Slashdot Mirror

danimlp writes "An article at SearchEngineWatch states that Google and Yahoo have become as almost parts of the operating system, a 'layer' above Linux, Windows or Mac OS. Another article at Kottke.org says that Google is building a a huge computer with a custom operating system that everyone on earth can have an account on. Some people predicts that, after Gmail, Google could start a new instant message service or even its own electronic currency."

Slashback is back, with more this time around on NASA's G5 benchmarks, an in-depth look at the Sobig.E virus, an update on the Internet Book List (growing rapidly), the fate of both the Microsoft-purchased Virtual PC and one very unlucky sperm whale, and more. Read on for the details.

A good excuse to file purchase orders, too. Eug writes "Writing in this Ars thread, Craig Hunter of NASA gives details about his much-quoted dual-G5 Power Mac benchmarks listed here. This should answer some of the questions posed around the net about the methodology and potentially the validity of his benchmarks."

The lines between viruses and spam is thin enough already. Joe Stewart writes "There have been a lot of news stories lately about how Sobig and spam are tied together. I actually revealed this in a paper two months ago. Now with the widespread Sobig.e, it seems to have become a topic again. However, the major antivirus companies have once again left out the whole story - most of them currently rate Sobig.e as 'low damage.' This is because they haven't fully understood how the real payload of Sobig.e is delivered. I've written a followup paper describing the entire mechanism that Sobig.e uses to facilitate spam, identity theft and bank fraud. Sobig has evolved, and it is much harder to stop than before."

Is this the beginning of a long goodbye? inertia@yahoo.com writes "Microsoft has updated their Mactopia Web Site to include a section on Virtual PC. It's taken them since February 2003 to do this. On the site, they mention, 'In August 2003, Virtual PC for Mac will be available through standard Microsoft channels of distribution.' So it looks like they aren't killing it after all."

Simplicity itself is a nice ideal. webword writes "Building Accessible Websites by Joe Clark is now available online. As you might recall, Joe was interviewed on Slashdot back in December. Good stuff if you care about accessibility."

Not yet billions and billions served, but getting there. nzilla writes "The Internet Book List, which announced its creation earlier this year on /. has now reached 10,000+ entries and is still going strong. The Internet Book List (IBList) strives to be the IMDb of books. IBList is maintained exclusively by volunteers around the world."

Girlfriends drive strange endeavors. ceejayoz writes "This interesting article on MSNBC.com details the Degree Confluence Project - a project to gather a photographic record of the points on Earth where latitude and longitude lines meet. The article has links to some of the more interesting points. The project's website also has an interesting map showing all the completed confluence points."

We mentioned this project quite some time ago, and it's progressed quite a bit since then.

Uh, sir, you have some blubber on your collar there. Scoria writes "Chilean scientists have determined that a 12-meter mass of flesh discovered recently on a Pacific beach is actually a sperm whale, not an obscure 'giant octopus' as many researchers speculated. Scientists performing research at the Museum of Natural History in Santiago were the first to develop this conclusion after observing the presence of dermal glands unique to the species."

Code that pays tribute to the money in television. mondainx writes "Following(?) in the footsteps of Linksys, Tivo has made their source available for versions 2.0 through 4.0. Get the GPL source here. Sweet!"

WebWord Usability writes: "The Technology Source is running an interview with Phil Long. It is mainly about open source software and open courseware development at MIT (e.g., Open Knowledge Initiative). If you're interested in this stuff, CREN will be streaming a discussion with Vijay Kumar and Phil Long on Thursday 7-March-2002 at 4PM EST. Still want to know more? Syllabus Magazine ran an article on OpenCourseWare in January 2002."

webword writes: "Dr. Dobbs is running a story by Ron Minnich on implementing private namespaces for Linux to solve problems in both distributed and cluster computing. This topic hasn't received as much attention as it should. I'm glad that someone published something intelligent and worth reading."

