Slashdot Mirror

For anyone who's interested, the law school's website has a press release with a little bit more information than was mentioned in the C|Net article. It is great to see that some people (esp. the lawyers!) can see the harm that is being done by our outdated system of intellectual property laws.

Even at the undergrad level, it seems that Duke has taken an interest in the subject. This year, for the first time ever, the CS department is offering a course that I'm currently enrolled in whose primary focus is intellectual property issues. It's panning out to be a pretty cool course, and is actually the only CS course I've taken thus far that doesn't involve any coding.

I think more CS departments should offer curriculum like this, since we (the techies) have a unique perspective on the issues, because we are the ones opening the public's eyes to the fact that our system of intellectual property law needs to be completely revamped.

If anyone out there has an interest in the topic, I'd highly reccommend reading John Barlow's The Economy of Ideas as a starting point.

Ultra-secure data storage, eh?

More like, "Huh? Who writes this stuff?"

How valuable does my data have to be to invest a skagillion quatloos (or however much it costs) to shoot my data onto the Moon (with the very real risk that it won't make it or get lost) and then spend another skagillion quatloos to bring it back if I need the backups? If someone seriously starts this business in the near future, I'll put a business plan together for not-quite-ultra-secure data storage by putting it in an out-of-service submarine on the bottom of Lake Superior. (Oh, wait, Sealand is already doing something like this.)

This company has been in patent trouble before. Story here
These guys are cyber-squatting ideas. It really bothers me.

According to an article currently running on Wired:

Bluetooth is a radio frequency technology that lets gadgets within 30 feet of each other interact wirelessly. It is more powerful than infrared and can transport data at 1 megabit per second.

A one megabyte pic should therefore transfer in 8 seconds. 47 seconds should make the picture just under 6MB in size -- that's pretty huge for a single jpeg!

There's an interesting article in Wired that sheds light on this problem, sort of. The article is relevant because the problem is similar: being dangerously distracted.

Basically, it boils down to concentration. People walking around talking on a phone aren't paying attention to the important things, like who is about to squash them. People can't multi-task nearly as well as they assume, which is why people get into these stupid situations.

There's an interesting article in Wired that sheds light on this problem, sort of. The article is relevant because the problem is similar: being dangerously distracted.

Basically, it boils down to concentration. People walking around talking on a phone aren't paying attention to the important things, like who is about to squash them. People can't multi-task nearly as well as they assume, which is why people get into these stupid situations.

GM is building some.

Next time, before everyone spends a lot of time and energy debating the morality of copyright laws and the hypocrisy of Hollywood and the MPAA, we should probably take a look at the source of the article to determine how seriously we should take it (even though that's not as much fun).

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Gandhi

I am an advocate of free speech, full disclosure etc., of course. But that's not all. The Internet wizards are watching this censorship movement overall and think they have it under control. They have built in low-level protocols (in very clever ways) which ensure that censorship cannot work . But, in my opinion, they have forgotten that most people don't have their skills or knowledge. Sure, unless a country 'cuts the wire' there are ways to bypass the censorship. Sure, if there's an information flow into and out of a country, you can always get information you want, in spite of any attempt at censorship - and do it undetected. BUT it requires skills. Very few sites on the Internet tell you how to do it. This site attempts to redress this deficiency.

• Angelfire mirror 1 of Wayne's
• Angelfire mirror 2 of Wayne's
• Arabhackers.org Mirror of Wayne's
• Rosinstruments Free Public Proxy Servers List
• Multiproxy

To the Chinese Government: don't think you can get away with this. We are watching you. Remember the IIS fuck China worm? Remember when Americans penetrated Chinese censorship sites. One particularly activist group is the Cult of The Dead Cow, as they are involved with a US-Canada-Europe anti-China-human-rights-abuses hacking group, the Hong Kong Blondes.

Its only a matter of time until the Internet disappears in China, and the Chinese government succumbs under its own agenda.

I am an advocate of free speech, full disclosure etc., of course. But that's not all. The Internet wizards are watching this censorship movement overall and think they have it under control. They have built in low-level protocols (in very clever ways) which ensure that censorship cannot work . But, in my opinion, they have forgotten that most people don't have their skills or knowledge. Sure, unless a country 'cuts the wire' there are ways to bypass the censorship. Sure, if there's an information flow into and out of a country, you can always get information you want, in spite of any attempt at censorship - and do it undetected. BUT it requires skills. Very few sites on the Internet tell you how to do it. This site attempts to redress this deficiency.

