How does TrustedBSD compare with NSA secured linux (http://www.nsa.gov/selinux) in terms of new and or improved security features? And are there any plans to eventually integrate the rest of the TrustedBSD features back into the shared BSD source tree (the extended attributes already have been committed)? How would using TrustedBSD instead of FreeBSD impact clustering applications?

And just for my information, where did all the packages for clustering BSD go? All I can seem to find anymore is the linux stuff. And personally I don't like redhat and their rpm distribution method, all anyone wants to distribute anymore is rpms which is not near enough to standard and compatable accross the board as tar-gzip for my purposes. (One primary difference being that I can open a tar-gzip on a windows box at work during break to browse through source, and to my knowledge no one has bothered to create a "winrpm")

Robert:

These compound questions are the killers :-).

I am both aware of and familiar with the NSA Secure Linux work -- a fair amount of the work is being done at NAI Labs under contract from NSA. Stephen Smalley, one of the lead developers on the project, actually works just upstairs from me in the Glenwood, Maryland office of NAI Labs. As such, I've had a number of opportunities to talk with him about the work. One of the advantages of working at NAI Labs is the ability to get wide exposure for a variety of security-related research on many platforms, and relating to many topics.

TrustedBSD and SELinux are similar in many ways, and also differ in many ways. The similarities lie in overlapping functionality and architectural goals; the differences only begin with the choice of operating systems. TrustedBSD introduces a number of features into the FreeBSD operating system including Mandatory Access Control (MAC).

In a broad generalization, MAC allows administrators to define security policies about how users interact with one another. These policies are mandatory in the sense that users are not permitted to change the policies, although some flexibility may be permitted by the policy.

MAC is distinguished from Discretionary Access Control (DAC) in this manner; most Linux or FreeBSD users will be familiar with DAC in the form of file permissions. In DAC models, the owners of objects (and possibly other parties) are permitted to modify protections to reflect their needs. A common mandatory policy is Multi-Level Security (MLS), or the "military security model".

In this model, users are assigned "clearances", and objects are assigned "classifications". MLS prevents users from reading files they are not allowed to read, but it also prevents users from sharing files they are not allowed to share (this is the mandatory component). MLS is just one mandatory policy, there are many others that have been defined and explored in various environments. TrustedBSD implements three mandatory policies in its current prototype form: MLS, a Biba integrity policy that is similar to MLS but protects integrity instead of confidentiality, and a light-weight partitioning scheme that is an extension of the popular jail() mechanism introduced in FreeBSD 4.0-RELEASE.

SELinux provides an implementation of a flexible mandatory access control architecture called Flask for Linux. The architecture is a generalization of Type Enforcement (TE) and can support a wide variety of mandatory security policies. In the Flask architecture, the security policy is encapsulated in a pluggable "security server" component that can be replaced. The example security server provided with SELinux includes support for TE, MLS and a simple form of Role-Based Access Control (RBAC). An important focus of this architecture is separating policy representation and processing from policy enforcement.

SELinux differs from TrustedBSD in that it is a more mature system, having been worked on for several years, that it addresses only mandatory access controls, and that it uses the Flask architecture rather than explicit hard-coded policies. It is certainly the case that we plan to leverage the SELinux implementation now that the source code is available; the abstractions of the Flask architecture are similar to ones that were being considered for TrustedBSD. Having the opportunity to look at the SELinux source will allow us to benefit from their implementation experiences.

As you observe, some TrustedBSD features have already been integrated into the base tree, including extended attributes on files, as well as infrastructure support for capabilities, ACLs, and some of the improved abstractions I spoke about above. The plan is to integrate most of the TrustedBSD features into the base operating system distribution over time; some features are more intrusive, as well as more computationally expensive, than others, meaning that some features may be distributed as modules rather than enabled by default. However, it is a definite goal to make all of the work easily available for FreeBSD installations, and under a two clause BSD-style license. Many of these features will appear in FreeBSD 5.0-RELEASE, although they will presumably mature over time.

The remainder of your questions address clustering; I have to begin by pointing out that I don't have much experience with clustered environments. I can probably safely comment that the TrustedBSD features won't present any substantial additional impediment towards implementing clustering, either in terms of functionality or performance. Most of the of the TrustedBSD features either supplement base UNIX features without substantially changing them in ways that impact applications, or are disabled unless specifically configured.

My understanding is that many of the normal computational clustering tools, such as PVM, are available via the FreeBSD ports/packages collection, and that FreeBSD is used in clustering, but as a non-expert can't speak much to this issue. As clustering means something different to every observer, this may not have answered your question, and I'd welcome follow-up e-mail to discuss this further.

