Slashdot Mirror

oo7tushar writes "CNN has this article on some of the new gadgets we can expect to see in 2002. We can expect smaller MP3 players, more powerful cell phones. The biggest barrier remains the cost of the multifunction gadgets (quote - But until consumers -- and not just gearheads -- show a liking to these technologies, and their prices become affordable, some companies are focusing on devices that serve one function well. ") We can also expect evolution rather than revolution. The article has much more info."

oo7tushar writes: "Time has a list of the Inventions of 2001. They've got a list of some very impressive inventions. They've got the inventions, a short description, prices/costs, and a link to the websites. On the list is the Abiocor Artificial Heart, Millennium Bridge, EZ-Rocket, a very sweet light weight fuel-cell bike with good mileage and a whole bunch of other very high tech toys, gadgets, vehicles, robots, and medical technology. A good read and very interesting."

Mdog writes: "The world championship of solar car racing is about (Nov. 18...ok so I can't wait :) ) to begin Down Under. World Solar Challenge pits high school, university, and corporate teams against each other in a race across Australia's Outback, from Darwin to Adelaide." Mdog supplies some more (ahem) non-partisan information about the race below.

"My Alma Mater's team (which took second in the American Solar Challenge...go UMR!) is looking to take sweet revenge on the evil (*g*) that is the U-Michigan Solar Car team (which won ASC.) Some other North American heavyweights will be Queen's University and U-Waterloo from the frigid north. I'll defer to Ozzies post links to their favoUrite college teams, which, along with the Japanese teams, are often very good. Lastly, watch out for team Solar Motions; out for blood after major technical problems two years ago. Their array is worth...how should I put this...a lot :)

I went two years ago, and this year I'll just be looking forward to this article getting posted on /. *sigh* Good luck and good sun to all the teams. No worries!"

Ian_Bailey writes: "ZDNet news presents another chapter in the Windows vs. Linux debate. Amazon.com claims that by switching to Linux, they were able to "cut technology expenses by about 25 percent, from $71 million to $54 million."" Lots of little bits in there. Nothing really new, but it's still nice.

Everyone out there who set up content mirrors helped the spread of information survive as well as it did. After the tremendous crush yesterday, conventional news sources seem to have largely recovered. However, people are still cushioning the network burden with their own mirrors and original reporting. We'll be putting up occasional updates as necessary, but for now hit that link below and you can read a ton of stories on all aspects of the story.

Ian Peon writes: "SF Gate has a short article on how the Internet "proved its mettle as a communications facilitator in a time of crisis." Kudos to all those who kept things running!"

An anonymous reader writes: "The who, what, and how are detailed in this Boston Herald story. The weapons were smuggled in the razor cases. And in order to get to the cockpit, they terrorized the stewardesses, killing a few in order to lure the pilot out. Once the pilot was out, they took control of the plane. They have identified a car driven by 5 arabs had flying instruction in arabic. The men have been traced back to different arab countries."

This WorldTribune.com story claims that Israeli intelligence reports favor the idea that the attacks may have had the backing of Saddam Hussein's Bagdhad government. According to a submission from UberOogie ,Osama bin Ladin denies involvement in the attacks. The claims, speculation and disclaimers will no doubt continue.

Connord D writes: "View the Survivor's Register Please, PLEASE go to the survivor registers, register that your looking for your family, tell your friends, pass the word around and identify those that have survived and those that are missing. Help worried families either confirm the fates of their loved ones so that they can mourn, or help them find those people that are missing." And Brian Mears, LAN Systems Operations Manager for Computer Sciences Corporation, writes: "I have created a forum on my website to allow families and friends of survivors to post messages and communicate with each other concerning this most tragic period." Here's the link: http://www.ntadmin.net/forum/.

