Slashdot Mirror

D3 writes: "The Washington Post has an article on what may be the first cyborg. The article also lists some other pretty cool stuff going on. Soon we'll also be able to relieve ourselves on a microchip to test for cancer as well." I'm still waiting for the spring leg implants that let me leap buildings, but this is a good first step. The eel-robot has been on before, not so some of the other things.

D3 writes: "The Washington Post has an article on what may be the first cyborg. The article also lists some other pretty cool stuff going on. Soon we'll also be able to relieve ourselves on a microchip to test for cancer as well." I'm still waiting for the spring leg implants that let me leap buildings, but this is a good first step. The eel-robot has been on before, not so some of the other things.

westfirst writes "The Washington Post has a front page story on those nice young boys in the food court from 2600. Here's one choice sentence: "Patrick thought 2600 would teach him how to hack. Instead, it taught him about job hunting, stock options and business plans." The press and the government were wrong along. 2600 isn't about learning how to launch the nuclear missiles at that fascist gym teacher-- it's about working hard and getting ahead. So, is 2600 better off with a reputation as Wally Cleaver or Eddie Haskell?" All I know is that it's good to see positive coverage of hackers/hacker culture.

Epona writes: "The Washington Post has an article about cloning genetically altered pigs. They were cloned by the same company that cloned Dolly a few years back, and they hope to eventually use the pigs for organ transplants." Xenotransplantation isn't exactly new, but it's been out of public view for a while. (Cliff the Ask Slashdot guy lives in the same town; hopefully he's not looking for a new heart, though.)

Epona writes: "The Washington Post has an article about cloning genetically altered pigs. They were cloned by the same company that cloned Dolly a few years back, and they hope to eventually use the pigs for organ transplants." Xenotransplantation isn't exactly new, but it's been out of public view for a while. (Cliff the Ask Slashdot guy lives in the same town; hopefully he's not looking for a new heart, though.)

pillageplunder writes: "A story in today's (13 Apr 01) Washington Post provides a link to the Hubble telescope repository for images taken through the Hubble. In a word, BREATHTAKING! Story link here. Link to actual Website here." Oddly enough, looking through our story archive we've posted a number of stories with Hubble photos that came from here, but never just said, hey, here's the whole archive. Well, here it is.

Delbert Matlock writes "The Wasington Post is running a story which hasn't yet been picked up by the other major space news carriers regarding the possibility of the Air Force taking over the X-33 program. For those who don't remember, the X-33 was a NASA program to build a single stage to orbit spacecraft. After Lockheed ran horribly over budget and behind schedule, NASA decided to can the program earlier this year. Apparently, the Air Force sees potential in this design of craft for a weapons delivery system."

carlie writes: "Ever wonder who's taking care of the 'National Kilogram'? Have a 40 foot structure you need tested to 12 million pounds of pressure? How about a 6 foot aluminum sphere with microwave plasma lamps called the 'Black Ball of Sunlight' to check that new polymer for photodegradation? The online version of the Washington Post has an article about the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, where all this and more occur daily."

carlie writes: "Ever wonder who's taking care of the 'National Kilogram'? Have a 40 foot structure you need tested to 12 million pounds of pressure? How about a 6 foot aluminum sphere with microwave plasma lamps called the 'Black Ball of Sunlight' to check that new polymer for photodegradation? The online version of the Washington Post has an article about the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, where all this and more occur daily."

rizzo420 writes: "Looks like NASA is returning to Mars according to this article in the Washington Post. The main objective for this mission is to map the planet to gain a better understanding of the mineral makeup, and as usual, to determine if it is possible that life ever existed on Mars. Overall, it's a pretty interesting read. The article goes into a little detail about the instruments that will be used in the mapping of the Martian surface."

rizzo420 writes: "Looks like NASA is returning to Mars according to this article in the Washington Post. The main objective for this mission is to map the planet to gain a better understanding of the mineral makeup, and as usual, to determine if it is possible that life ever existed on Mars. Overall, it's a pretty interesting read. The article goes into a little detail about the instruments that will be used in the mapping of the Martian surface."

