Slashdot Mirror

PizzaFace writes "A study being published today in Nature predicts that global warming will doom 15 to 37 percent of plants and animals to extinction by 2050, according to various news sources. The study looked at how predicted warming would affect the suitability of the areas that particular species inhabit, and whether displaced species would be able to migrate to suitable habitat. Many of the unlucky species are being caught between the hammer of global warming and the anvil of habitation destruction." The BBC has a story about climate engineering: long-range planning on making major changes in order to reduce the effects of global warming.

aSiTiC writes "Apparently, satellite radio is finally catching on. I'm an avid internet radio listener on stations such as KEXP, BBC 6Music and SomaFM. I am looking for a more portable alternative and I wonder if eventually my favorite MP3/RM/WMA internet stations will be ever be carried on satellite."

The Wicked Priest writes "The Washington Post is reporting that culture is among Japan's leading exports." Talks about Anime, Manga, Music, Video Games and so forth. Interesting reading.

An anonymous reader submits "Earlier this year, librarian Susanne Caro was looking through an 1888 book on United States Civil War medicine and discovered a small envelope labeled 'scabs from vaccination of W.B. Yarrington's children' and signed by Dr. W.D. Kelly, the author of the book. After a bit of research, she realized they might be smallpox scabs used in early live vaccination methods and contacted various officials including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC was excited by the find, because it gives them an untreated specimen from over a century ago, and a chance to look at the disease's evolution. Although the FBI had concerns that the smallpox may have been planted in the book, most of the researchers believe the scabs are too old to be dangerous, and they fear they may not even be able to yield live smallpox."

Thanks to the Washington Post for their article discussing Nintendo's current position in the console wars. Although many of the usual points are discussed (despite Sony and Microsoft's efforts at innovation in online gaming and elsewhere, Nintendo has "...stuck to a philosophy that people who buy and play video games enjoy the familiar and care little for such gimmickry"), the piece also points to possible failure in Nintendo's current tactics ("The company proclaimed that the Game Boy Advance would be a 'Trojan horse' for the GameCube - but that Trojan horse never opened because very few game designers have figured out cool ways to take advantage of that connectivity.") The article ends with an analyst's concern that "...the game console market might be starting to move beyond what Nintendo can deliver."

The WP has a tale titled The Messages in a Battle about the recent growth of computer-generated battle scenes in movies, now that you don't have to pay all those extras. RotK clearly wouldn't have been much of a movie if the battle scenes hadn't been so good.

An anonymous reader sent in a link to 'Battery and Assault: When His iPod Died, This Music Lover Tackled Apple. Stay Tuned.' in the Washington Post. The article (good reading even if you're familiar with the situation) has Apple reps being rather callous about the issue - I think it's a fairly reasonable assumption that if you spend several hundred dollars on a gizmo, it shouldn't be "disposable". A replacement battery for my cell phone cost $10; one for my cordless phone cost $10; Apple is presumably making a good deal of money on their $99 replacements.

code_rage writes "Everett Ehrlich (capsule biography) writes an article in the Washington Post that examines Howard Dean's effective use of the internet to create a political organization. He says that Dean has created a 'virtual' party that has taken over the only remaining asset of value, the brand name of the Democratic party. His analysis refers to the theory of Nobel-winning economist Ronald Coase: that the size of an organization is determined by the cost of gathering information. Ehrlich's article makes some predictions about the effect that Dean's strategy will have on the political system." In a related story, there's an mp3 interview with Dick Morris, along with a couple of (appropriately) blog posts about it.

will writes "The Washington Post has a good review of patents in the information age. The insanity of the US patent system has been chronicled on this site numerous times in the past (for example, an FTC report on patent policy, some patents for obvious applications such as Microsoft patenting local weather, and Amazon patenting inside book searching). The Washington Post article does a good job of overviewing IP issues today, why the current US patent systems fails in the information age, and gives an example of patent extortion. Excuse me while I patent my DNA."

will writes "The Washington Post has a good review of patents in the information age. The insanity of the US patent system has been chronicled on this site numerous times in the past (for example, an FTC report on patent policy, some patents for obvious applications such as Microsoft patenting local weather, and Amazon patenting inside book searching). The Washington Post article does a good job of overviewing IP issues today, why the current US patent systems fails in the information age, and gives an example of patent extortion. Excuse me while I patent my DNA."

Fighting.Cephalopod writes "For the fourth year in a row, most federal agencies have received low grades for failing to protect their computer networks from hackers and other cyberterrorists, according to a computer security report card issued today by the House Government Reform Subcommittee on Technology." Other readers point out coverage of the report at ZDnet, Reuters (via Forbes), The Washington Post, and ComputerWorld." As mr. don't points out, the agencies receiving an actual failing grade are "the U.S. Department of Justice, as well as the departments of Energy, Health and Human Services, Interior, Agriculture, Housing and Urban Development, and State."

trystanu writes "The Washington Post reports that Google 'will stop accepting advertising from unlicensed pharmacies that have used the Internet to sell millions of doses of narcotics and prescription drugs without medical supervision', following both Yahoo and Microsoft's similar moves last month. The head of Google's U.S. AdWords branch maintains it's not just for the money but that they want their searchers to have the ads most relevant to what they're looking for. It's quite clear some advertisers are using the front door to spam Google rankings. Are some of the 100,000 advertisers now signed up for Adwords tarnishing Google's image at a delicate time?"

