Slashdot Mirror

mickeyreznor writes: "TiVo and Sony have entered into a seven year deal. The deal will result in TiVo's software being incorporated into Sony's electronic products. This deal might be good for TiVo, who've seemed to have been struggling financially to date. I'll just have to see how much more sony products cost with TiVo included." This is good news for anyone with a TiVo.

Lally Singh writes: "Getting bored with the latest distribution? Or getting tired of searching for drivers for your 8 bit soundblaster (in)compatible? Then listen to one BSD user's opinion of Mac OS X. And stop complaining about the hardware. Give a Powermac or one of the portables a chance before knocking on it."

cyberassasin writes: "Yellow Dog Linux is selling PowerPC G3 and G4 computers called the 'briQ' with YDL pre-installed. I believe this may be one of the first non-Apple or -IBM machines to make the G-series of processors available. More info and specs are available at the Yellow Dog site." Terrasoft Solutions is actually the company, but they now sell both Yellow Dog Linux and these sweet-looking tiny yellow boxes built by Total Impact. Let's hope they're somewhat more succesful than the 1U servers Storm Linux announced before closing up shop.

pjdepasq asks: "I run a small but growing web site. Currently the site has optional registration (for the message boards), though we know we have a larger number of anonymous users. Is there an industry standard for calculating number of unique users based on the unique IP addresses over a period of time (1 week? 1 month?) We'd like to get a handle on the number of users we have. Sure, I know about dynamic IP addreses and ISPs like AOL which can dilute or confuse the numbers, but surely there's some benchmark calculation we can use."

DagnyJ asks: "I am an Undergraduate planning to pursue a Graduate Degree in Software Engineering and Design. The question is whether to get a Ph.D. or a masters degree. When pursuing a career in this industry, is a Ph.D. going to make much of a difference in opportunities over a Master's degree, or would it be better to get out of school fast and get some real experience?" It's an ever popular question for college undergrads in their senior year. With the change in economic climate, maybe staying in school for a few more years might not be a bad idea.

vergil asks: "I've been researching software and business method patents issued by the U.S. PTO and placing choice examples here. Recently, I stumbled upon an interesting Microsoft patent (6,175,833) filed on April 22, 1998, granted on Jan. 16, 2001 and entitled 'System and method for interactive live online voting with tallies for updating voting results.' Is anyone aware of substantially similar web polls (WhizQuest, perhaps?) that were in use before Microsoft filed for this patent and might qualify as prior art against any of this patent's claims? This nugget of intellectual property seems to cover many fundamental aspects of web-polling - such as the Slash pollbox, for example." In light of the things that can get patented these days, I'm hoping it shouldn't be all that hard to find suitable examples to bust up this one.

"The patent above appears to claim an automated, database-run webpoll that:

• Has an automatic 'authoring tool' that allows an editor to create and store polls (claim 7), including fields for question text, numbers, and answers (claim 4).
• Total votes and percentage fields for displaying poll results (claim 5).
• A 'votes table' to track users that have already voted, a "totals table" to contain vote tallies, a 'vote handler' that processes votes, and a 'survey index table' that displays either the poll questions, or results, depending on whether the user has voted (claim 1)."

Jamie and I looked into this and it appears that the Slash Poll feature does appear to be at least a partial implementation of what's listed in the patent. However it's not real clear, from what data we could retrieve out of the database, exactly when Slashdot started it's online poll. The Earliest live poll on record is titled "Corel" and is dated March 24, 1998.

Of course, the voting system has evolved quite a bit since March of '98. Our current polling system, like the patent, uses 3 tables: one table to keep track of the questions (pollquestions), one to keep track of the answers for each poll (pollanswers), and another to track the individual votes made to the active poll (pollvoters). However, back in March of '98, the system was only two tables: pollquestions, and pollanswers, with pollanswers pulling double duty as the place where the votes were counted. Duplicate vote checking wasn't implemented until the creation of the pollvoters table, waaay back in Slash v0.9, which was released in the beginning of 1999, almost a year later.

Still, as I understand it, you don't need to have prior art that's an exact implementation of a patent to break it. I think that as long as enough core ideas of a patent are exhibited in a piece of prior art, then there may be grounds for the patent to be invalidated, but I Am Not A Patent Lawyer, and unfortunately, I won't have time to contact one before this story runs.