This is, I hope, the last Mir story we'll be doing for a long while. Mir's dead. Controllers gave the de-orbit command at 12:08 AM EST, and it apparently came down just before 1 AM EST. Lots of stories out there, here are just a few: Space.com | AP | BBC. Remarkably, pieces of Mir are already being auctioned on Ebay. More information below.

Space.com is giving the splashdown time at 12:58 AM EST, which seems to agree with what everyone else is saying. Unless I can find a more precise time, I'll go with that.

Mir stats: first piece launched Feb. 20, 1986. Returned to Earth Mar. 23, 2001. Total orbits: 86,331 (that's a Trivial Pursuit question in the next edition, guaranteed). Longest stay: 438 days, Cosmonaut Valery Polyakov, currently the record-holder for longest stay in space. Debris footprint: 120 miles by 3,600 miles, centered around 44 S latitude and 150 W longitude.

Jacek Fedorynski took a look at Guess When Mir Will Splash and drew up this nice histogram of the guesses. He also notes that the median guess for Mir's return to Mother Earth was 2001-03-19 10:11:01.

Good guesses:

• 2001-03-23 02:02:02 - looks like 'cowkiller' is our champion Mir-guesser
• 2001-03-23 04:07:33
• 2001-03-23 04:27:42
• 2001-03-23 04:37:28
• 2001-03-22 21:37:19
• 2001-03-22 21:21:21
• 2001-03-23 06:12:25

There's a strange, somewhat funny story in The Washington Post today about how technology is probably going to keep outstripping people's ability to deal with it for many decades to come. It's a long piece, but please bear with it to the end; that's where Jaron Lanier (who some credit with inventing the phrase "virtual reality"), whimsically suggests that, in exchange for being granted U.S. copyright protection, commercial software publishers should have to pay users $1 every time their product screws up. "Instead of hunting down people who smoke pot," Lanier says, "they'd be hunting down people who sell business software that crashes. They'd owe people a buck or go to jail. That's what Washington should be doing."

There's a strange, somewhat funny story in The Washington Post today about how technology is probably going to keep outstripping people's ability to deal with it for many decades to come. It's a long piece, but please bear with it to the end; that's where Jaron Lanier (who some credit with inventing the phrase "virtual reality"), whimsically suggests that, in exchange for being granted U.S. copyright protection, commercial software publishers should have to pay users $1 every time their product screws up. "Instead of hunting down people who smoke pot," Lanier says, "they'd be hunting down people who sell business software that crashes. They'd owe people a buck or go to jail. That's what Washington should be doing."

Johnny Mnemonic writes: "The Washington Post is running an story about a one-day Internet career. The guy quit his previous job, started a new job at 9:00--and was laid off by 5. Not sure whether to laugh or cry, but he probably holds the record for Internet flameouts. Isn't this how "Secret of My Success" started?"

Several folks have submitted a variety of stories proclaiming that Napster has been given 72 hours to remove copyrighted materials from its servers. Meanwhile, websites are cropping up everywhere to encode filenames to simple things like Pig Latin, as well as more complicated stuff. No doubt open-source Napster clones will have that built in within a few days.

Mister Kurtz writes "The Washington Post is reporting that some lawmakers are taking notice of the music industry's extraordinary reticence towards distributing music online. Their solution? Take away some of their copyright privileges. In particular, it was suggested (by Orrin Hatch, no less) that the government create a compulsory license which would allow music to be sold online without the record label's permission. Of course, music executives are "vehemently opposed" to any such license. Check out the story here."

Mister Kurtz writes "The Washington Post is reporting that some lawmakers are taking notice of the music industry's extraordinary reticence towards distributing music online. Their solution? Take away some of their copyright privileges. In particular, it was suggested (by Orrin Hatch, no less) that the government create a compulsory license which would allow music to be sold online without the record label's permission. Of course, music executives are "vehemently opposed" to any such license. Check out the story here."