WebWord writes "The title says it all. This really is the best damn guide to setting up a LAN party I have ever seen. They cover all the details from equipment to food to network protocols. Excellent!"

webword writes: "Joel Spolsky is running an editorial where he claims that writing really good software takes ten years. (Yes, TEN years.) He explains several mistakes that are made by companies that don't understand his ten year principle. The mistakes are backed up with some interesting industry examples, so it isn't just vapor. Unfortunately, he doesn't mention any OSS/FS examples, but I'm sure we can handle that. I am mostly skeptical of his idea because I'm not sure how he thinks a young software company could possibly survive without building really good software in much less time. Spolsky mentions that new companies need to strictly control their cost structures, and that will save them, but that doesn't seem like enough to me."

webword writes: "BBC News Online is reporting that Dr. Orly Lacham-Kaplan, from Monash University in Melbourne, has developed a technique to use any cell in a body to fertilize an egg. According to the story, theoretically 'lesbian couples could give birth to a baby girl without the need for a father'. In particular, she has been able to fertilise mice eggs in lab cultures using somatic cells. (Aside: Here is a little article on the ethics of cloning using somatic cells.) While this is not quite bokanovskification, it seems to be a step in that direction."

webword writes "SciTech Daily is reporting on a 'mole' that Japanese scientists have developed that can cut through a 2cm thick chunk of beef steak in 20 seconds. The tiny machines could be injected into a vein, and could be steered around the body using an external magnetic field. The idea is to use them to remove cancerous tissue and move drugs around the body. Not that anyone cares, but they remind me of the bore worms from Flash Gordon."

webword writes "Westwood Studios has announced that Emperor: Battle for Dune has gone gold and will ship June 12 in North America. The game looks great. Get the screenshots, original music tracks, movies (MPG format), and desktop theme. I'm not a Dune fanatic, but I have to say that this game looks damn good. (I couldn't find any news on a Linux port. Argh!)"

webword writes: "Attrition.org has decided to stop updating their defacement mirror. Their decision is based on problems associated with the rapid increase in web defacement activity. They don't have the time, energy, or money to keep it updated. Fortunately, the image gallery, music reviews, movie reviews, poetry, and contests, will receive more attention." Those things are certainly more interesting to me than who's scribbling where, and it was becoming no fun for the attrition.org folks to keep up with them.

webword writes: "Web Techniques is running an interesting article written by James Hong, one of the masterminds behind AmIHotOrNot.com (now known as HOT or NOT?). Before you decide to skip over this, consider that Hong and company used Apache, PHP and MySQL to build their site. They found that these open source tools ran much better on a 700-MHz Pentium III than a quad processor Sun E220. Hong also covers their moderation system, advertising arrangements, and how they were able to scale to handle 1.8 million page views per day after being in operation for a mere 8 days."

Let's get back into the quickie portege00 sent in linkage to Robot Store where you can buy parts to build a Battlebot. Maybe after I finish my MAME cabinet ;) Speaking of MAME, Martin Hock claims that it makes in appearance in Godzilla 2000, check it out. Ever through of using a beverage as a weapon? Innominate sent in a weapon that uses pop cans as ammo. I'll just stick to coffee: Matador sent in the TCP/IP equipped Espresso Machine, but I'd tend to rather go the other way (thanks again Ant). matth sent in a cool page that has Dr Seuss Art for sale- the man did some really excellent work. If Seuss is to arty for ya, maybe SkippyVision can help; he sent us to the Etch-a-sketch art Gallery. If you need something to wear to the gallery, foondog sent us hats made of meat. If you think dandruff is an unhealthy food risk, Boolean sent us what might be the greatest meal ever. How can you resist a bowl of soup that morphs into a Ninja Asassin. While we're talking about Japanese stuff, Ant continues to submit quickies at a frenzied pace, like Mathematical Origami. webword sent in a site that explains how to make lightsaber effects with basic video editing tools. And it just wouldn't be quickies without rampant Microsoft Bashing: List knows what happens when you combine WinCE, WinME, and WinNT: Coming soon to a frys near you. Khan showed us where Microsoft got the inspiration for XBox's Controller, and Ron Harwood sent us linkage to the best MCSE Trainer around.