It would be a godsend if the various survivor registries would pool their data, or if someone sets up a google-like search engine to reach all of them at once.

oo7 writes: "CNN has a stream of the first plane crash. If you'd like to download it you can from the videos section of this site; it has news updated as fast as I can and streams as fast as I can capture. Please forward any unknown news and links that you may have."

pKa writes: "The last image from WTCs 77th floor webcam is available on a few sites around the net. The original WCTA.org cam-site is dead, but available in Googles cache, where you can see the dark screen (camera already dead, most likely) at 09:52:52, 09/11/01 - just before the buildings crashed. Article (in norwegian) with screenshots available here" The stream of concern that yesterday's events will lead to an illiberal attitude toward privacy is growing into a torrent: vena writes: "CNN reported on television broadcast earlier today that the NSA was now going through volumes of recorded cellular calls for calls made by passengers on the planes. Clear admission."

GothChip writes: "Ananova are reporting that just hours after the terrorist attack on New York, the FBI started approaching ISPs asking for help in installing Carnivore."

mkelley writes: "This is only the beginning folks...looks like the internet is going to be blamed for this...Wired has a story that is sure to cause panic. This is going to be the goverment's way to push wiretapping into your email and web surfing. In this time of crisis, people in high places are going to use this to get their agenda through. "Blame the Internet" is going to be the rallying cry for everything ..." If you're interested in the details of the planes the terrorists chose, a Semi-Anonymous Coward writes: "American Airlines flight 77 confirmed down, crashed into the Pentagon, Washington DC. Flight 77 (Dulles to Los Angeles) is scheduled as a Boeing 757-200:

Boeing 757-200 data and history:

American Airlines Boeing 757-200 photos:

• American Airlines flight 11 confirmed down, crashed into World Trade Center New York. Flight 11 (Boston to Los Angeles) is scheduled as a Boeing 767-200:
• Boeing 767-200 data and history
• American Airlines Boeing 767-200 photos

United Airlines flight 175 confirmed down, crashed into World Trade Center New York. Flight 175 (Boston to Los Angeles) is scheduled as a Boeing 767-200:

• United Airlines Boeing 767-200 photos

United Airlines flight 93 confirmed down near Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania. Flight 93 (Newark to San Francisco) is scheduled as a Boeing 757-200:

• United Airlines Boeing 757-200 photos: United Airlines Boeing 757-200 photos"

Everyone out there who set up content mirrors helped the spread of information survive as well as it did. After the tremendous crush yesterday, conventional news sources seem to have largely recovered. However, people are still cushioning the network burden with their own mirrors and original reporting. We'll be putting up occasional updates as necessary, but for now hit that link below and you can read a ton of stories on all aspects of the story.

Ian Peon writes: "SF Gate has a short article on how the Internet "proved its mettle as a communications facilitator in a time of crisis." Kudos to all those who kept things running!"

An anonymous reader writes: "The who, what, and how are detailed in this Boston Herald story. The weapons were smuggled in the razor cases. And in order to get to the cockpit, they terrorized the stewardesses, killing a few in order to lure the pilot out. Once the pilot was out, they took control of the plane. They have identified a car driven by 5 arabs had flying instruction in arabic. The men have been traced back to different arab countries."

This WorldTribune.com story claims that Israeli intelligence reports favor the idea that the attacks may have had the backing of Saddam Hussein's Bagdhad government. According to a submission from UberOogie ,Osama bin Ladin denies involvement in the attacks. The claims, speculation and disclaimers will no doubt continue.

Connord D writes: "View the Survivor's Register Please, PLEASE go to the survivor registers, register that your looking for your family, tell your friends, pass the word around and identify those that have survived and those that are missing. Help worried families either confirm the fates of their loved ones so that they can mourn, or help them find those people that are missing." And Brian Mears, LAN Systems Operations Manager for Computer Sciences Corporation, writes: "I have created a forum on my website to allow families and friends of survivors to post messages and communicate with each other concerning this most tragic period." Here's the link: http://www.ntadmin.net/forum/.