So, is Slashdot's Poll feature enough to constitute prior art in this case?

Regardless, we're looking for other examples prior art (the more the better), to try and break yet another example of a Patent That Should Never Have Been. There is always the worry that Microsoft can begin acting in the same fashion as NCR has recently (since the patent has been issued), and start throwing lawsuits at every online poll they can find on the net.

Including Slashdot's.

Update: 03/16 07:24 PM by C :According to CmdrTaco, the poll system had it's earliest incarnations in the beginnings of Slash, way back in November of 1997, however that system wasn't SQL based, it was text file based (with judicious use of various unix tools [sed, grep, wc] to cull the voting and catch dupes). You can see a mention of the old system from this archived story from the earliest days of Slashdot...way back in November of 1997. The first SQL implementation of the poll is the March, 1998 version. And there is even more existence of online polls from Slashdot archives, including an even earlier article which mentions a ZDNet poll in the comments! Just so you know, even though the dates in the comment say 1998, they do indeed come from 1997. Blame CmdrTaco's bad code. ;)

Kupek writes: "The Washington Post is carrying a story about how simple chemicals, when in space, form structures that resemble the membranes found in all life on Earth. "This discovery implies that life could be everywhere in the universe," said Louid Allamandola of NASA's Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley. Instead of the life process happening entirely on a planet capable of supporting life, it is proposed that some of the process takes place in space."

Alex Bischoff writes: "As noted in this Politech posting, a federal district judge says it's OK to do port scans on networks. 'The court concluded that an imperceptible slowdown in performance was not damaged under the Georgia law.'" Note that this is a very specific situation; only one data point out of many that will be required to figure out how various laws apply to the Internet.

Alex Bischoff writes: "According to this NY Times Article, 3Com will release Palm OS 3.5 in the fall, but for about $20. 'Mr. Cook said that he had already heard grumbling from some Palm users about the upgrading fee and that some future releases might still be free.' ObCredit: PalmStation." (Free registration, worth every penny.) I wonder if this is a way to sell more (new) Palms?

Alex Bischoff asks: "At work, I'm forced to suffer in my cubicle with overhead fluorescent lighting. So, I've given some thought to building a "roof" to block out that light, at which point I could use my own incandescent lighting to light the area (or perhaps an Eclipse Computer Light). Anyhow, at first I was going to just drape a sheet across the top of the cubible walls, and weigh them down somehow. But, after some thought, I'm thinking that might be too low, as the cubicle walls are only about five feet high (so would "stilts" for the sheet work?). So, has anyone built a 'cubicle roof' before? Any ideas on how to go about this?" Maybe a 'cubicle tent' would be more appropriate here? Especially for those cubicle warriors who are unusually tall.

Alex Bischoff asks: "I will likely be buying a cell phone within the next six months. And, while there seem to be half a million sites reviewing hardware, I can't find even one that does reviews of cell phones! Now, I've tried Google, of course, but all I can find are cell phone service providers and reviews on "super cell phones" -- that is, cell phones with built-in PDAs and such. I already have a Palm Pilot, so all I want is a "regular" cell phone. Can anyone recommend any sites that review cell phones, or offer his/her opinions on brands to buy and features to look for? "

Chad asks: "I am looking into doing so molecular modeling on Linux platforms because they are cost effective. After running some tests, I find errors, albeit small, in the results as compared to similar tests on SGIs or SUNs. I have heard about this in the past when talking to some professors but I never thought much about it until now. Knowing that errors propagate and grow (especially after weeks of computation), I want to know what I can do to avoid problems with the math library. Is it a problem? Can it be fixed? Am I over reacting?" Can anyone offer up some information on this? Has anyone actually stressed tested libm.a?

Silverpike writes "The Boston Globe is running an article about how life really is in Silicon Valley. Why would you want to live in a place where you live like a pauper on a great salary? This is the first time I've seen this in print, despite the fact that engineers/IT people have felt this for several years. " I read a recent Rolling Stone piece on much of the same issue - how much it costs to live in the Valley. It's an incredible place to be, but it's also more expensive than almost anywhere.