Ridgelift writes "The FCC will begin hearings on Monday December 1st to see if they will get involved in regulating calls placed over the internet. Since a federal court in Minnesota ruled a month ago that calls delivered over the Internet are not subject to state regulation, Qwest, Verizon and SBC have all announced their intention to deliver more calls over their data networks. "The stakes in the debate are huge. Federal and state governments could lose billions of dollars in revenue from regulatory fees if calls moved onto the Internet are no longer subject to the charges.""

PizzaFace writes "Contributions to science, law, and other scholarly fields rely for their authority on citations to earlier publications. The ease of publishing on the web has made it an explosively popular medium, and web pages are increasingly cited as authorities in other publications. But easy come, easy go: web pages often get moved or removed, and publications that cite them lose their authorities. The Washington Post reports on the loss of knowledge in ephemeral web pages, which a medical researcher compares to the burning of ancient Alexandria's library. As the board chairman of the Internet Archive says, "The average lifespan of a Web page today is 100 days. This is no way to run a culture.""

Slashback tonight with more on whether Princeton really hates open source (hint: No.), the outcome of Australia's mp3s4free.net case, the Farscape-to-return saga, and other updates to recent and semi-recent Slashdot stories. Read on for the details.

"Frankly, sometimes the guy just ... says things." An anonymous reader writes "In a recent Slashdot article, it was reported that Howard Strauss, manager of technology and outreach at Princeton University, wrote a paper bashing the open source community. Princeton has now publicly denounced this article and stated its official policy towards open source."

(I don't know that it's fair to call Princeton's response a denunciation, but the school makes clear that a) Strauss was speaking on his own, not on behalf of the university and b) that Princeton uses, likes, supports, and develops plenty of open source software.)

Oh, they're only votes! tklancer writes "Remember the voting machine failures earlier this month? Well, now Fairfax County is going to investigate the failures in (hopefully) a bit more depth. Now if they'd only start talking about adding a paper trail ..."

Lik-Sang and Microsoft, back on merely uneasy terms. D4rkUnderlord writes "For those who forgot, Lik-Sang was taken down last year by Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo for selling "Modification devices" (see CNN.com December 16, 2002). Lee sent us this article coming from a HK newspaper: [QUOTE] Have Found this tuesday in the South China Morning Post. Microsoft always get what it want Lee [/QUOTE] Read it here (scan of newspaper article). Note that lik-sang.com has been sold and put under new management last year, so nothing of these trials can or will affect lik-sang.com"

I wish people'd been this worked up about Northern Exposure. calethix writes "There's a news post over at Save Farscape regarding the return of Farscape as a 4 hour mini-series. There aren't a lot of details yet but it's supposed to air next year and has been confirmed by a solid source."

Much as I loathe and mock online petitions ... Hey, if it worked for Farscape, a television show with Alf at the wheel ... Dagrush writes "As you know, there was a slashdot story about how Saruman wa being cut from LotR:RotK. Now there is a petition to put the 7 minutes of Saruman back in the film. You can go here to add your name to the petition, as well as you comments. There are over 17000 signatures right now."

Follow the money, just don't say "terror." Best ID Ever! writes "CNN is reporting that the Policy Analysis Market is set to return, albeit without futures on 'violent events,' and without DARPA or other government involvement. As you may remember, the former DARPA project, under retired admiral John Poindexter's office, was shut down after being roundly condemned by politicians on both sides, leading to Poindexter's resignation. There seems to be a lot of interest in such 'information markets' lately, from the recently announced MIT Market to the long running Iowa Electronic Markets."

Next time they get tied to dingos. An anonymous reader writes "Australian University students Peter Tran, Charles Kok Hau Ng, and Tommy Le avoided jail when they were sentenced today. Charged with Internet piracy for running a file trade site the three copped a plea to reduced charges. Tran gets an 18-month suspended sentence and a $5,000 (Australian) fine. Ng got an 18-month suspended sentence and 200 hours community service. Le was only given community service. Needless to say the Australian record industry is complaining the three should do time, which could have meant five years behind bars. The judge ruled prison was not called for."

will writes "The North American Electric Reliability Council has released four documents concerning the August 14th power outage power outage in the North East. The blackout investigation homepage lists all NERC's documents relating to this event. Press coverage is at The Washington Post, CNN, and CBS News. The take home message: FirstEnergy did it. The are, of course, denying it." The report is also available at reports.energy.gov. Reader stinkydog writes "According to Yahoo News part of the blame for the big fizzle of 2003 lies with a failing SCADA system, GE's XA/21 power management system. 'Not only did the software that controls audible and visual alarms stop working at 2:14 p.m. EDT, but about a half hour later, two servers supporting the emergency system failed, too.' According to the product specs, it is a Unix system with X Windows."

will writes "The North American Electric Reliability Council has released four documents concerning the August 14th power outage power outage in the North East. The blackout investigation homepage lists all NERC's documents relating to this event. Press coverage is at The Washington Post, CNN, and CBS News. The take home message: FirstEnergy did it. The are, of course, denying it." The report is also available at reports.energy.gov. Reader stinkydog writes "According to Yahoo News part of the blame for the big fizzle of 2003 lies with a failing SCADA system, GE's XA/21 power management system. 'Not only did the software that controls audible and visual alarms stop working at 2:14 p.m. EDT, but about a half hour later, two servers supporting the emergency system failed, too.' According to the product specs, it is a Unix system with X Windows."