• Angelfire mirror 1 of Wayne's
• Angelfire mirror 2 of Wayne's
• Arabhackers.org Mirror of Wayne's
• Rosinstruments Free Public Proxy Servers List
• Multiproxy

To the Chinese Government: don't think you can get away with this. We are watching you. Remember the IIS fuck China worm? Remember when Americans penetrated Chinese censorship sites. One particularly activist group is the Cult of The Dead Cow, as they are involved with a US-Canada-Europe anti-China-human-rights-abuses hacking group, the Hong Kong Blondes.

Its only a matter of time until the Internet disappears in China, and the Chinese government succumbs under its own agenda.

Your analogy is wrong, too. According to the Wired article, an Army spokesperson said that MIT won the award "based on the substance of the proposal."

Also, in the article:

"They can get to court, but whether they can prevail is another issue," said Joseph Walsh, a New York City intellectual property lawyer with the firm Ladas & Parry. "The defense would be that there's no harm to the market. It's not like they went out and did another comic book."

This wonderful article from Wired (the mag, not the website) shows that fiber is already part of the sales pitch of any modern realtor. Way to go, Korea!

> If you RTFA ( Read the Freakin' Article ) you'll see it's not a photoshop touch-up etc. I get the feeling that it's two groups with similair concepts that drew something similair.

From what I've read, MIT themselves amit to using Radix's images, and I quote:

"In a letter dated May 3, MIT attorney Mark Fischer admitted that MIT had used this drawing of "Val" in its grant proposal to the Army."

As stated here

Fee fi fo fum. I smell the blood of a troll-ish man.

In a letter dated May 3, MIT attorney Mark Fischer admitted that MIT had used this drawing of "Val" in its grant proposal to the Army. But Kelly says because "MIT reproduced a very small number of copies (approximately 25 copies)," of the document for "educational activities," the school did not violate the Lais' rights.

I guess the point is, when large corporations like Disney switch away from a particular product, regardless of the political stance, (and it doesnt really matter which product - in this case Microsoft), the rest of the world will soon follow.

I don't see how this connects to your previous point regarding the apparent international move to "Open Source".

Taken on its own merit, I'm not sure I agree about Disney as introducer because Disney's choice to use Apache came after Apache had been adopted by many other organizations (probably as a result of the very liberal terms under which it is released). Given the amount of time that has passed since Apache's release to Disney's adoption, Disney strikes me more like a follower here than a leader.

Disney's poor choice of supporting things like the SSSCA doesn't matter. They are huge and have many sub-contractors supporting their industry.

Of course it matters. Any large support for legislation that takes away our freedoms matters. Disney's well-funded support for repressive bills is a fine example of how the US is run by and for corporations with apparently little being done by the two dominant US political parties to stop it (probably because these corporations give so many millions of dollars to these two political parties). Corporate overrepresentation in politics is a nexus of many other issues and, as such, probably the single most important issue facing the USA. Support for bills like this is a huge issue that technically astute people (who are uniquely poised to understand what's wrong with the bill) really need to start working on by means other than writing code (to paraphrase one of Lawrence Lessig's points raised at an FSF fundraising dinner, in a keynote speech he recently gave, the link to the MP3 of which I can no longer find, and in a Slashdot interview). At the risk of being repetitive, I hope anyone reading this will contribute to the EFF.

When the customer switches to a particular product, you can bet that the contractors will carry the exact same product in their own offices to ensure seamless compatibility with the customer - thus, a domino effect.

Influence exists, definately, but I think we must be careful of the direction of the influence--are we placing more power into fewer unaccountable hands or are we placing greater societal software rights for all computer users? Seamless integration is another technical end which can be attained through software freedom, but focusing on integration can distract one from deeper causative concerns. When the freedoms to share and modify are inseparable from the software everyone gets the benefit of the technical advantages the Open Source movement talks about. The Apache license is a non-copylefted one--the freedoms to share and modify do not have to be replicated in derivative works. Disney may someday (perhaps they are already, I haven't seen the license to their software) choose to release something based on Free Software that is non-free. This would be an unfortunate trend to see being copied by all these contractors you refer to, and one way in which Disney can build on what was supplied to it as a gift and turn it into more power.