According to an Australian official, the CEO of Lotus Development Corporation believes:

Industry has no issue with online content regulation. The industry endorses content regulation.

The context is Australia's new system of dumbing the net down for children; here, the words "content regulation" mean simply: "censorship." An excerpt follows.

Senator Alston, Australia's Minister for Communications, is still working to sell Australia's censorship law, which was passed in June and takes effect on January 1st. Essentially the entire continent's internet will be rated like movies, with teeth. Unless something is done before January - which looks unlikely - it will be the worst trampling of net liberties by a Western democratic nation.

One of the compelling arguments against Australia's plan is that it will slow or halt the technology industry - halting progress means losing venture capital and slowing an entire nation's economy; nobody wants that. So Senator Alston has been looking for evidence to the contrary, and in particular he hopes to convince people that the industry itself supports the plan.

In the excerpted speech below, given on September 30, he recalls a conversation with Jeff Papows, CEO of Lotus, and claims Papows voiced support for the plan. (Note that Alston also claims support from Yahoo. Yahoo denies this, but Lotus has not, and had no comment at press time).

The industry itself accepts that there should be these codes of practice and this form of regulation. We have been trying to negotiate it for the last three years with the Internet Industry Association. Their problem is that there are these maniacs - these electronic frontiers outfits - running around stirring up trouble, using quaint expressions and feeding lines to that woman from the Civil Liberties Union [Nadine Strossen] who then gets out there, gets a good run and says that we are global village idiots. This is just a low-grade political campaign. I do not find industry opposing this approach.

I was fascinated when I was in Silicon Valley about two months ago. I waited for industry to raise it, because it was at the height of the furore. It was just after the legislation had gone through and I was doing the rounds of all the IT companies in the valley. I waited for them to raise it with me. The only people who ever raised it with me were journalists who were saying, 'Isn't this a big problem?' I replied, 'Why it is a big problem?' They said, 'It is because it is getting media coverage. It is coming out of Australia. Your Senator Lundy is faxing the New York Times and saying, "Isn't it disgraceful?" and Electronic Frontiers Australia is calling for the minister's resignation. Isn't this an issue?' It is an issue for the media, because it is new, exciting and a lot of fun, but it was not an issue for the industry.

The only people who raised it with me on that visit were Yahoo who thought it was a good idea. I recently saw the president and CEO of Lotus, which is a major player. He was out visiting Australia. Again, I waited for him to raise it with me and he did not. Over the years I have seen a lot of these people and none of them have ever raised it. I thought I might as well ask him what he thinks. His answer was, 'Industry has no issue with online content regulation. The industry endorses content regulation.' In other words, all of the responsible players - and most of these people have kids of their own - do not for a moment want to see the anarchy that is prevailing at the moment.

Lotus' support for this plan comes as a surprise to those who remember that the company was founded by Mitch Kapor, later a co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Silverpike writes "Cicso and IBM have announced that they will now partner on networking technologies. All existing IBM networking equipment will cease development and maintain support. Cisco gets IBM networking patents and preference on all new silicon devices. IBM Global Services will now also sell Cicso products. " Lotsa money exchanging hands-2 billion. Cisco starts to use more IBM custom chips, while IBM sells Cisco stuff.

Alex Bischoff writes "According to this article, SAFE (the Security and Freedom through Encryption act) has been rewritten to be more law enforcement friendly. 'The House Armed Services Committee voted 47-6 Wednesday to replace an industry-endorsed encryption bill with substitute legislation drafted by law enforcement advocates.' " And for once, it looked like the US Gov't was going to get a /clue/ about crypto.

Josh Baugher writes " A 100 megabit ethernet card with a TCP/IP stack built in. They claim to be able to do 9 megabytes/second with only 2% CPU load (compared to 4.5 megabytes/second at 98% receiving CPU load using Windows NT TCP/IP ( read about this on "geeks" mailing list.) "

Josh Baugher wrote a line to point us over to this Wired article. Sun has backed off the original plan to have Java submitted as an open standard to the Internation Standards Organization. Sun and the ISO have been arguing over things, because the ISO is a bit less then happy with having one company retain control of the technology.