Openpackages?
by Enahs

What's your opinion on the Open Packages project? Even though I'm not currently a *BSD user, it sounds great on the surface--there's even been interest expressed in patches for Linux!--but I've got to wonder what sort of complexities need to be worked out to maintain a set of packages for FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, Darwin...

Robert:

I think OpenPackages is a great idea: the ports/packages on FreeBSD and other BSD platforms have been an incredible boon for the users of these systems. One of the disadvantages of BSD is that it hasn't presented a single porting target, and that there has been redundant porting work going on. OpenPackages offers a way to reduce redundant work, and improve application portability. I was excited to see Apple on the list of sponsors for the project, it shows continued commitment by Apple to open source.

A few important questions:
by Bob Abooey

1) Do you ever plan on moving away from the slow and resource intensive method of VMS style paging for memory address resolution

Robert:

I'm not sure how to interpret this question; FreeBSD provides the standard UNIX-like API for memory management (brk(), sbrk(), memory mapping, protection modification, SysV shared memory). This is supported by a Mach-based virtual memory system that has undergone substantial feature evolution and performance optimization. All performance benchmarks I've seen suggest that the FreeBSD virtual memory system is both robust and high-performance under both light and heavy loads. This is one of the features of FreeBSD that has made it so popular for web farms and file servers.

My understanding is that the new VM system under development for Linux takes into account the FreeBSD VM design, and shares many of its design choices and, as a result, performance and stability properties. However, I have not followed that work closely enough to comment in great detail on the topic.

2) Are there plans to rewrite the TCP/IP stack to be multi threaded

One of the major development projects currently underway is "SMPng", or the Next Generation SMP project for FreeBSD. The SMPng project goals include:

• A fully preemptive and reentrant kernel
• Fine-grained data based locking
• An evolutionary development process
• Rapid development cycle leveraging technology donated by BSDi from their next generation SMP support under development for BSD/OS, including debugging tools and operation models
• Thread-based interrupts allowing blocking at will

This should substantially improve performance on SMP machines, as well as modernize the structure of the kernel. It will include work to push down locks (eliminating the giant kernel lock present in other versions of FreeBSD), including in the network subsystem, allowing components of the network stack to execute in parallel on different processors.

3) Will BSD ever migrate away from UFS to a more modern file system?

It depends what you mean by a "modern file system". Right now, FreeBSD actually uses FFS, the Berkeley Fast File System, with the addition of "soft updates" for performance and consistency, and under 5.0-CURRENT (the development branch), the ability to atomically snapshot file systems, as well as the ability to store extended attributes on files, in turn supporting other features such as Access Control Lists (ACLs). Fsck-less booting is currently a work in progress, and will be in 5.0-RELEASE also. In fact, several sites including Yahoo! have already deployed fsckless booting internally. paper presented at the USENIX 2000 Technical Conference discusses the performance and consistency differences between journalled and soft updates consistency mechanisms. The paper in question also discusses two different journalling implementations based on FFS and developed on FreeBSD, which will be made available at some point to the FreeBSD project for possible integration. I think it's safe to say that, by most definitions, FFS on modern BSD operating systems is very much a modern file system.

4) With serious POSIX compatablity issues are there plans to use code from POSIX compliant OS's to become more commercially attractive to major corporations

One of the FreeBSD Project goals is to comply with appropriate API and user interface standards. Generally speaking, a failure to comply with a relevant standard is considered to be a bug, and should be reported using the standard bug reporting tools (we use GNATS to track bugs). If you are aware of non-compliant features or interfaces, please let us know and we will endeavor to fix them.

Why would you... ?
by SonOfSam

FreeBSD development is obviously a big part of your life. I have noticed that peoples reasons for using a free OS are often not simply because its better, but because of some view or stance on freedom that they have.

I am a Windows guy, only because my job says so.

What I want to know is, how would you go about convincing me, a Win2k user, to consider using a *BSD. I am interested in learning a new OS... always. But, what makes it stand out from Linux/Win2k/MacOS?

Robert:

There are a number of aspects to your question, and there are a lot of ways I could explore it. It seems that the first part of the question relates to why I as a user and developer make use of FreeBSD (and open source in general). Another aspect seems to be a question about political motivations.

Open source gives me as a developer the ability to do things that closed source could never allow--I get to determine what features are important and dedicate resources to making them available. As "extensible" as closed source operating systems may be, it is hard to understand how a system works without access to the source, and hard to modify it to do things the designers didn't anticipate. This argument is also a reason why NAI Labs does a great deal of its research and development on open source systems: it's simply impossible to get that level of responsiveness from a closed source system vendor.