I think it's important to note that Think wasn't really about electric "cars" it was about electric vehicles. The venture was very much an "outside the box" and it's product line makes that obvious. (Mostly they are small vehicles designed for short trips around town) Not surprisingly, people like cars and don't want

That said... Here's a rejected slashdot story submission about what *I* think was a fairly interesting news. I post it because I think it's on topic and intersting and I put some time in typing it up--obviously, sometimes slashdot doesn't have the space... so no hard feelings. (Maybe I just spelled everything right ;-) )

The jist is that GM is betting on fuel cells. Not electric and not "conventional" hyrbids.


Popular Mechanics is carrying an article (with pic's) of GM's latest fuel-cell concept car. The pictures are our first look (mine at least) at GM's new strategy to redefine the basic systems every car they make. It's called AUTOnomy and was written about a little while back in Popular Science. Essentially, because fuel-cells allow a radically different organization of cars' structures, GM is betting it can make cars cheaper. This despite the fact they'd be running on the famously expensive fuel cell. Wired wrote about this"billion dollar bet" in its August issue and quotes a GM exec: "If we're not there by 2010], we'll have dug too deep a hole to recover the time value of that money." In other words: call us stupid if you can't drive one of these by 2010. This is some good reading for those wanting to know more about what GM's plans to do with its fuel cell "platform" that it hopes to use for virtually every vehicle it makes in the future. Of course, as Wired notes, a fairly heavy dose of skepticism is NOT optional. Itís required.

I don't know about Kei cars, but I've read some pretty interesting articles on the GM Autonomy. It's currently vaporware, but there's about $1 billion in funding behind this hydrogen car already. See more here:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.08/fuelcellc ars.html

Hopefully it will come out within the next 10 years - would be interesting to see.

Incidentally there is a good articles in a recent Time magazine and Wired.

For those adopting open source, we have Peru, Mexico City, some parts of the US Govt, Norway, Disney, and China has long been open source to name a few. I'd say the dominos are starting to topple.

For those adopting open source, we have Peru, Mexico City, some parts of the US Govt, Norway, Disney, and China has long been open source to name a few. I'd say the dominos are starting to topple.

For those adopting open source, we have Peru, Mexico City, some parts of the US Govt, Norway, Disney, and China has long been open source to name a few. I'd say the dominos are starting to topple.

For those adopting open source, we have Peru, Mexico City, some parts of the US Govt, Norway, Disney, and China has long been open source to name a few. I'd say the dominos are starting to topple.

For those adopting open source, we have Peru, Mexico City, some parts of the US Govt, Norway, Disney, and China has long been open source to name a few. I'd say the dominos are starting to topple.

Why set the cookie for such a short time? Do you really want to have to reset your preferences that often? I don't. Cookies are entirely under your control as a user though-- if you want to clean them out you can do it any time you like. Looking at the google cookie, the date looks suspiciously close to the date of the Unix version of the Y2K bug ("The next millenium headache"@Wired), so maybe the cookie programmer did it as a joke or it is somehow related to an integer used in the code that calculated the date for this field (which is why the epoch date in 2038 will be such fun) or something like that.

The "problem", if we're to treat it as such, is less Wired than Leander Kahney the individual. If there's old Mac hardware and software being used by anyone, anywhere, and made vocal online, I wouldn't put it past Leander to report on it.

That isn't to say Newtons and Hypercard aren't worth note. However, there's a bit of disproportionate tracking of Mac "cult" interests over at Wired as a result.

Doesn't help that articles such as this made an appearance on Wired's front page with a description along the lines of "iPod users giving up their Palms". It's a little bit of pleasant hyperbole, but justified in that it no doubt pleases the iPod owners in the crowd.

but seriously, if there is "news" that is remotely Apple related, Wired, is all over it. They love to report Apple news and culture, it tends to be of this type: Gee, Apple stopped doing X long ago, but look, these hip trendy, user groups are doing it themselves!!!! Yay Apple!

Don't believe me? Try this story or this story or this story

Or maybe I'm just missing something? Is there really a well dresses, over educated, hip Apple underground that I have never seen? Wired just tends to report these user groups and people as trendy, San Fran artist types. They have swallowed more than just a bite of Apple's marketing message. (bad pun, I know)

Kind of like Slashdot reports on Linux types... Think about it, it is easy to come up with stereotypes of Wired readers. And slashdot readers for that matter.

but I digress, I do think the Newtons are cool.

but seriously, if there is "news" that is remotely Apple related, Wired, is all over it. They love to report Apple news and culture, it tends to be of this type: Gee, Apple stopped doing X long ago, but look, these hip trendy, user groups are doing it themselves!!!! Yay Apple!