Nick pointed us to this AP story about self-healing composites, fibrous materials with integrated, fungible glue capsules - so that each stress which breaks fibers also breaks the glue capsules to repair those fibers. Very cool stuff, especially if they could make the glue set fast enough to repair in "real time". The Washington Post has another article about the same thing with a bit more detail.

John Thacker was the first to submit this news about American publishing companies preparing to wage war on the idea of reading books for free. You see, libraries loan books, and publishers don't get paid -- that's stealing. And libraries even do inter-library loans -- that's stealing too. "We," says Schroeder, "have a very serious issue with librarians."

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."

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."

An Anonymous Coward asks: "Following in the as-of-yet legally uncontested footsteps of the City of Honolulu, it looks as if Fairfax County, Virginia might be adding ad banners to its official government site, according to this article on the Washington Post's website. In addition to first amendment concerns, current ad banners are designed to imitate GUI elements and could confuse a lot of citizens - what is Slashdot's take on the whole 'govads' concept?" While I understand that every city government appreciates an extra source of revenue, there are appropriate places for it, and inappropriate places. I feel a City Government's main Web site should be a banner-ad free zone. How do you feel?

An Anonymous Coward asks: "Following in the as-of-yet legally uncontested footsteps of the City of Honolulu, it looks as if Fairfax County, Virginia might be adding ad banners to its official government site, according to this article on the Washington Post's website. In addition to first amendment concerns, current ad banners are designed to imitate GUI elements and could confuse a lot of citizens - what is Slashdot's take on the whole 'govads' concept?" While I understand that every city government appreciates an extra source of revenue, there are appropriate places for it, and inappropriate places. I feel a City Government's main Web site should be a banner-ad free zone. How do you feel?

A reader writes "The Air Force recently performed a war game set in the year 2017 featuring space warfare, according to this article in the Washington Post. Between hypothetical 'red' and 'blue' countries, which the article conjectures to be China and US, "...the game assumed that the heavens will be full of weapons by 2017. Both Red and Blue possessed microsatellites that can maneuver against other satellites, blocking their view, jamming their transmissions or even frying their electronics with radiation. Both also had ground-based lasers that could temporarily dazzle or permanently blind the optics of satellites.""

The Washington Post describes how the Department of Energy and Celera have made a cozy deal whereby the DOE will assist Celera in their genome-mapping efforts, and Celera will extort billions of dollars from the rest of the world by patenting that genome.

itchyfish writes "Looks like the fight on TLDs is going to be a long one. It seems as though Congress is going to get involved. Could be a long, long time before any TLDs see the light of day."

nicadic writes: "The FCC may add a requirement to the AOL-Time Warner merger agreement that would force AOL to make its IM system interoperable with at least one other provider of instant messaging services. Have a look at the full story here (www.washingtonpost.com)" With that small concession, it looks like the merger is likely to go through.

kreinsch writes "According to an article in today's Washington Post, the U.S. Government quietly granted a license to Space Imaging, Inc. two weeks ago to allow the sale of satellite photos with half-meter resolution, as compared to the current one-meter resolution available." As the article points out, this effectively ends the monopoly the spy agencies had on this high-end imagery.

alumshubby writes "The Washington Post, undoubtedly among others, reports that the AOL & Time-Warner merger has gone through. Note that it was unianimous, and the FTC extracted a promise that the new behemoth would 'protect consumer choice.'" And, on the more amusing side check out this alternative coverage. On a more serious note, we've also got information from the FTC, and coverage from CNNfn, and ABCNews.

graxrmelg writes: " The Washington Post reports that Science magazine has made a special agreement with Celera Genomics to allow publication of an article about its research without the requirement that the raw data be made publicly available (through an NIH database), as is done with all other articles. (Celera's patent-happiness has been discussed earlier on Slashdot.) Science has put out a statement on the matter."