Alex Bischoff writes "This article gives a good bulleted summary of all the rules theatres have to follow in order to show Star Wars Episode 1. My personal favorite: "Theaters can begin playing the two-hour, 11-minute film at 12:01 a.m. on May 19."" Thats 12:01 GMT, right?

Josh Baugher sent us a link to a book (that none of you ought to buy!) over at Amazon. By our good buddy Bill Gates, but Check out that List Price. So you thought he got rich simply by enforcing a monopoly on the computer industry! Update: 03/23 01:15 by CT : Doh! Its a set of 24 books- so its only $40 a book. Practically a bargain. Go pad Bills pocket if you like.

Josh Baugher wrote in to say that Feed is running a special issue on free software. Includes bits with RMS, ESR. More is coming, including bits from the GNOME boys and Larry Wall. Nice little page.

Aaron Tunnell writes "Once again Microsoft has used Be and BeOS as a answer for the governments continued attack on the software giant, Be has had enough and in a public statement reaffirmed that it is not marketing nor does it strive to be a Microsoft replacement, but a niche market product for digital media creation. It also said that it would like Microsoft to stop its continued references to Be as a rival to the OS giant. Read more link "

Josh Baugher wrote in telling us that the Supreme Court on Monday left intact a decision saying that mathematical algorithms used in computer programs can be patented The judges were actually refering to a formula used in a particular domain. Am I the only one that worries about everything becoming owned by the wealthy 2 percent of people?

Josh Baugher writes "Big Monitors Go Flat Mitsubishi and Viewsonic offer big-screen monitors with truly flat CRTs. Finally vendors have truely flat screens. (and they mention a nifty 18" lcd display at bottom of article)." CRT won't be dead any time soon at this rate- the prices are reasonable for the 22" screen.

Josh Baugher wrote in to tell us that the January 1999 Issue of the Linux Gazette is now out. Articles on Samba, booting Linux with the NT Boot Loader, printing and more.

Josh Baugher writes " Reverse Engineering the LEGO RCX Really interesting notes from a talk on the reverse engineering of the LEGO RCX. Gives an idea of how reverse engineering is done. "

Josh Baugher writes " Gecko Changes Everything Excellent article on Netscape's new browser. " That about sums it up.

zootsuite writes "Interesting article about the changes about to take place on the public telephone network. Also includes reference to a linux based telephone. Pretty interesting stuff. "

Josh Baugher wrote in to say that Salon now has a swell Index of their articles on Free Software and Open Source. It includes several articles that have been mentioned here, several others that weren't, and even the one on Slashdot. Worth checking out if you've got time to read.

Josh Baugher writes "Got this from Jon Callas's "The Eristocracy" mailing list.... Russian Boran Orbital Space Shuttle, 1/4 size of US Shuttles! One of two of five remaining. Has space for One-man seat. Three have been scraped. One other is in Moscow Aviation collection, the other Is at Edwards Air Force Base Warehouse. Only Boran-5 and the other in Moscow made successful Orbital flights. There are only TWO LEFT in existence! This one is complete and has NOT been gutted or parted out. Boran-5 must find a Home. Please find him a big front yard. Great for display in front of Airports, Observatories, Planetariums, and Colleges! Phone questions: 818-766-6858(ROSS) " Ok I laughed.

Rob Kaper sent us a link to something you might have missed on Freshmeat. It's a nifty site that is tracking Server uptimes. El wrote in to send us a link to "Penguin Lust" which I found silly enough to post. Josh Baugher sent us a link to the so called Christmas Document that you might find amusing. Quazi sent us a link to a ZDNet IE5 Review that normally wouldn't deserve a glance. But apparently a Slashdot fan was involved. Or just as likely, they wanted some hits and figured that this publicity might send some clicks their way *grin*. iota wrote in to send us a link about Mexico using Linux in schools and saving themselves over a hundred million bucks in the process. Mark Woon sent us a link to a funny BMW ad poking fun of MS. Lastly, worth noting (and based on the submissions box, and my msglog, a lot of you did) Red Hat has updated their website with a cleaner, and frameless design. Joy!

Josh Baugher wrote in to send us a link to a wired article where you can read about the recent NYSE Computer Crash that halted trading for an hour. So folks, are we to reliant on computers?