Don't believe me? Try this story or this story or this story

Or maybe I'm just missing something? Is there really a well dresses, over educated, hip Apple underground that I have never seen? Wired just tends to report these user groups and people as trendy, San Fran artist types. They have swallowed more than just a bite of Apple's marketing message. (bad pun, I know)

Kind of like Slashdot reports on Linux types... Think about it, it is easy to come up with stereotypes of Wired readers. And slashdot readers for that matter.

but I digress, I do think the Newtons are cool.

but seriously, if there is "news" that is remotely Apple related, Wired, is all over it. They love to report Apple news and culture, it tends to be of this type: Gee, Apple stopped doing X long ago, but look, these hip trendy, user groups are doing it themselves!!!! Yay Apple!

Don't believe me? Try this story or this story or this story

Or maybe I'm just missing something? Is there really a well dresses, over educated, hip Apple underground that I have never seen? Wired just tends to report these user groups and people as trendy, San Fran artist types. They have swallowed more than just a bite of Apple's marketing message. (bad pun, I know)

Kind of like Slashdot reports on Linux types... Think about it, it is easy to come up with stereotypes of Wired readers. And slashdot readers for that matter.

but I digress, I do think the Newtons are cool.

You did spell oppressive as "opressive" in CID;
http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=38792&cid= 4161583; but that will not derail your argument or distract me from reasonable discussion. That*s two "p's," not one.

I personally use my real account and meta-moderate with it. I make every effort to make anything modded down and mark these as "unfair" without looking at the moderated post. It's almost similar to how I vote in "real life." Since categorically all politicians are corrupted to some degree, I screw the incumbent out of office if I know no great love for him. I may be doing the public a disservice in both cases, but 9 times out of 10 I'm not. Moderators here classically are very aggressive to dole out points in a negative fashion. Humans by nature are like this. They would rather trample on others to "get up." I meta-moderate all positive moderations as "fair." This is because there is not enough love here. If "-1" was truly reserved for just crap (disgusting ascii art, offtopic, crap flooding), I would not feel this way. But I feel compelled to read comments, if at all, at -1, because most of the wittiest and acerbic humor and insights come from the bowels of the comments." +5", which I can obtain with almost certainty on my real account [but have now chosen not to be a boot-licking serf anymore and start expressing disgust], is awarded to extremely crafty humorous fast responses, which are rare. The rest of the "+5" high mods are generally doled out to linkers, story re-posters, or Katz like ranters who are pseudo intelligent, horribly deficient in geopolitical knowledge or world politics, ultra left wing idiots, SUV hating dip-shits (eg; those who don*t blame fossil fuels in general but just one vehicle that burns fossil fuels, but they would charge an electric car from a coal factory which is less efficient that an SUV) and other sorts of geek-socialist types. Lots of decent commentary in 3-4 range. Because most people can post at +2, there is a lot of crap in the 1-2 range. But "+5" to me always seems to have a major format-lick-ball-editor-sheeple-emulator feel to it. I'm rarely impressed.

All in all, I do visit Slashdot daily, with very low expectations, a grave hatred for that fucking Mega Tokyo anime shit, and annoyed at ads that my inline html proxy/editor doesn*t catch.

I might suggest Ars Technica: The PC enthusiast's resource,The Register * sure it can be crap, but I like it, * the Inquirer and Wired News. Also, for humor, I would strongly recommend Cliff [& Enoch] Yablonski and of course plain Something Awful.

Seriously, I believe a lot of the Slashdot visitation is by trolls, genuinely decent nerdy types (vast minority, even more minute are the ones who are both nerdy and informed/educated/intelligent), and horribly afflicted pre pubescent teens with raging online hormones due to frustrations in real life.

Its gone from bad to worse. The latest was 50 Karma being "Excellent." Is that like, totally, Bill and Ted's Bodacious EXCELLENT adventure or what dude. Lets go watch Anime before we graduate high school. Oh shit, My DBZ fetish got my grades suck, dude. Ill have to go for my GED over my Wind0Z3 XP machine now and pretend im using Linux, man.

the saturation in South Korea is not normal. it's more than just a small landmass. it's a cultural and political phenomenon. the country has consciously been moving away from industrialization and towards digitalization and knowledge industries.

my mother recently went on a trip to see old school friends in Korea. at the end of a big dinner, the half dozen friends all gave her e-mail address and cell phone numbers. they all made fun of my mother fot not being into e-mail. this from middle-aged women.

also, take in mind that virtually all new housing developments are coming wired with fiber, therefore making broadband de rigeur.

for more head over to wired. "The Bandwidth Capital of the World"

broadband in Japan is no where near the levels in Korea. there hasn't been an initiative.