Beolach writes "The Washington Post has an article on Kazaa launching a $1 million advertising campaign promoting itself as a legitimate media distribution tool. From the article: 'The campaign is the latest push by the Kazaa file-sharing service and its parent company, Sharman Networks, to counter a multi-million-dollar legal and lobbying effort launched by music, software and movie firms convinced that peer-to-peer (P2P) services are a major source of online piracy'."

Beolach writes "The Washington Post has an article on Kazaa launching a $1 million advertising campaign promoting itself as a legitimate media distribution tool. From the article: 'The campaign is the latest push by the Kazaa file-sharing service and its parent company, Sharman Networks, to counter a multi-million-dollar legal and lobbying effort launched by music, software and movie firms convinced that peer-to-peer (P2P) services are a major source of online piracy'."

geoff313 asks: "I'm sure many of you are aware of the uproar over Nicholas Carr's article 'IT Doesn't Matter' which was published in the Harvard Business Review, back in May. While many big names in the IT world have responded already to Carr's article (Ballmer has declared it 'Hogwash' and Fiorina has pronounced it 'Dead Wrong'), Carr debated vendor executives Monday at the Comdex trade show, proving that the issues he raised are still resonaating through the industry. Do you feel that corporate IT budgets should be focusing on cutting edge technology to best serve its customer's needs, or should they focus on shoring up what they have now in order to maximize its usefulness to the customer? Some background can be found from the Washington Post, InfoWorld, and ZDNet, as well as at Nicholas Carr's site."

"For those of you unfamiliar his philosophy, it can be summed up pretty thoroughly by his statement 'Follow, don't lead,' arguing that the huge advances in the IT industry over the last two decades have erased the strategic advantage to be had by corporations for staying at the cutting edge of technology. In short, he advises 'executives need to shift their attention from IT opportunities to IT risks - from offense to defense.' Of course the head honchos at IBM and Microsoft disagreed with him, citing Wal-Mart's use of RFID tags to keep track of inventory and other forward thinking IT decisions as a refutation of his thesis.

What I am interested in is the opinion of those in trenches of the IT war."

securitas writes "The Washington Post reports on the first human to be injected with '100 trillion strands of synthetic' Ebola DNA. The DNA in the vaccine has been bioengineered by Vical to remove 'the part that triggers illness and the part that might allow the DNA to recombine with the DNA of some other virus.' The New York Times, AP via ABC and BBC all have stories about the new vaccine as the WHO reports 11 dead in a new Ebola outbreak in Congo this week. If you're interested in participating in the Ebola clinical trials, the NIH needs 27 volunteers. The study only has two. Best quote comes from the NIH vaccine center's nursing director: 'People freak out about Ebola.' Slashdot previously discussed an Ebola/HIV gene therapy."

Amy's Robot writes "The Washington Post reports that after 13 years of wear and tear, the Hubble telescope may be on the way out. NASA and some outside scientists have become involved in a heated debate about how and when to end the Hubble telescope program. Keeping Hubble in service until 2020 would require an extra maintenance visit by astronauts at a cost of at least $600 million. Some even worry the batteries could fail by 2010, since the next maintenance visit has been delayed by the Columbia accident and space station priorities. Is it worth maintaining our old friend Hubble, or should NASA let him go out in a blaze of glory?"

Pcol writes "The Washington Post reports that 'Spim,' as people are beginning to call unsolicited instant messages, is the latest sign that online marketers will seek to take advantage of other communication tools, not limiting themselves to spam or pop-up ads. The good news is that it's not easy for spimmers to send unsolicited instant messages. Instant message providers like AOL, Microsoft and Yahoo have a lot of control over their instant message networks, and since they look at their IM offerings as gateway services that help draw customers in to their paid Internet offerings, these firms are already committing resources to making sure the spim problem never reaches the same scale as spam." Even without the providers assistance, many people who use IM systems are smart enough to limit incoming messages to those from their buddy lists. Still, there must be enough of a success rate to move spimmers to continue messaging users.

Pcol writes "The Washington Post reports that 'Spim,' as people are beginning to call unsolicited instant messages, is the latest sign that online marketers will seek to take advantage of other communication tools, not limiting themselves to spam or pop-up ads. The good news is that it's not easy for spimmers to send unsolicited instant messages. Instant message providers like AOL, Microsoft and Yahoo have a lot of control over their instant message networks, and since they look at their IM offerings as gateway services that help draw customers in to their paid Internet offerings, these firms are already committing resources to making sure the spim problem never reaches the same scale as spam." Even without the providers assistance, many people who use IM systems are smart enough to limit incoming messages to those from their buddy lists. Still, there must be enough of a success rate to move spimmers to continue messaging users.

Slashback tonight with another notch up for Virginia Tech's Big Mac, another downloadable robot design for the Mini-ITX crowd, updates (both in the negative) regarding two recently speculated-upon business mergers, and more. Read on for the details.

Shooting down those trial balloons. Glitch Tybalt writes with an update to the report that German ISP T-Online might acquire AOL: "This just in from The Register: apparently the buyout wasn't really going to be a buyout, only 70%, and there haven't been any confirmed reports on this. One spokesman for T-Online said '[Such a deal] is more unlikely than likely,'"

On a similar note, gletham writes "A flurry of reports [like this one] over the past day indicated that Nokia was talking with Psion and was seeking to buy the company. This latest piece from Reuters confirms that the topic was merely a rumor and speculation gone rampant. Mind you, with Psion's stock jumping 10% and discussion on Nokia lists and forums quite brisk, you can't help but speculate that Nokia may in fact consider this in the future. The timing is very good, particularly considering Motorola's recent selloff of Symbian ownership. I can't wait to here an official report from Nokia on this one! If all works out, we may even witness a rebirth of the Psion handheld using Series 90!"