Chernyakov writes "The Washington Post has an article about attacks on DoD systems. According to the article, the Pentagon's chief information officer said 'The Defense Department suffered more than 22,000 electronic attacks on its computer systems in 1999 and about 14,000 in the first seven months of this year.' " Those numbers apparently count port scans too, but the article is interest, talking about many things, including the fact that they don't run any commercial software on their most classified systems for fear of backdoors. I imagine the DoD's sysadmins are a scary bunch.

Chernyakov writes "The Washington Post has an article about attacks on DoD systems. According to the article, the Pentagon's chief information officer said 'The Defense Department suffered more than 22,000 electronic attacks on its computer systems in 1999 and about 14,000 in the first seven months of this year.' " Those numbers apparently count port scans too, but the article is interest, talking about many things, including the fact that they don't run any commercial software on their most classified systems for fear of backdoors. I imagine the DoD's sysadmins are a scary bunch.

swestcott writes "This is a very interesting article in the Washington Post today about an experiment on the Viking mission to Mars apparently found life on Mars - or not."

Daemosthenes points to this Washington Post article, which reads in part: "America Online Inc. is negotiating a deal to give its long-standing nemesis Microsoft Corp. access to Time Warner Inc.'s cable-television lines in a push to meet government demands over AOL's pending takeover of the media company, according to sources familiar with the matter. The rapprochement between AOL and MSN, Microsoft's online service, is a startling reversal of form for two fierce competitors offering rival online services and instant-messaging systems." The entangling alliances here are thicker than your average EULA, too -- the story points out some of the other tendrils which tie together several of the big ISPs, including one of mine (Earthlink).

code_rage writes: "An article in the Washington Post says that some 160 employees and contractors of the CIA are being investigated for operating an unauthorized chat room. Two of those accused are "innovative, out-of-the-box, unconventional thinkers - these are essentially the hackers of the CIA, in the most positive sense of the word." The article raises issues of national security, workplace monitoring, and worker's legal rights. Although security was not compromised in this case, the prospect of unauthorized software running on secure computers might be a little troubling. The article says that senior employees have a keystroke monitor installed on their computers. The 5-day timeline demanded by The Company for response to accusations, seems to preclude the employees the ability to consult with legal counsel, given that clearances take months to be approved."

VirtualAdept writes: "The candidates' views came out in the debate last night on the issue of Internet content. Essentially it boils down to the fact that Bush favors putting a filter on all computers paid for by public money (libraries, schools, etc) and Gore favors ISPs having a 'parents' protection page every time 95 percent of the pages come up' as well as 'a feature that allows parents to automatically check, with one click, what sites your kids have visited lately.' The relevant quotes are on the third page of the Posts's debate coverage, about 1/4 of the way down on my window. Here is the start of the Washington Posts's debate coverage." Very few issues hit as close to home as this one.

VirtualAdept writes: "The candidates' views came out in the debate last night on the issue of Internet content. Essentially it boils down to the fact that Bush favors putting a filter on all computers paid for by public money (libraries, schools, etc) and Gore favors ISPs having a 'parents' protection page every time 95 percent of the pages come up' as well as 'a feature that allows parents to automatically check, with one click, what sites your kids have visited lately.' The relevant quotes are on the third page of the Posts's debate coverage, about 1/4 of the way down on my window. Here is the start of the Washington Posts's debate coverage." Very few issues hit as close to home as this one.

joabj writes: "Today's Washington Post trumpeted the delivery of the first-ever commercial-grade optic-switch, by Corvis Corp. I'm not sure how commercially viable a switch the size of a refrigerator can be, though a commercial-grade all-photonic switch is indeed, as the WP points out, a "holy grail" of the optics industry--the missing piece for the 40-80 Gbps throughput for fiber optic cable that the industry is so hungering for these days. (Now, photonic signals must be converted into electrical signals to be switched, then back into light again -- slowing transmission speeds considerably.) Unfortunately neither the article (Free reg. req.) nor Corvis' own Web site explains what the winning technology was. There are a lot of competing ideas out there on how to switch optical signals. Is it MEMs? Liquid crystals? Curious minds want to know ..."