Josh Baugher writes "Applixware 4.4.1 for Linux New version of Applixware has Office97 filters, Y2K compliance. " "They" always say its about the apps. Applix is definately making that happen.

Craig Sanders sent us a link to an article about (surprise!) Linux called The People's Revolution, which is a front page story from the IT pages in The Age, Melbourne's biggest newspaper. Mike_Miller wrote in to say that Rob Kennedy (of linux-howto.com fame) is starting a monthly magazine called Ext2 about (surprise) Linux. Josh Baugher wrote in to say 32 Bits Online is now changing their focus to be a (surprise) Linux oriented site. And lastly, mholve has written a nice bit on Advocacy for (surprise!) Linux.

Josh Baugher sent us a link to a Linux Gazette article called The Proper Image for Linux. And he says "Here is a great article. The author took a survey of all of the current kernel contributers. Asked them about their education, experience, current use, motivations and quality. Very interesting read. " Hopefully this will do much dispell the immature hacker myth that seems to be floating around out there.

Josh Baugher wrote in to send us a link to an article that talks about CBS unveiling HDTV on a football game on Nov. 8. It's only in New York, and its only Football, but its a start.

Josh Baugher wrote in to tell us about a zdnet article about Internet 2 broadcasting surgery. It's good to know that Internet2 is still progressing. We really just need infinite bandwidth and infinite IPs. I2 & IPV6 take us one step closer to both of those goals. The article isn't anything spectacular, unless maybe if you're a doctor, but I just like knowing that more bandwidth is coming before I die.

Josh Baugher wrote in to say " Intel's chairman says he has seen the future of computing " Yes.. you heard it right. Andy Grove says that Imac is a lot what computers in the future will be like. " All I know is that they look even better candidates to be fish-tankized. Anyone got extra Macs they wanna send for fish tank conversion? We'll make a story out of it-send me mail here.

Josh Baugher wrote to tell us that Connectix, creaters of the QuickCam has sold said division. The division has been sold to Logitech for about 25$US million. Anyone know any more of the details?

John Murray sent us this techweb article about ISPs being threatened with legal action. Typically they just give out user information rather than go to court. I'm curious how prevalent this is. Has anyone experienced it? Does this matter? Should we care?

Josh Baugher wrote in to tell us that yesterday's NPR Radio show on alternative operating systems is now available online. And for those with bandwidth, they can also listen to the real audio version.

Josh Baugher wrote in to tell us to read about a "Really cool project where scientists have been running a computer simulation where they have pretty much recreated the universe. They let the simulation evolve, and have discovered results similar to what our universe is like. "

Here's a challange for everyone out there: Rob Williams has a a Sparc Station without a CD ROM drive, and asks "How do I remote boot and install SunOS 4.1.4 on an OSless Sparc from a machine running Linux? The RARP and bootparm stuff sounds doable, but how do you layout the tftp directory and exports to allow a full install of SunOS on the Sun disk? Is the SunOS disk even fully readable by Linux? Are there other considerations for serving diskless client SunOS machines from a linux box?" (Note:If you have a question for Slashdot, send them to Cliff Wood. Don't be shy!)

Too much good stuff sent in today. W. O. Frobozz sent us a link to User Friendly, another cool geek comic strip. Josh Baugher writes "Jenni of JenniCam fame is going to be interviewed on the 10:00 Fox5 news (out of Washington, D.C.) tonight. " And finally, Kory Lasker sent us a link to the mp3mobile which has been updated to include a bit more info for those who are as envious as me.

Is it just me, or has today been looong as heck? Allright, first off, the Slashdot Q&A thing is still coming, and we have a (ahem) Victim to start routing questions. Contact Clifton Wood with your questions. Linux, or other. Easy or Hard, Bring it on. We'll post it, and let the Slashdot Readers try to answer it! Next, Sam Smith sent me A Psion 5 Review thingee. It's funny and interesting if you need a distraction. Lastly, Matthew Miller Sent us a link to some interesting info about MacOS 10.

Alex Bischoff sent us a link to Trivial.net where you can take nerd trivia challanges. When I went through, I was asked things about programs ranging from Eliza to Win95 to Emacs. It's pretty varied, but a lot of you will be saddened to discover that a lot of the questions are fairly ancient history, but there are enough cool questions for nerds of all ages.