Microsoft has ported DivX (not the codec) to the PC with Windows Media Player 9. Now get out there and explain the analogy to your non-technical friends and colleagues.

Right here

Although it's pretty vague like many Wired non-technical articles.

But i find it amusing to see a person spend 10 years on such idea while running a company.
Also talks about his life, pretty interesting :)

People are still trying though.. The aforementioned Current Technologies and Amperion are trying to develop a viable product for the US. The distribution transformer is still the killer. More information on the power line broadband space can be found at the United Power Line Council.

Oh, BTW.. There was a story on /. a few months back on Luke Stewart and Media Fusion. Apparently, they have mended their fences and Stewart is back peddling his mumbo-jumbo, too-hard-for-anyone-but-Luke-to-understand technology known as "Advanced Subcarrier Modulation [ASCM] (TM)."

--z

You just described the whole reason for the tech bubble.

People like her. And that guy who published the "Whole Earth Catalog". I think he started some flashy magazine where he hyped the new "digital economy" where "all the old rules don't apply".


gotcher nose!

I remember reading a Wired article last year about this topic, and why we will never see it in the US.

The article also talks about a company that claims to be able to utilize powerlines in a different way that would let them transmit data up to 2.5Gb/s. I dont think their webpage has changed in over a year though, so I wouldn't hold my breath.

Are we on our way to overpopulation?

Yes.

You mean we need someone who's trustworthy?

You mean like this: http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,54611, 00.html? It was a link on the end of the original article to another article on wired.

Autonomy of the units is very important, as you don't want your enemy hacking your system and taking remote control of your battle-bots and wreaking havoc on your lines. Also, you don't want them to be able to capture the devices and re-deploy them against you.

First off, Doom ][ outsold the original Doom by a fair amount. And the actual numbers for Doom ][ are something in the neighborhood of 1.8 million copies (Myst has sold more than 5 million copies and the Sims more than 6). As the first link states, lots of people got the Doom demo, but since you had to mail order Doom when it first came out sales were not that high.

Secondly, at the time Doom came out (1993) there were quite a few machines that could run it. Even measly 386 DX's could and it ran quite well on my 486 DX 33. By the time Doom ][ came out a year later with the same engine and only slightly more cpu intensive maps, virtually everyone could play it.

Quake on the other hand had mediocre single player compared to Doom, graphics that were technically superior and cool but looked like crap till people had 3d cards with 16 bit color and high res, and required a Pentium 100 or better to run well at a time when Pentium systems were significantly more expensive than 486's.

Also, much like how the first Doom episode was easily distributed via BBS's and floppy disks, the first episode of Quake was sold on CD for $5 and was also downloadable off the Internet, so some people may never have bought anything more.

The last thing is that Doom had numerous 3rd party addons, map packs, editors, Final Doom and everything else that further drove the Doom craze. Everybody and their brother was playing Doom, getting extra Doom levels, etc. Quake sold less copies, mapping was more difficult, etc. so there were fewer people creating maps and there was only the one official addon pack. Frankly, Quake single player wasn't that fun compared to Doom. Quake 2's single player focus still didn't help, it's got a horrible single player aspect.

Above everything else, the advancements science is making on vision is amazing. However poor that 10x10 image is, in time will get better. Personally, I was more intrigued by this story:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.09/vision.ht ml
where the scientist is actually inserting probes in the brain to stimulate the nuerons that produce the image we need to see with. It sounds as though he is having better success, assuming that the patient was able to drive a car (albeit limited) after the operation. That 10x10 image doesn't leave me feeling that the patient could get in a car and drive, much less distinguish what he's looking at.

The other bionic eye alluded to in the title is this article from Wired and its accompanying Slashdot post. Excellent read if you missed it.

(And no, I don't need the karma, its stuck on... "yahoo, you're not 100% useless 'round here" or something...) :P

Starcraft is not just a game in South Korea, it is a national sport, what football was in America in the 1970s. Five million people -- equivalent to 30 million in the US - play.