Hey, maybe they just hadn't thought of it yet ... wo1verin3 writes "Previously reported was that Fox News Considered Suing Fox's 'The Simpsons' for using a news ticker spoofing the news service. Apparently this was only satire and an apology has been issued.

'Nonetheless, "The Simpsons" (the show, not the characters) issued an apology yesterday: "Matt was being satirical and certainly there was never any issue between the show and Fox News. We regret any confusion.'"

At this rate, it'll be #1 by March! An anonymous reader writes "According to the latest round of leaked information to reach The Register, the Virginia Tech Big Mac has reached 10.28 teraflops. A solid #3 win, 'This places it behind the 5,120 processor Earth Simulator system - 35.9 teraflops - and the 8,160 processor ASCI Q system - 13.8 teraflops.'"

Hold tight, though: Elysdir points to a AP article, pointing out that "the Top 500 list will be officially announced Nov. 18, so it's not clear to me whether the #3 ranking is official or not."

A Droid You Can Build From Downloadable Plans. In this article, LinuxDevices checks out OAP, an open source droid. OAP shares the same VIA Mini-ITX mainboard as the VIA-Roboteq "PC-bot" featured in an earlier Slashdot story, but OAP's project goals seem a little more ambitious. According to the FAQ, OAP will eventually be able to 'Read your favourite news web pages or blogs aloud to you.' A personal droid that reads Slashdot aloud to you -- what more could you ask for?"

(A girlfriend?)

micromoog writes "New touchscreen voting machines caused problems last night in the suburbs of Washington D.C.. Several machines failed and had to be rebooted, and nine were actually removed from the site, repaired, and returned, in violation of election laws. The machines also failed to report their results correctly due to network problems. At least one lawsuit is pending. Interesting quote: 'County elections officials said it was the slowest performance in memory for counting votes on election night.'" Read on for more on how the current crop of electronic voting machines are faring.

Not every electronic voting machine misstep comes from Diebold; reader zznate points out that the Virginia machines came from Advanced Voting Solutions (dcw3 butts in: "The slogan on their home page really gives you a warm fuzzy: 'Helping Shape American History for over one hundred years.'"), as well as that the EFF won a decision for an accelerated court date of November 17 in their attempt to stop Diebold from shutting down sites that make the infamous memos available. Let's all hope this is the first in a series of many wins for the EFF against the Diebold folks and crappy e-voting schemes in general. Have you donated lately?"

Reader meadowreach writes points out more trouble on the other coast: "From news.com: 'As voters in California go to the polls, the state is launching an investigation into alleged illegal tampering with electronic voting machines in a San Francisco Bay Area county.' Diebold upgrades software without letting the state know? How reassuring."

Generic Guy writes "CNN is running a story about California not certifying the Diebold voting machines and instead opening an investigation into the use of uncertified systems. Maybe there is still hope for democracy in the U.S."

And from Cambridge, Massachusetts, Peter Desnoyers writes "Cambridge uses an optical scanner system, where you fill out SAT-style ovals with a pen and the election officer feeds them into a scanning machine. From last night's preliminary results on the Cambridge website:

'In two precincts at 7:55 and 7:59pm the memory cards reached capacity. To ensure that every ballot was counted , the Election Commission has decided to rerun the ballots for 9-1, Lexington Avenue Fire House and 11-3, Churchill Avenue. We expect that it will take between one to two hours.'

I interpret this to mean that they took all the paper ballots out of the box and ran them back through the reader. (with a bigger memory card?) In the mean time, voters were able to continue voting and no votes were lost."

Slashback tonight brings you word on the less-spectacular-than-advertised solar storm earlier in the week, Mandrake's response (a good one) to the problems their new release had with LG brand CD drives, more Diebold madness, and more, including a lengthy rebuttal to Slashdot's review of Eclipse in Action. Read on for the details, and check your costume in the mirror before leaving the house.

Copies files in under 17 minutes, I bet. Eug writes "The latest supercomputer list (Oct. 26) has Apple/VT's G5 Power Mac cluster at 9555 Gflops/s, which puts it into third place overall. This list is hosted here. This new score is interesting for a number of reasons, besides placing them in third place:

1. It is now ahead of the 1.5 GHz Itanium 2 cluster, which is composed of 1936 CPUs and which achieves 8633 Gflops/s.
2. On a per CPU basis, the G5 2.0 is also ahead of the Itanium 2. The G5 2.0 scores 4.52 Gflops/s per CPU, while the Itanium 2 1.5 scores 4.46 Gflops/s per CPU.
3. If one extrapolates from the score of NetworX's Xeon 2.4 cluster (2304 CPUs at 7623 Tflops/s), a G5 2.0 would be as fast as a Xeon 3.28 GHz.
4. Efficiency of the G5 clusters is now at 57%, which is considerably higher than the IBM POWER4 clusters in the top twenty. (The G5 is a derivative of the POWER4.)
5. Virginia Tech's cluster is now in shouting distance of 10 Teraflops/s, and there are still a few weeks left to optimize the system. (They've gained over 2 Teraflops/s in the last 2 weeks.
6. They have utilized only 2112 CPUs (1056 dual Power Macs), despite having supposedly purchased 2200."

eGovOS 3 cancelled due to EC funding withdrawal jaruz writes "Due to the unexpected withdrawal of EC funding for the eGovOS conference from the University of Maastricht's MERIT's FLOSSPOLS EC contract, the conference is now cancelled."