It would be a godsend if the various survivor registries would pool their data, or if someone sets up a google-like search engine to reach all of them at once.

oo7 writes: "CNN has a stream of the first plane crash. If you'd like to download it you can from the videos section of this site; it has news updated as fast as I can and streams as fast as I can capture. Please forward any unknown news and links that you may have."

pKa writes: "The last image from WTCs 77th floor webcam is available on a few sites around the net. The original WCTA.org cam-site is dead, but available in Googles cache, where you can see the dark screen (camera already dead, most likely) at 09:52:52, 09/11/01 - just before the buildings crashed. Article (in norwegian) with screenshots available here" The stream of concern that yesterday's events will lead to an illiberal attitude toward privacy is growing into a torrent: vena writes: "CNN reported on television broadcast earlier today that the NSA was now going through volumes of recorded cellular calls for calls made by passengers on the planes. Clear admission."

GothChip writes: "Ananova are reporting that just hours after the terrorist attack on New York, the FBI started approaching ISPs asking for help in installing Carnivore."

mkelley writes: "This is only the beginning folks...looks like the internet is going to be blamed for this...Wired has a story that is sure to cause panic. This is going to be the goverment's way to push wiretapping into your email and web surfing. In this time of crisis, people in high places are going to use this to get their agenda through. "Blame the Internet" is going to be the rallying cry for everything ..." If you're interested in the details of the planes the terrorists chose, a Semi-Anonymous Coward writes: "American Airlines flight 77 confirmed down, crashed into the Pentagon, Washington DC. Flight 77 (Dulles to Los Angeles) is scheduled as a Boeing 757-200:

Boeing 757-200 data and history:

American Airlines Boeing 757-200 photos:

• American Airlines flight 11 confirmed down, crashed into World Trade Center New York. Flight 11 (Boston to Los Angeles) is scheduled as a Boeing 767-200:
• Boeing 767-200 data and history
• American Airlines Boeing 767-200 photos

United Airlines flight 175 confirmed down, crashed into World Trade Center New York. Flight 175 (Boston to Los Angeles) is scheduled as a Boeing 767-200:

• United Airlines Boeing 767-200 photos

United Airlines flight 93 confirmed down near Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania. Flight 93 (Newark to San Francisco) is scheduled as a Boeing 757-200:

• United Airlines Boeing 757-200 photos: United Airlines Boeing 757-200 photos"

s20451 writes: "The American Solar Challenge solar car race wrapped up yesterday in Claremont, California, with the University of Michigan winning. According to this article in the Globe and Mail, two Canadian teams finished in the top five: Waterloo and Queen's, finishing third and fourth, respectively. Go Canada!"

An unnamed correspondent writes: "Three mathematicians just solved the 'carpenters ruler' problem. The carpenters ruler problem is given a chain of linked rods (a carpenters ruler) in two dimensions, can it always be unwound? As it turns out, it can, check here. You might be saying 'so what', but this has potential applications in anything from protein folding to robotic arm movement. Check here for some animations of the carpenters rule in action."

An unnamed correspondent writes: "Three mathematicians just solved the 'carpenters ruler' problem. The carpenters ruler problem is given a chain of linked rods (a carpenters ruler) in two dimensions, can it always be unwound? As it turns out, it can, check here. You might be saying 'so what', but this has potential applications in anything from protein folding to robotic arm movement. Check here for some animations of the carpenters rule in action."

Nyerp writes "The final results for the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest are up. Cheers for St. Petersberg State U, followed by my own school, the Univerity of Waterloo!" Congratulations, guys! I wonder if any of the world finalists used Pascal, since it's allowed.

Roger_Wilco writes "The GNU Web site is announcing that Spacetime Systems will now install GNU/Hurd as well as GNU/Linux. Hurd is Object Oriented, unlike Linux, so it may be a superior system in the long run."

hobb writes "OK, so Roger Ebert's not a technical genius, but he's written an interesting piece on the future of digital movie projection (theatres, not home.) Read his essay here. Digital for home systems is great, but will 1280x1024 be good enough for theatres? That's about 10mm dot pitch, folks... "

Prince Caspian writes "There is a rather lengthy and informative interview with several key GNOME developers available, a good balance to the recent Slashdot KDE interview. Particularly interesting are the UI improvements with screenshots. " Mmmm. Eye Candy.