[...]

Chong points out a 20-year-old in an orange sweatshirt, immersed in online tactical warfare. "He's a pro gamer. Most of them practice 10 hours every day, like musicians," he says. "In Korea, people play games using the Internet like that. It's a kind of boom.

hi AC, we did the Big X last time.... with our OS X Anniversary pizza.

Well... They almost got the link right...
But, they linked to the 2nd page of the story..

For those too lazy to do it themselves or too stupid to realize it here's the link.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,54693,00 .html

Alang is a small stretch of beach along the coast of India where a surprising number of ships are eventually scrapped. Instead of a dry dock, the ships are rammed full speed into the oily beach, then are picked over by workers for scrap. There are 35,000 men ripping apart the things with hammers and sledges. The welders use oxygen and cooking propane, the most skilled of them getting the choice assignment of ventilating fuel tanks to get rid of the fumes (yes, the welders ventilate the explosive fumes). The place is a filthy mess of pollution and there's an estimated fatality a day. By all estimates, it's basically Hell on Earth.

I read about this in an article in the Atlantic Monthly (Aug 2000). The piece detailed the horrible conditions, the economic motivation (wrecking a ship filled with toxic waste is an expensive proposition here in the West), and the efforts of enviromental groups to put a stop to it. But the real eye opener was the reaction of the Indians.

Many were pissed that the industrialized world wanted to stop the wrecking and considered such efforts hypocritical. They are not stupid and they know the risks they're facing. They are more than willing to take those risks for steady, reliable income. Many of them point to the pollution and conditions in Dehli that are worse than at Alang. They laugh at what concerns Greenpeace in their tidy offices in London and Holland.

Do I think it's wrong to ship toxic waste to these countries instead of taking care of it at home? Yes. Should I condemn people who are not really that much different from Americans during the Depression from trying to get by? No. These things are never black and white.

[/rant]

PS: I have heard that some regulation has come to Alang and other wrecking operations of late, so my Atlantic Monthly article is likely out of date. Apologies in advance. Also, I found two stories online about the issue: in Wired and The Baltimore Sun. I have not read them all the way through, though, and highly recommend the dead tree version of the Monthly piece if you can find it.

This should explain that. From Wired:

The m130 actually supports 4,096 colors typical of a 12-bit screen. But by using blending techniques, the company can display 58,621 "color combinations -- approximately 11 percent fewer color combinations than we had originally believed" on the m130 handheld, said Palm spokeswoman Marlene Somsak.

Napster obviously killed the RIAA. They barely had enough money to pay mobs of lawyers to sue people. Forget the fact that year after napster was shut down that record sales was lower than any of the years while napster was in use. I believe I saw this in some infoporn. And liebowitz says that file sharing could be good for the music industry

I Personally mis napster, it was so much easier to actually get what you wanted than using gnutella, and I don't dare install kazaa. Obviously record sales must be hurting even more now to pay for all of the politicians they are buying off.

Sure piracy is bad. But I've never heard of an industry attacking it's customers. The RIAA might suggest that they're attack the people who aren't paying, while in reality somebody has to be buying the CDs to rip them. I believe It's not like the music companies are an oligopaly so there's plenty of good old competition there.

How long will it be before these dinsaurs go extinct?

Last month, Wired ran an article about the new construction at the South Pole. It makes no mention of this fiber.
As an Engineer for one of the Telephone Companies, I can tell you that fiber is stronger than you think. I had a pole get hit, knocking the cables the ground- a few 18 wheelers drove over the cables, partially crushing a copper cable. But, the two fiber cables were uninjured (part of their sheathing was shorn away, though).
Still, running fiber to the South Pole is idiotic- think of how long (and how costly) the FLAG project was!

Apologies for being a little off topic but this kind of thing is very successful in the far east. Particular in Seoul.

At least according to an article in Wired 10.08 [www.wired.com/wired/]. It talks about the age of broadband and how cybercafe's are the new singles bars.

Not that us slashdot geeks have any need for that!

ASCAP! The mafia that controls music. There's a great story at wired about travelfinder.com's links to radio stations.

ASCAP wanted them to fork over royalty fees even though the music wasn't archived on their site! The links were clearly denoted as external.

Then again this isn't suprising behavior considering that ASCAP tried to strongarm the girl scouts into paying royalties for songs sung around the campfire.