I prefer conspiracy theories, myself. MyNameIsFred writes "Slashdot recently discussed White House Website Limits Iraq-Related Crawling. It turns out The Dead Parrot Society got an explanation for their behavior. They used the unprecedented approach of asking someone at the White House. White House spokesman Jimmy Orr stated the blocking of search engines is not an attempt to ensure future revisions will remain undetected. Rather, he explained, they "have an Iraq section [of the website] with a different template than the main site." Thus, for example, a press release on a meeting between President Bush and Special Envoy Bremer is available in the Iraq template (blocked from being indexed by search engines) or the normal White House template (available for indexing by search engines). The attempt, Mr. Orr said, was that when people search, they should not get multiple copies of the same information. It was also reported that the White House recently asked the The Internet Archive to do a thorough scan of everything on its website."

My dad can beat up your burst of solar radiation. Earth survives solar storm. kurth writes "A major solar flare unleashed Tuesday punished Earth's protective magnetic field early Wednesday, but the planet and its high-tech communication systems appear to have weathered the worst of the storm."

eggfellow writes "here's an article in the WashPost about the geomagnetic storm that pounded Earth (with little disruption) [Tuesday]. What I want to know is why the predicted pounding-time was 12 hours later than actual. Can't these scientist do their math?"

Sounds like a nice feature. News.OSDir.com is reporting that Mandrake is re-releasing it's 9.2 ISOs and CDs after the unfortunate LG CD drive incident earlier this week. "The problem was that the kernel would send a FLUSH_CACHE command to the LG CD-ROM drive which would make the drive inoperable by overwriting its firmware....A new kernel (2.4.22-21mdk) has been released that fixes this problem in the kernel, although the CD-ROM devices are still not up to specification. New CDs and ISOs will be available shortly to correct these problems; they will come with the new kernel."

Maybe they should stick with safes and such. The work of the Swarthmore rebels is paying dividends, (they now have 17 mirrors of the Diebold memos set up). Meanwhile Scoop is reporting how one of the memos deals with an incident in which a single memory card from a precinct of just 600 voters managed to subtract 16022 votes from Al Gore in Florida, nearly lead to his concession of presidency. You can read more about this in Bev Harris's "Black Bov Voting" Chapter11 (PDF) also available here & here."

More on the Diebold front: cananian writes "Two students at MIT (I'm one of them) received cease-and-desist letters from Diebold today for mirroring Diebold's incriminating internal memos, which reveal (among other things) -16,000 votes being credited to Gore in Florida in the 2000 presidential election, how the vote could have been rigged by changing the audit logs or creating a manager card, etc. Students at Amherst also received cease-and-desist letters today. Diebold claims we are infringing its copyrights, but there is good precedent for the legality of the publication. The EFF has in is support: "Wendy Seltzer, an attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation [...] encouraged them to defy the Diebold cease-and-desist letters.""

... because making text cross-platform is Unamerican. David H. Rothman writes "Convert Lit, the program that lets you crack Microsoft Reader to make backups as part of Fair Use, has moved to a Polish host to escape the tyrannies of the new EU-style DMCAism in the United Kingdom and elsewhere. Meanwhile, in the wake of a new Copyright Office ruling on the DMCA, lawyer Robin Gross at IP Justice warns not to think that the DMCA peril has passed."

But how do you really feel? In reaction to our ealier review of Eclipse in Action, wobbet writes "I've started using Eclipse at work and consistently feel that there is more sophistication and power hiding underneath the obvious and wanted a book that would help me find and fine tune the goodies under the covers. I read a previous review of this book on Slashdot that prompted my purchase. If that review had not been as positive I probably would not have been so disappointed and moved to post my own review.

When I read a technical book I ask myself how well it stays on topic, how thoroughly it addresses the topic and whether it meets my expectations. In this instance I find that the book stays on topic about half of the time and that it is thorough about half of the time. Unfortunately that half of the time I really didn't care about and thereofre my expectations were unmet. To be honest - after reading the book and then re-reading the back cover I should have not even purchased the book because the objectives set forth on the back cover would have warned me that this book was not what I was looking for.

I found the first half of the book to be simply horrible. A supposed introduction to actually using Eclipse this section concentrates more on the "Agile" toolset that all competent, well-informed Java developers that care about the quality of their code, products and development process should already be using. Well, that's what all the books say anyway.

If I wanted a book on Agile tools for Java developers I would purchase Java Tools For Extreme Programming . Is it a great book? No, but it is honest about what it is - a survey of tools. Despite what Mr. Chappell says about Eclipse In Action, I did not find the authors' "...TDD evangelism, skillfully disguised as Eclipse usage instruction. ." Instead I found the first half of the book to be TDD Evangelism thinly disguised as poor Eclipse usage instructions. I did not learn a single thing about USING Eclipse that I hadn't already figured out from randomly selecting menu items over the past two months.

The second half of the book seemed to be a decent introduction to the development of Eclipse plug-ins. If I cared I probably would have found it interesting in its discussion of the API, the perspectives, views and even editors. Those of you that do care may find the second half of the book to be worth skipping the first half of the book."