Kinthelt writes "For the first time, an animal of one species gave birth to another species. Not only that, but they also used a frozen embryo. " The species was an American short-haired cat birthing an African wildcat. Similar size and weight ranges which helped the birth go successfully. I've heard that this is the method they are considering using for mammoth birthing - using an African or Indian female elephant to implant a woolly mammoth embryo. It's going to be a lot harder to create that embryo though, unlike the wildcat which was created naturally.

Pilchie asks: "When reading this recent article I started thinking about a problem I learned about when working for Canada's DCIEM in the simulation training technology sector. Most of you are probably familiar with some type of simulator or virtual reality. Have you ever noticed that every VR game includes some kind of vehicle? The reason is that no one has been able to develop a system to accurately simulate walking, without actually going anywhere. Before you laugh at this, think about it. How would you build a User Input system that allows a person to walk in an arbitrary direction at an arbitrary time?" Interesting thought. Anyone have potential solutions? (More below)

Pilchie continues:

"Some Ideas
These are some of the ideas that I have heard, and some of their drawbacks:

Don't walk. Use some other input system (joystick, whatever) to move the character. Problem: People get lost if they don't actually walk. See here.

2D mesh of bearings. This is probably the best idea so far, the idea is to have a 2d mesh of bearing that can rotate in any direction, each with a sensor to determine which direction it is rotating in. The drawback is the difficulty in sensing the rotation of the beads, as well as allowing them to move in any direction. Plus safety(things getting caught between the beads).

Spheres. This idea involves placing a person either inside or outside of a spere and letting the whole sphere rotate in an arbitrary direction (sort of like a mouse ball). The problem is making a sphere big enough, with little enough friction that it can actually be moved by a normal walking action.

Mime Walking. This involves teaching people to walk in a special manner to allow the system to know they are walking. See this again. Problem is that it is fake.

Large room/visual tricks. Put someone in a large room and let them walk where they want. When they start to approach a wall, rotate the picture enough that they compensate, but not enough that they realize it is rotating. Problem: obiously you can't be sure they won't hit a wall at some point.

Well what are your ideas on the issue?"

vivekb writes "Scientists at Ruhr University in Germany are using DNA to assemble microscopic structures. They attached matched DNA strands to construction materials, and use the DNA as an highly selective bonding agent. So far, basic polyhedra have been manufactured using gold spheres. The BBC presents this article. The paper is entitled Self-Assembly of Trisoligonucleotidyls. "

vivekb writes " C|Net reports that Microsoft and Hoshin GigaMedia Centre, Taiwan's cable ISP, will be jointly providing broadband services. The two companies will create a broadband version of MSN, financed by a rumored $31.5 million dollar investment by Microsoft to GigaMedia. The network runs on Microsoft's Commercial Internet Services platform. GigaMedia is part of Taiwan's giant conglomerate, the Koos Group, and [originally] partnered with 3Com to introduce their cable modem service."

Daniel M. German writes "The CyberLaw Journal of the NYTimes has an excellent article about the MP3 and the implications of the recent ruling on the case RIAA vs. Rio. Simply put, by making a copy of your MP3 you are "space shifting" your already adquired music. Further, it is fair use. Some even claim that fair use might mean it is legal to own a copy, even if it came from an illegal source. Quite interesting reading. " Its the NY Times, so you need a free account to read it.