Initially, this sounds a lot like the optical switch announced by Agilent a little while ago, but with the bonus of being ready "within a few weeks" from workaday life. (Does that mean the equipment reported as delivered is still being installed or set up?) [Updated 11th Oct. 2000 4:05 GMT by timothy:] As a few people have pointed out in comments, that free registration is pretty painless ... since it's not necessary. Better than the other way around! ;)

joabj writes: "Today's Washington Post trumpeted the delivery of the first-ever commercial-grade optic-switch, by Corvis Corp. I'm not sure how commercially viable a switch the size of a refrigerator can be, though a commercial-grade all-photonic switch is indeed, as the WP points out, a "holy grail" of the optics industry--the missing piece for the 40-80 Gbps throughput for fiber optic cable that the industry is so hungering for these days. (Now, photonic signals must be converted into electrical signals to be switched, then back into light again -- slowing transmission speeds considerably.) Unfortunately neither the article (Free reg. req.) nor Corvis' own Web site explains what the winning technology was. There are a lot of competing ideas out there on how to switch optical signals. Is it MEMs? Liquid crystals? Curious minds want to know ..."

Initially, this sounds a lot like the optical switch announced by Agilent a little while ago, but with the bonus of being ready "within a few weeks" from workaday life. (Does that mean the equipment reported as delivered is still being installed or set up?) [Updated 11th Oct. 2000 4:05 GMT by timothy:] As a few people have pointed out in comments, that free registration is pretty painless ... since it's not necessary. Better than the other way around! ;)

Logic Bomb writes: "A group of researchers at a privately-owned Massachusetts company are trying out an experiment that could help solve some of earth's problems with endangered species. An article from the Washington Post details their project to create a cloned Asian Guar using a good ol' American cow as a surrogate mother. The new guar, 'Noah,' is due to be born next month -- in other words, the project is a success. The company sees great possibilities for earth's wildlife, because as long as an appropriate surrogate mother can be found -- of the same or another species -- there is hope for any endangered animal. The next project is to bring a species of Spanish mountain goat back from extinction(!). Giant Pandas are on the schedule too."

Attack Pirate writes: "The Washington Post is reporting that Republicans in the Senate are pushing major expansion of guest worker programmer bill. The Democrats are trying to 'poison pill' the bill by giving limited rights to Hispanics who have been in the country for decades. It says Clinton might veto the bill, but he said that in 1998 but let it pass just before a fundraising trip to Silicon Valley."

Attack Pirate writes: "The Washington Post is reporting that Republicans in the Senate are pushing major expansion of guest worker programmer bill. The Democrats are trying to 'poison pill' the bill by giving limited rights to Hispanics who have been in the country for decades. It says Clinton might veto the bill, but he said that in 1998 but let it pass just before a fundraising trip to Silicon Valley."

John Murdoch writes "Tens of thousands of programmers, database specialists, and other technical workers come to the United States each year on "H1B" visas--temporary visas for workers with in-demand technical skills. The key word in that sentence is temporary. Congress began the program six years ago, and the H1B visas have a six-year time limit--meaning that thousands of H1B holders are reaching the end of their visas, and they do not have any hope of getting permanent resident status. The Washington Post has an excellent story about the problem (click here for story as posted on MSNBC). These H1B residents have invested six years of their lives here--they have homes, families, and careers here. There is a generally acknowledged (or perhaps, generally alleged) shortage of programmers and other tech workers in the U.S. The federal government is presently working with Congress to approve legislation increasing the number of H1B workers that can come to the U.S.--while simultaneously sending currently-employed workers home. "

A long outing this time -- a litany of updates and corrections for your edification and amusement. Microsoft apps that run on Free OSes? An art contest that you won't have to go through your high-strung middle-school art teacher for (and is judged by the family Johansen)? A titanium tank which could fall from the sky? All this and more, if you're willing to read on.