Bootsy Collins writes "Microsoft has reached a settlement in class-action lawsuits filed against them by five states and the District of Columbia. Two of the six settlements have already been approved by the relevant courts. The settlements would provide $200 million in vouchers to past purchasers of Microsoft software. The vouchers can be used to purchase hardware, software, or training; suprisingly (given plaintiffs' willingness to roll over on this issue in the past), vouchers used for software need not be used to purchase Microsoft products. More on this story from the Washington Post as well as many other news sources."

phil reed writes "According to this article on Digital Spy, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has upheld a Federal Communications Commission ruling requiring that all TVs with 13-inch screens or larger must be equipped with a digital tuner by July 2007. FCC press release here (warning - PDF document). The Court specifically cited foot-dragging on the part of the industry, and noted the chicken-and-egg problem. Here's the Washington Post story." sdriver writes adds a link to CNN's coverage.

Slashback brings you updates tonight on Diebold's attempts to bring undisclosed-source, unauditable black-box voting to a ballot box near you, John Carmack's search for (rocket-fuel, not hair) peroxide, AT&T's (withdrawn) request for its customers' mail server addresses, open source goings on at Comdex, and more -- read on for the details.

Diebold Election Systems Round 2 in MD zznate writes "Looks like Diebold is not going to get off the hook so easily in Maryland after all. For anyone local, feel free to contact delegates Hixson or Hollinger to express your support. Perhaps they could even receive a copy or two (or fifty ;-) of the documents listed here."

Diebold is having an easier time at Swarthmore. yoshi_mon writes "Previously reported on /. was the Swarthmore Students Effort to keep the Diebold leaked memo's online. However that effort has been quashed by one Dean Bob Gross. To quote the dean, "We can?t get out in front in this fight against Diebold." BlackBoxVoting.com reports that '[Swarthmore College] is not willing to take a strong stand against Diebold, and is systematically disabling the network access of any student who hosts the files.'"

AT&T says Ha, just kidding! An anonymous reader writes "In an update to an earlier Slashdot article, Telco giant AT&T rushed to withdraw two notices sent to business partners and customers asking for the IP addresses of all outbound SMTP servers because of a 'human error' gaffe."

All this and cheap shrimp cocktail. blackbearnh writes "While the topic has been raised, I thought I'd mention a few other things going on at COMDEX Open-Source wise.

First off, the Open Source and Linux track has been expanded from a half-dozen sessions last year to nearly twenty this year. These will cover everything from the basics of Open Source (taught by folks like Ken Coar of Apache) to an intro to PHP led by Rasmus Lerdorf.

On the show floor, a massive 2500 sq foot Open Source Innovation Center will serve as the site for hourly talks by Open Source evangelists on business-related topics such as case studios proving the benefits of Open Source. There will also be a staffed "clinic" area where attendees can get advice on what Open Source technologies would work well in their business. There will also be install parties held at noon each day, where attendees can bring their laptops to get help installing MySQL or Debian. And lastly, a .ORG village inside the center will host representitives from more than a dozen prominent Open Source organizations, including OpenOffice and Mozilla.

Also, the COMDEX/ApacheCon exchange program continues this year. COMDEX members can get access to the ApacheCon expo floor and BOF sessions, while ApacheCon member can visit the COMDEX show floor and the Open Source keynotes. Shuttle service will link the two conventions.

James Turner
Co-Chair, Open Source, Fall 2003 COMDEX"

It's a crapshoot, eh. Dick Faze writes " Royal Bank of Canada is part of a $50 Million investment in SCO: Has our communist neighbor to the north finally flipped completely?" (We know Mr. Faze is being facetious, here ... don't we?) This is the same $50,000,000 investment deal in which some people suspected Microsoft's involvment.

Patent Office Cancels Swing Patent An anonymous reader writes "Remember the swing patent issued last year covering the method of swinging a swing? Well, the Patent Office must've taken offense at the amount of criticism it received over this patent. It initiated a reexam proceeding and after a year's worth of reexamination, they cancelled the patent on July 1, 2003."

But all the other patents are up to snuff, don't worry.

Carmack's Peroxide Troubles Over? Rob Jellinghaus writes "John Carmack's aerospace company has had problems getting enough concentrated 90% peroxide for their engines. So they have been working on mixed monoprop engines that would need only 50% peroxide, which would pretty much end their fuel troubles for good. They have had many failures, but they may have just succeeded. In his words: 'This is Very Good.'"

Remember, most of the world is still dial-up, at best. Anothermouse Cowered writes "It's a router, it's a firewall, it's a home gateway it's a... In another giant leap for the Open Source community, you can now hack on your own embedded Linux system for under $70. The source code for the ActionTEC Dual modem previously mentioned on Slashdot ('Hacking the Actiontec 56k Modem/Gateway') in September has now been released under the GPL. Downloads available here."

LMCBoy writes "Steve Ballmer recently told an industry conference that Microsoft software is more secure than Linux. PJ at Groklaw has a nice, thorough analysis of this dubious claim. She points out that not only are there vastly more Microsoft exploits reported, but that the exploits tend to be much more severe, involving remote administrator access." In related news, mhesseltine writes "According to an article from the Washington Post, in an unusually ironic twist, Microsoft has started talking smack about their own products, instead of those of their competitors. Bill Gates said of Office 'it's too hard to find things in e-mail' and described some features of Word as 'clunky.'"

LMCBoy writes "Steve Ballmer recently told an industry conference that Microsoft software is more secure than Linux. PJ at Groklaw has a nice, thorough analysis of this dubious claim. She points out that not only are there vastly more Microsoft exploits reported, but that the exploits tend to be much more severe, involving remote administrator access." In related news, mhesseltine writes "According to an article from the Washington Post, in an unusually ironic twist, Microsoft has started talking smack about their own products, instead of those of their competitors. Bill Gates said of Office 'it's too hard to find things in e-mail' and described some features of Word as 'clunky.'"