webword writes: "There is an article in the July 2000 issue of Crosstalk (The Journal of Defense Software Engineering) about gathering requirements in Open Source projects. This is especially interesting because most commercial projects are driven by the requirements gathering processes (or the 'SDLC') whereas most Open Source projects are written to 'scratch an itch'. Let's face it, Open Source requirements are almost always in the mind(s) of the programmer(s), not on paper. However, if the requirements are captured, and shared, the quality and speed of development will improve." How many articles like this have we seen? How many open source applications have ideas like these spawned? I remain skeptical.

webword asks: "There are many geek tools in the world, e.g., Palm Pilots, desktop computers, cell phones, cameras, digital watches. I've seen things recently like Samsung's cell phone camera and on Slashdot we've talked about the merger of cell phones and PDAs. Obviously, as time goes on, technology will improve so that these tools can talk to each other. However, it is entirely unclear how much physical merging can occur. There are screen limitations, human memory limitations, color limitations and so forth. So, just how much can our devices merge?"

webword writes: "Did it slip under the radar that Go.com's content engine is now Open Source? The engine powers sites like ESPN.com, NFL.com, ABCNews.com and GO.com. Not too shabby." More to the point, it powers Mr. Showbiz, one of my favorite movie sites. The license is based on the Apache License.

webword writes: "The Duke of URL has posted a pretty good review of Mandrake 7.1. There is a useful list of pros and cons, along with performance and usaability ratings. There are some helpful screenshots too." BeOpen submitted a link to a 7.1 review on gnulinux.com, Sensei^ one on linuxnewbie.org, and Quick & Flupke serendipitously pointed out the new slash-like Mandrake Forum where users can (among other things) suggest features for upcoming Mandrake releases.

Lets start this off with some homework: we were nominated for a 2000 Webby in Community. Please go vote for us (requires annoying login, but please do it anyway! I want a crappy little trophy!) Now with the 'biz outta the way, brainsik pointed us to the Brainshaker: a headmounted subwoofer that looks like it would make Quake a bit to real. Plastik noted a web filter guaranteed to offend the conservative and humorless. But it makes reading Slashdot damn entertaining. And if you're interesting in violating most religions, vkulkarn found an "Escort" who apparently reads Slashdot (will she go out with CowboyNeal?) Speaking of religion, Zippy noted that I am apparently a prophet in the Church of The Enlightenment , along with Jay Stile of Stileproject . Illiad, from Userfriendly.org is a bard. webword sent us CalculusGirls.com which combines 2 of the many things I don't understand. Andy Lester noted that Brunching Shuttlecocks has a book on "Fuzzy Logic Functions", in the style of O'Reilly. yek401 noted that his english professor builds barbie doll cyborgs: god bless tenure ;) Trenchcoat Steve warned us about Moon Land Registry which claims to be selling land on the moon for $10/acre: you even get a deed and mineral rights... and it might be legal! Gravey noted that their are two new Reboot movies going into production. For you conspiracy theorists, backtick noted that everyone's favorite software monopoly might be getting into the furniture biz along with Lazyboy. SgtPepper pointed us to RFC 2795 which "describes a protocol suite which supports an infinite number of monkeys that sit at an infinite number of typewriters" ucsimon noted that LegoLand in California just gota liquor license. Mind you after a few shots of vodka, finding a 2x2 blue block takes a lot longer. Let's wrap up with jyuter's note that Comedy Central has vid clips of the south park kids doing Python's parrot sketch in Quicktime or Real.

webword writes "Here's how those cool scenes from the Matrix were filmed (go here). Not that I want actually buy one of these cool cameras, but I hunted around to find out how to get one and how much they cost. You can get one here. This brings up a quick question: How are people keeping up with the latest and greatest filming techniques?" What? An advance in cinematography that doesn't involve a farm of Linux machines?