Alex W. Jackson writes "According to this email by Jerremy Koot of the SNES9x project, www.snes9x.com's server has pulled the plug after receiving an email from Nintendo to the effect that "Emulators are illegal." The email from Nintendo was not made available, but it apparently makes references to this so-called Legal FAQ. Someone with a legal background wanna take a stab at poking some holes in this thing? "

Daniel M. German writes "Reporting, live, from the WWW8 Conference in Toronto. RMS has been announced as the recipient of the Yuri Rubinsky Memorial Award, (which this year is mainly founded by Microsoft and Sun). Previous recipients of the Award are Vint Cerf --inventor or TCP/IP--, Doug Doug Englebart --inventor of the mouse, amongst many other things-- and Ted Nelson --who coined the term Hypertext. " During his speech --broadcasted from the US-- he talked mainly about patents and their threat to Free Software.

The Award is an important recognition from the WWW Community to GNU and the Open Source movement in general.

I will write a complete report for Slashdot tomorrow.

Reporting, for Slashdot, from the Toronto Convention Centre.

Stu Charlton wrote in to remind us that next Wed. (Nov 25) is the final episode of Babylon 5. And related, NiNe X wrote in to say that Star Trek Voyager has run its 100th episode. I remember watching TV once.

A whole bunch of you have written in about multiple monitor (multi-headed) support in Linux. Is it possible? What's involved? Who supports it? These are all interesting questions, and one person made a point of noting that Windows could do it, and couldn't find out how to do it on Linux. There's also a nifty project in the works involving Linux and a "video wall"! Click below for more... Christopher Danz had this nifty project he's working on:

"My name is Christopher Danz and I'm part of a team in Washington State University that is building what we affectionatly refer to as a picture wall. It's bank of nine monitors placed in a three by three grid, each controlled by a corresponding 486 processor. Each "computer" consists of a mother board, CPU, video card, ethernet card, and our own homemade boot card (emmulates the boot disk). These nine computers must then in turn by controlled via the ethernet cards by a tenth computer. We've decided to use linux as the operating system on the tenth computer (as well as the nine slaves). The problem is we're having difficulty finding video controlling functions. Each screen is supposed to have the ability to fade, scroll, etc, as well as work together as a whole. Do you know of any locations on the Web we could look for such programming functions?" taliesen had this question to ask about basic multi-monitor support: "I'm looking into putting together a multiple monitor multiple video card system under Linux. The official word for XFree86 is that none of the current X servers support this. I was wondering if there are any patches or maybe even a commercial X server that would support two or three video cards/monitors. Preferably one AGP and one or two PCI, but all PCI would be better than nothing. Any information would be greatly appreciated."

Frag-A-Muffin asked something similar, but he mentions Xi Graphics' AccelX servers. He also thought that XFree86 did support multi-headed displays, but that you had to have two of the same card to do it.

and Aaron W. was looking for a HOWTO, and couldn't find one on this subject...(any volunteers?)

Will the folks with some answers for these please step forward? (grin!)

Stu Charlton writes " Eric Lundquist explains why watching linux grow in popularity will be the most entertaining thing in years. No factual errors, very cool piece. (this might be a ZDNet first.. hah)"

Pilchie writes "Hey, I live in a house with seven other students, we have an extra phone line for connectivity, and we are running a 10baseT network. I am configured as a proxy server for the network in Win98 (shudder!!), but would like to set something similiar up in Linux. We need: ftp, http, telnet, pop3, smtp mapping, nntp mapping, and socks 5 support. Is this possible? It also needs to be fairly simple, as I am not a Linux guru. I am running RedHat 5.0, with Kernel 2.1.122 "

Alieneyes wrote in with a summary of the Apple WWDC. Hit the link below to read up on what's happening with Jobs & Co. Some nutty stuff has been happening at Apple lately, so if you're not up to speed, read this. The following is a summary by Slashdot Reader Alieneyes

Apple WWDC Summary

I must admit I have not been a long time slashdot.org reader but I feel that I am in a great position to give a general summary of the Rhapsody/MacOS summary, having been at WWDC all week.