HeavenlyWhistler writes "The Washington Post reports that the FCC will make a ruling this month on whether or not to mandate that all HDTV receivers implement copy protection when a 'broadcast flag' is detected in the received television signal. Movie and TV studios are pushing for this in an attempt to limit consumers' home-recording rights. An October 8 article states that CBS, under orders from Viacom CEO Mel Karmazin, has threatened to stop all HDTV broadcasts unless the broadcast flag is approved. While the comment period on the proposal (Docket 02-230) is over, the FCC web site will still let you submit comments. The EFF also discusses this issue."

Slashback tonight brings updates on the recent Google hiccup, LookSmart and the FBI's note-snooping in the Adrian Lamo case, as well as (at long last!) a list of the theaters whose seats will soon be smooshed for far longer than usual under the weight of those dedicated enough to sit through 10 hours of Lord of the Rings. Read on below for the details.

Microsoft thinks LookSmart looks less smart. securitas writes "Internet search company LookSmart was dropped by Microsoft's MSN service today. MSN has decided not to extend its licensing contract with LookSmart beyond January 2004. The news is devastating for LookSmart since, 'Microsoft accounted for approximately 65 percent of listings revenues, and all of LookSmart's licensing revenue in the second quarter of 2003,' according to a company press release not listed on LookSmart's site. The move comes after LookSmart recently launched its own Overture-style pay-per-click service and indicates Microsoft is close to launching its new search engine technology designed to unseat Google for the search crown. All of this is against the backdrop of acquisitions by rival Yahoo. More coverage at SearchEngineWatch and a Reuters mirror at CNN Money."

They could have fixed this if they'd googled for an answer ... powerg3 writes "This follow-up, explains the Google wackiness posted yesterday. Here's the quote from the Google Weblog: '...when a spam result comes up in a search, Google not only blocks the spam, but every result after it. This means that for searches where spam results manage to rise to the top, very few -- sometimes zero -- results will be returned....It's pretty amazing that such a serious bug made it past Google's tests. It will be interesting to see how quickly it's fixed.'"

Pardon me, mum, can I borrow your hard drive? AndreL writes "The Guardian has an update about the BBC's digital archive plans. They're considering using P2P technology to avoid bandwidth bottlenecks. The bad news: because of technical, financial, and legal problems nothing will happen until 2006 at the earliest."

Please arrive in costume if at all. KTecumseh writes "The list of theaters showing the extended editions of LOTR as been revealed. You can check out the list at the official website, and before you look, pray that you live somewhere close by to take advantage of this once-in-a-lifetime experience. For those that can not make the full 10-hour saga, they are also showing the first two extended additions on different dates, but who wants to miss out on an entire theater of sweaty LOTR fans."

Shamus Arrigan asks plaintively "There is no mention of these ticket sales in any other country. Does anyone know when and where these tickets will be sold at? (Canada especially)"

Wait, are you fellas press? Dangnabbit! ccnull writes "Good news from the inquest against hacker Adrian Lamo. According to a paragraph in a Washington Post column (buried about 3/4 of the way down the story), the FBI appears to be backing off from pursuing reporters' notes in the case. Relevant quote: 'A Justice Department official says the FBI agent "acted out of turn" by not seeking approval from the U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan and Attorney General John Ashcroft's press office. "The agent did not follow standard procedures," the official says. "We're just not going to pursue it. It is the policy of the Justice Department to exhaust all other means before seeking information from members of the media."'"

Eh, what's a few orders of magnitude? Grant hayes writes: "It seems the decimal point in the Mono story you ran is being a bit ambitious. We should be reading Mono 0.28, not Mono 2.8. Check the link below as well as links there to other Mono resources; I see 0.28 throughout." Here's the Mono site -- guilty as charged. Thanks for the correction.

Decaffeinated Jedi writes "According to this Washington Post article, a federal appeals court in California has overturned a Federal Communications Commission decision that many smaller companies claim has kept them locked out of the high-speed cable Internet business. As Chris Murry of Consumers Union (publisher of Consumer Reports) notes, 'Many consumers hate their cable companies' privacy policies and their failure to deal with spam effectively. Giving consumers a choice of Internet service providers would open the door to more competition, and let people choose services with better privacy and less spam.' As noted in News.com coverage of this decision, however, FCC chairman Michael Powell plans to appeal the ruling." Reader rednaxela provides some more insight (and a link to the ruling itself), below.

rednaxela writes "The 9th Circuit today issued a decision overturning the FCC's classification of cable modem service as an 'information service,' stating instead that cable modem service consists of both an 'information service' *and* a 'telecommunications service.' Telecommunications services are classified under Title II of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, and are subject to all kinds of regulation. Information Services are classified under Title I, and are largely free from regulation. If upheld, this decision will likely require cable modem providers to open their networks to competing ISPs. Further, this is likely to derail, or at least complicate, the FCC's plans to classify DSL service (which is provided primarily over incumbent telco facilities) as a unified 'information service." Bottom line - the 9th Circuit's decision may well have preserved open access for competing ISPs on all forms of wireline networks.' Here is the 9th Circuit's ruling (PDF).

john82 writes "In an interesting and insightful article, NetworkWorld Fusion discusses how lawyers for SBC and Verizon are fighting the RIAA's attempts to monitor their customers. As we've heard before, RIAA wants the telcos to report when users download any copyrighted material. Lawyers for SBC and Verizon are fighting back. They also claim that the RIAA is trying to grant themselves powers that are outside of even the Patriot Act. Now where have heard that before? NWFusion also points out that RIAAs handwaving, threats, tantrums have less to do with protecting the rights of musicians, than with protecting the revenue stream created by an out-of-date distribution system." In other RIAA news, taped2thedesk writes "According to the Washington Post and Ars Technica, the RIAA will now contact P2P users before suing them." The RIAA's not so bad, they'll settle out of court over the phone, if you don't mind paying up instead of getting a lawyer.