You want fries with that software? If the recent report of Microsoft porting apps to *nix, intrigued you, see Paul Thurrott's piece in Windows 2000 Magazine (yes, there is such a thing). Thurrott says, in part: "I can't tell you that the port is going to produce actual products. But I can tell you that Microsoft is looking into it. No, I don't think it's smart. No, it's not what I'd do. But yes, I believe it's true. So why would Microsoft try to port its desktop applications to a platform that has absolutely no desktop market share? I've no idea." Too bad for Microsoft Linux has "absolutely no desktop market share."

Silly! The sky isn't falling! It's just sinking a little each day ... Johann writes "Here is a follow up story to last week's NY Times article which was debated here on Slashdot. The article states that 'Open water at the top of the world isn't evidence that the North Pole is melting, as an article this month in The New York Times suggested.' There are numerous quotes in the article that do suggest that global warming is fact, not fiction."

To which the dapper and elegant Party Remover adds: "The Associated Press reports that a recent New York Times story about liquid water at the North Pole was rather overstating the seriousness of the situation. It seems that the Arctic Ocean is typically 10% ice-free during the summer." And the wording of the correction is amusing, for those of us easily amused.

Getcher doo-dads! Red-hot, computer-generated doo-dads! Get 'em while they're hot, ladies and gents ... ussphoenix writes: "Regarding the /. story about Computer Makes Robot Offspring, here is an article in the journal Nature describing the system. There are also mpegs of the virtual machines and the corresponding real machines moving!"

Next week we explain the buggy-whip makers' case, too. breillysf writes: "Eric Sinrod has condensed the complicated legal issues surrounding 2600's hyperlinking ruling. You can read the article here: Upside Counsel DeCSS article. The article is concise and not filled with legal jargon. A good contribution for those with little time to understand the fundamentals of the case."

And on the DeCSS note, Jim Tyre writes "Tom Vogt, a defendant in the California DeCSS lawsuit brought by DVD CCA, has started DeArt, the DeCSS Art Contest, to further explore the expressive aspects of DeCSS. Original creations only, obviously must be related to DeCSS. The contest runs through Dec. 31, and there will be prizes. Tom and Jon Johansen are the current judges, Emmanuel Goldstein has been asked to be an additional judge. Time for Slashdotters to express their creativity in a new way." I think the most strategic contest area would be performance art. Since it must be digitized, a video recorder would be necessary, I guess. Anyone here watched Roger and Me?[grin]

And if you're feeling less artistic, don't worry: Carpman writes, "I have set up a project to create a letter to congress about the DMCA and its effects. I'm running this like an open source project, you submit, it gets reviewed, and added. Also, you can submit stand alone letters to send allong with the big letter. The page is here." Of course, note the verb sense of "carp" and this makes perfect sense ...

Oh, no, you must have misunderstood. What we meant was something totally different. thebaron writes "Here is a interesting back-pedaling by Sony in this article. One should think before opening mouth and inserting [one's] own foot, even if you're a company exec." Or perhaps especially then. As roblimo pointed out recently, big companies have trouble tying their collective shoelaces sometimes, never mind effecting their own conspiracies.