The Steve Jobs keynote was confusing to say the least, leaving a lot of Mac developers in utter confusion. It took multiple sessions over several days to clear the OS strategy which I have summarized below:

OSes
MacOS X will essentially be Rhapsody but for branding (ie marketing) purposes, the name will remain the same. It was also quite clear that application vendors who have current legacy code gave tremendous resistance to the absolute switch to YellowBox, rendering their current applications effectively dead, which gave rise to Carbon (see below). Rhapsody and MacOS X WILL converge at some future date into a cohesive OS to which most applications should move seamlessly.

YellowBox, Carbon, BlueBox
The YellowBox is a BIG part of MacOS X. It is the Apple recommended development API for all new projects, especially cross platform ones. The way this works under MacOS X is that it is an "application environment", basically a system DLL, as is Carbon and as is the legacy environment (a boxless BlueBox). The Carbon API as stated before will take advantage of the new multi threading, protected memory, etc, while all boxless BlueBox applications will exist in a single process.

BSD
BSD support will exist in MacOS X, although hidden from the end user. Sockets will apparently be in there and OpenTransport should make an appearance although probably layered on the socket interface.

I see Rhapsody as a release to help keep the NeXT developers on board since there is a good (relatively speaking) business presence they have built. It will also be a test bed for new technologies for MacOS X.

There is also some really cool low level stuff that can be done for Rhapsody/MacOS X like writing plugins for the VFS and custom memory paging routines.

I trust this clears things up!

Alieneyes wrote in with a summary of the Apple WWDC. Hit the link below to read up on what's happening with Jobs & Co. Some nutty stuff has been happening at Apple lately, so if you're not up to speed, read this. The following is a summary by Slashdot Reader Alieneyes

Apple WWDC Summary

I must admit I have not been a long time slashdot.org reader but I feel that I am in a great position to give a general summary of the Rhapsody/MacOS summary, having been at WWDC all week.

The Steve Jobs keynote was confusing to say the least, leaving a lot of Mac developers in utter confusion. It took multiple sessions over several days to clear the OS strategy which I have summarized below:

OSes
MacOS X will essentially be Rhapsody but for branding (ie marketing) purposes, the name will remain the same. It was also quite clear that application vendors who have current legacy code gave tremendous resistance to the absolute switch to YellowBox, rendering their current applications effectively dead, which gave rise to Carbon (see below). Rhapsody and MacOS X WILL converge at some future date into a cohesive OS to which most applications should move seamlessly.

YellowBox, Carbon, BlueBox
The YellowBox is a BIG part of MacOS X. It is the Apple recommended development API for all new projects, especially cross platform ones. The way this works under MacOS X is that it is an "application environment", basically a system DLL, as is Carbon and as is the legacy environment (a boxless BlueBox). The Carbon API as stated before will take advantage of the new multi threading, protected memory, etc, while all boxless BlueBox applications will exist in a single process.

BSD
BSD support will exist in MacOS X, although hidden from the end user. Sockets will apparently be in there and OpenTransport should make an appearance although probably layered on the socket interface.

I see Rhapsody as a release to help keep the NeXT developers on board since there is a good (relatively speaking) business presence they have built. It will also be a test bed for new technologies for MacOS X.

There is also some really cool low level stuff that can be done for Rhapsody/MacOS X like writing plugins for the VFS and custom memory paging routines.

I trust this clears things up!

Andrew writes "Amoeba is an operating system designed by Andrew Tanenbaum (author of "Modern Operating Systems", among others) to treat a network of machines as one giant server. It is now free (open-source). Interesting idea; the OS has some limitations. It would be interesting to hack around on the source. The Hurd developers want Hurd systems to be able to do this. " I actually own Modern Operating Systems. Big heavy book. Lot's of good stuff. I'm kinda tempated to snag the code and take a gander. Probably have more pressing issues this weekend though.

M|U writes "MC6, annual mod music contestis finally public - go check out the homepage, and be sure to enter if you're interested and tell everyone! " Mods were always one of the more impressive things that I could do on my 286 way back when. They're still pretty darn cool now.