An anonymous reader writes "Washingtonpost.com is running a detailed story about how new changes to the sentencing guidelines will increase jail time for most computer crime cases, starting November 1. When will the feds learn that raising penalties isn't going to deter this type of crime? The piece ends with a quote from uberhacker Kevin Mitnick saying just that."

An anonymous reader writes "Washingtonpost.com is running a detailed story about how new changes to the sentencing guidelines will increase jail time for most computer crime cases, starting November 1. When will the feds learn that raising penalties isn't going to deter this type of crime? The piece ends with a quote from uberhacker Kevin Mitnick saying just that."

An anonymous reader submits: "A replica of the Wright Brothers' 1903 flyer failed to fly yesterday afternoon at a demonstration in Chicago. Organizers blamed the measly 5 MPH winds. Kitty Hawk had 25 MPH back on December 17, 1903. IIRC, isn't Chicago the 'Windy City?'" Here's an earlier story about the various groups attempting to re-enact the Wright brothers' pioneer flight.

greenhide writes "As forecast in this story, a new Microsoft worm has indeed wriggled to the surface. The W32.Swen's claim to fame is its professional looking email advertisement that pretends to be a fake Microsoft patch. Earlier viruses have made the claim, but none of them looked this good. It appears to have infected over 1.5 million machines. "

fortheloveofjava writes "The Washington Post says here that the Senate voted 55 to 40 today to wipe out all of the Federal Communication Commission's controversial new media rules, employing a little used legislative tool for overturning agency regulations. If you signed the MOVEON.org petition, an image of part of it is visible here with sponsoring senators Senators Byron Dorgan (D-ND) and Trent Lott (R-MS)."

fortheloveofjava writes "The Washington Post says here that the Senate voted 55 to 40 today to wipe out all of the Federal Communication Commission's controversial new media rules, employing a little used legislative tool for overturning agency regulations. If you signed the MOVEON.org petition, an image of part of it is visible here with sponsoring senators Senators Byron Dorgan (D-ND) and Trent Lott (R-MS)."

Thanks to the Washington Post for their article discussing the rise of sophisticated, adult-aimed board games. According to the piece, "sales of non-electronic specialty games... have nearly quadrupled since 1995, [and] one of the fastest-growing areas, industry experts say, is the adult strategy game." But although "the specialty market is still dwarfed by mass-marketed games", excluding a few break-out specialty titles like Settlers Of Catan, the article claims that "board-game sales have always increased during economic slumps", and, "in a sign of just how hungry people are for smarter board games, adult-education programs in Fairfax and Arlington now offer classes that introduce strategy-oriented [boardgame] titles."

clafarge writes "I just read in the AP's LiveWire that, as reported by Xinhua News Agency, China has blocked 127 mail servers which it identifies as major sources of spam. Oh, happy day. They also published a list of 225 spam servers around the world just last month." Guess they're following through on this.

tetrad writes "Berkeley Breathed is creating a new Sunday comic strip, according to the Washington Post. The half-page comic strip will feature Opus the penguin from Breathed's Bloom County and Outland series, and will begin Nov. 23."

chrismg2003 writes "Nationwide universities are opening their doors to new students but closing off their network services. The Blaster worm has caused universities to take drastic actions to protect their campus networks. Universities have gone as far as shutting down their entire resnet network and bringing it back up dorm-by-dorm after each computer has been certified worm-free. The ICMP ping requests alone have brought down my university's resnet multiple times and we are scrambling to clean the worm from all computers before it forces us to follow suit with other universities."

weileong writes "This should be of especial interest to fans of Frank Herbert's Dune (or maybe only those who preferred House Atreides) - a genuine, flexible, flapping-capable winged aircraft (by which I don't mean passenger-carrying. Yet.) has been produced by the University of Toronto's Institute for Aerospace Studies and SRI International (Washington Post article, free reg required). Advantages include everything from low speed control to efficiency. Once these things really hit "real world" usage, the V-22 Osprey really HAS no reason to exist (and all the army personnel at risk of dying in one should rejoice)."

Henry V .009 writes "The FBI will be arresting an 18 year-old in connection with MS Blaster, reports The Washington Post." According to the article, the teen was witnessed testing the worm, and then turned in by a bystander. It's also worth noting that this is merely one of the Blaster variations. Hope whoever it was had fun, because a world of pain is waiting in store now.

Henry V .009 writes "The FBI will be arresting an 18 year-old in connection with MS Blaster, reports The Washington Post." According to the article, the teen was witnessed testing the worm, and then turned in by a bystander. It's also worth noting that this is merely one of the Blaster variations. Hope whoever it was had fun, because a world of pain is waiting in store now.

Circuit Breaker writes "A Washington Post article says Microsoft Windows is insecure by design. Quote: 'Between the Blaster worm and the Sobig virus, it's been a long two weeks for Windows users. But nobody with a Mac or a Linux PC has had to lose a moment of sleep over these outbreaks -- just like in earlier "malware" epidemics. This is not a coincidence.'"