As to political motivations? My motivation for pushing FreeBSD is the philosophy of the project, rather than general intuitions about personal freedom. The project (as with many open source projects) has a dedication to technical excellence and openness (of process, as well as source) that is outstanding. I wouldn't force anyone to open source their software as that's a personal (or often corporate) choice, but I recommend open source software widely.

One of the political aspects to open source is the selection of license: I don't see this as a big thing. The BSD license probably does better reflect both my beliefs and needs, but I use and modify software under a variety of licenses, and recognize that the license you release your software under has to reflect your own beliefs and needs. Any other understanding of license selection as a moral argument fails to recognize a contemporary understanding of relativism that is vital to cooperation :-).

As to why FreeBSD as opposed to any other operating system? Well, as I mentioned above, the FreeBSD project has a dedication to technical excellence and openness. What does this mean? It means that I have a high level of confidence in the software (both by reputation, experimentation, and source code inspection). The operating system is stable and performs extremely well, is extensible, and is being actively developed in a variety of ways. There's an attention to detail, as well as the big picture, that reflects a high level of dedication among developers.

Advantages over the traditional Windows platforms have long been stability and performance, as well as openness. I haven't run the performance numbers recently, but understand that Microsoft has made large investments in stability and performance for Windows 2000; it would be a mistake to underestimate their ability to improve in this area. As long as Microsoft remains closed source, however, they will be unable to match the openness that is vital to the work that I do.

The primary difference that I see as important for me when comparing FreeBSD and Linux lies in the development model: there is a central forum and structure for the FreeBSD developer community that provides a forum for communication, group decisions and consensus building. My feeling is that this leads to better design decisions, and a focus that reflects a whole-system view. An important question for the FreeBSD Project as we move forward is whether or not this model can scale easily as we expand. The number of "committers" on the FreeBSD team has dramatically expanded over the last couple of years; many of these developers are working on the ports/packages and documentation, but many of them also work on the base system. Moving towards an elected core team, as well as ongoing debates on the development model and source code management reflect the increasing size and more diverse needs of the developers. The SMPng project's managed development model is another sign of this growth, and an example of a successful attempt to address the need for more structured development practices in the face of a larger audience and more people working on the same code.

Mac OS X appears to have a bright future: Apple has managed to tread in NeXT's footsteps when it comes to combining a mix of strong technical components from the open source and research communities, as well as excellent internally developed work. OS X represents a number of dramatic changes for the Mac user community; Apple has in the past shown a great deal of responsiveness to that community, and OS X looks like it will be an interesting fusion of advanced operating system concepts and a highly usable interface. Part of what will be important in the widespread adoption of Mac OS X is consistency with prior versions, allowing users to migrate in a relatively seamless manner. In Steve Jobs' recent demo and presentation, inclusion of the traditional Apple Menu appears to demonstrate sensitivity to this issue, and responsiveness to the comment submission process. I see a place for a Mac OS X box on my desk in the near future.

Because it leverages FreeBSD work, and because FreeBSD leverages Apple's work, I don't see them as mutually incompatible. It is my firm hope that Apple and the FreeBSD Project find ways to work together more in the future, because I think everyone will benefit from this.

These are just my opinions, and I would expect others to disagree with me. I should point out that in the past, I've recommended the use of a variety of operating systems to both individuals and companies; this includes Windows, Linux, Mac OS, Solaris, and FreeBSD. I'd be a fool to assert that any operating system is appropriate for all uses and environments.

decent literature
by boog3r

instead of asking you a few questions directly, i would like to solve them on my own with the best set of tools. what publications or literature would you recommend for:

the *bsd newbie or learner
the *bsd uber-know-it-all-i-dont-need-any-docs

i am trying to cut the signal/noise ratio out of understanding bsd. specifically, what security documentation have you found useful day-in/out?

Robert:

I'll speak to the FreeBSD section of BSD, since that's what I'm most familiar with. There are several books available describing FreeBSD.

The most commonly used is The Complete FreeBSD by Greg Lehey, which can also come bundled with a CDROM set, making it easy for new or experienced users to go to a single source. The book is currently in its third edition, and apparently there is a fourth edition currently under preparation. I saw this book in the local Barnes and Noble's recently, so it should be fairly easy to locate. A recent addition to the collection of books on FreeBSD is Ted Mittelstaedt's The FreeBSD Corporate Networker's Guide, which also includes a CD-ROM.

The online documentation for FreeBSD is also strong, both in the form of the FreeBSD Handbook, which includes both reference and tutorial materials accessible via a web browser, and the normal UNIX-like man pages. The FreeBSD Handbook is also available in printed form. Both are actively maintained and regularly extended to cover new features.