Hit that high hat, swing that hook! PenguinRadio writes: "The Washington Post notes in Tuesday's paper that Motorola has begun the necessary reporting to certain government agencies so that they can burn up the $4 billion in Iridium satellites. Interesting in this announcements is the fact that their engineers feels certain pieces of the birds may actually reach the Earth and not burn up completely. Most notably a 2 foot by 3 foot titanium fuel tank may make it through the atmosphere. Wanna bet we see it on e-bay if it does fall to earth?"

matthewd writes: "Hackers everywhere should be interested in this AP article about the gene that is the key to caffeine production in coffee being isolated. (I also found another article that's almost a year old that is very similar.) Of course hackers wouldn't even be interested in coffee sans caffeine. However, once the genetic basis for caffeine production is isolated, the obvious application besides removing it from coffee is to insert this genetic codes into the human body, so that your body can produce caffeine on it's own (perhaps even regulated by the body's circadian rhythm). Everyone ready to hack their bodies?"

There is a broader implication though: It's known that many drugs come from or are discovered in naturally occuring plants and then synthesized. If the genetic basis for these types drugs can be discovered and replicated, you could turn the human body into it's own pharmacy. Maybe synthesizing salicin internally could be as effective as taking aspirin? (and less irritating for your stomach) Or maybe if the fundamental genetic operations that synthesize chemicals/proteins is discovered (the microcode of cells?) you could even synthesize chemicals that don't occur naturally. Perhaps in the future a "pharmaceutical organ" will be hacked into the human body specifically for this purpose.

Of course there's the other side to this, where people will want to synthesize certain chemcials in opiates or marijuana ... Fun to speculate about, at least!"

tealover noted thatMSNBC has headline saying that Napster has been shut down by the judge. As of this writing, its still up, and the Napster MOTD is telling us to expect an announcement in a couple of hours. More when we got it. here is a zdnet story. I've attached the MOTD below. Update: 07/27 12:40 AM by CT : this washington post story reports that the injunction will go in effect PM friday. Boycotts against the RIAA are being discussed. This is the motd you get when you connect to napster as of 8:02 eastern:

You have probably heard in the news about the recording industry's lawsuit against Napster. The RIAA has asked a federal judge to shut Napster down, and an important hearing will be held at 2:00 p.m. PDT Wednesday, July 26 at the U.S. District Court in San Francisco.

Wednesday at 7:00 p.m. PDT we will give the Napster community a brief update of what happened in the courtroom via a live webcast that you can view at www.napster.com.

The first paragraph of the Media Notes column in today's Washington Post says, "Reporter Adam Penenburg is quitting Forbes magazine to protect Slut Puppy and Master Pimp." This pair is accused of having defaced the New York Times Web site. Penenburg wrote about them, and now Federal prosecutors want him to testify against them or at least affirm the truth of what he wrote, which Penenburg feels could open him up to further questions. It's a murky situation. What would you do if you were in it? What do you think Slashdot should do if faced with that kind of choice?

The first paragraph of the Media Notes column in today's Washington Post says, "Reporter Adam Penenburg is quitting Forbes magazine to protect Slut Puppy and Master Pimp." This pair is accused of having defaced the New York Times Web site. Penenburg wrote about them, and now Federal prosecutors want him to testify against them or at least affirm the truth of what he wrote, which Penenburg feels could open him up to further questions. It's a murky situation. What would you do if you were in it? What do you think Slashdot should do if faced with that kind of choice?

An unnamed correspondent writes: "The Washington Post has a story about the Senate Judiciary Committee meeting on the future of digital music at [this link]. Real Video's available from [The Washington Post] or on CSPAN. (I'd recommend using the CSPAN link, it appears to work better). Witnesses include Lars Ulrich of Metallica; Roger McGuinn of The Byrds; Hank Berry, CEO of Napster; Michael Robertson, Chairman and CEO of MP3.com; Fred Ehrlich, President of New Technology, Sony Music Entertainment; Gene Hoffman, Jr., Founder, CEO and President, Emusic.com; Gene Kan, Gnutella developer and Infrasearch founder; Jim Griffin, Founder and CEO, Cherry Lane Music. (A hard copy of their planned statements can be found at [the U.S. Senate Web site]." Of course, whether this is an issue that ought to be handled politically rather than in the marketplace is a question I hope the witnesses get around to in their spare moments.