FreeBSD and BSD books are generally available from BSDi via their FreeBSD Mall Books page, and from the Daemon News Books and Posters page, not to mention your normal online book vendors (Amazon, Barnes and Noble, et al), and quite possibly your local bookstore.

In addition, the BSD Daemon News magazine is now available in print as well as electronic form, and includes articles appropriate for both users and developers.

I suspect the "uber-know-it-all-i-dont-need-any-docs" guy is unlikely to listen to any recommendations from me, but would probably find the man pages most useful as they're more reference than tutorial :-).

To be honest, I don't use security documentation other than the man pages, as I'm familiar with most of the base system features, as they're an area where I've done a lot of work. Out of the box, FreeBSD is a fairly safe beast, as long as you've reviewed recent security advisories for the release you're using. The usual advice applies: don't install or run things you don't need to, and emain up-to-date on security advisories. There's a FreeBSD security how-to on the web site.

For the die-hard "uber-know-it-all", there's always the source, which in the end is authoritative as to how the implementation works, regardless of documentation :-).

----------------

I noticed in the comments, although it didn't make it into the questions in the interview, that there was a lot of curiosity about the relationship between the OpenBSD Project and the TrustedBSD Project, also regarding TrustedBSD and FreeBSD. As it's important to understanding the work I do, and the goals of the project, I figured I should throw in a bonus answer:

TrustedBSD provides a set of extensions to FreeBSD to add support for {ACLs, Capabilities, Mandatory Access Control, Auditing} as well as supporting features to implement them. As I described above, these features are being integrated into the base operating system distribution, with the intent that they be "part of FreeBSD". This is facilitated by having some of the TrustedBSD developers also be FreeBSD Project developers.

The OpenBSD and TrustedBSD projects have largely different thrusts: while the OpenBSD project seeks to provide a correct and bug-free POSIX implementation (where correctness includes a focus on failing to suffer from security holes). It also includes cryptography-related features as a primary development goal, hence early development and integration of IPsec in the base system (and a continuing high level of maturity of their implementation), as well as their work on OpenSSH. The TrustedBSD project seeks to introduce a variety of features, some described in the defunct POSIX.1e draft.

While TrustedBSD targets FreeBSD as the starting operating system, it should be observed that all of the BSD systems stem from the same source base, and remain very similar. This means that porting a feature from FreeBSD to OpenBSD should prove relatively straight-forward. The same goes for Darwin, the kernel from Mac OS X. I list both of these explicitly because we in fact have plans to start porting features to both of these platforms, as resources permit. The starting point in both cases will be to make Extended Attributes available in their file systems; these are used to store the supporting data for ACLs, capabilities on files, and MAC labels. I'd welcome interest in porting these features to other BSD platforms, including NetBSD and BSD/OS as well.

---------------

MrKhuel writes: "Professor Lee Hollaar of the University of Utah School of Computing has filed a neutral friend of the court brief, which has been posted with other electronically submitted documents in the Microsoft anti-trust appeal, discussing problems with some arguments for combining programs and how to test for the legality of program combination in anti-trust cases." Beyond the Microsoft case, this has some interesting applications.

MrKhuel writes: "Professor Lee Hollaar of the University of Utah School of Computing has filed a neutral friend of the court brief, which has been posted with other electronically submitted documents in the Microsoft anti-trust appeal, discussing problems with some arguments for combining programs and how to test for the legality of program combination in anti-trust cases." Beyond the Microsoft case, this has some interesting applications.

MrKhuel writes: "Professor Lee Hollaar of the University of Utah School of Computing has filed a neutral friend of the court brief, which has been posted with other electronically submitted documents in the Microsoft anti-trust appeal, discussing problems with some arguments for combining programs and how to test for the legality of program combination in anti-trust cases." Beyond the Microsoft case, this has some interesting applications.

Alex Prestin sent us This Link to a strange picture of the iMac, and what appears to be its long lost little brother. Ewan Leith wrote in to tell the world that "PC Plus in the UK goes on sale tomorrow (the 27th) with Suse 5.2 on the cover CD, along with another CD full of linux programs." Donovan was the first to warn the world that the 2.1.119 kernel is now out. I compiled my 2.1.118 kernel a wopping half hour before the 119 release. Sigh. Colin Walls sent us a link to the latest Spencer F. Kat cartoon thingee. There's another piece of aftermath from last weeks standards hoopla. icetrey wrote in to say "OctobrX and Bishop have chosen me, icetrey, to be the new blackbox themes webmaster. It has a new look, as well as a few new themes for 40.x."