Slashdot Mirror

MJ writes "Evan Brown has finally lost his 7 year court battle over ownership of thoughts in his brain. Judge Henderson of the 219th District Court in Collin County, Texas granted DSC Communications Corporation, Inc (now Alcatel, USA) a Final Judgement granting DSC ownership of Mr. Brown's idea of a reverse compiler that Mr. Brown claims to have begun formulating twelve years before his employment at DSC and during his off-time while at DSC. Mr. Brown has received media coverage in print, televion and on the Internet: The John Marshall Journal of Computer & Information Law, Wired, Computerworld. This rings similar to previous Slashdot articles on employer/employee IP rights."

SteamyMobile writes "Privacy International announced its Sixth Annual Big Brother awards today. These are awards given to the governments, business and individuals who are doing the most to bring us closer to Orwell's world of 1984. Normally this award is reserved for the British, but there are so many great candidates from other countries this year that they had to acknowledge that. So, who won, and who shall we nominate for next year? This certainly is an area with some tough competition lately."

joehoya writes "Wired has an extensive article about an expedition with the goal of discovering new microbial species and new genes in the world's oceans. The expedition is led by J. Craig Venter, who is best known for his involvement in the race to sequence the Human Genome. This is a really fascinating expedition with a pretty high geek quotient. I know, as I set up many of the computer and other electronic systems aboard, and traveled with the expedition as far as the Pacific side of the Panama Canal. In fact, you can see me (ok, the side of my head) in one of the article's pictures, next to the Captain while helping to take a sea water sample."

joehoya writes "Wired has an extensive article about an expedition with the goal of discovering new microbial species and new genes in the world's oceans. The expedition is led by J. Craig Venter, who is best known for his involvement in the race to sequence the Human Genome. This is a really fascinating expedition with a pretty high geek quotient. I know, as I set up many of the computer and other electronic systems aboard, and traveled with the expedition as far as the Pacific side of the Panama Canal. In fact, you can see me (ok, the side of my head) in one of the article's pictures, next to the Captain while helping to take a sea water sample."

SeaDour writes "Wired News is reporting that Microsoft is in early discussions with five or six media companies over a potential sale of MSN's online magazine Slate. This comes mere weeks after Slate recommended Firefox over Internet Explorer."

SeaDour writes "Wired News is reporting that Microsoft is in early discussions with five or six media companies over a potential sale of MSN's online magazine Slate. This comes mere weeks after Slate recommended Firefox over Internet Explorer."

Uninvited Guest writes "After a rough cut of U2's latest unfinished album was stolen earlier this week, the band has vowed to release the entire album on iTunes if the music appears on P2P networks. Bono told the London Daily Telegraph, 'If it is on the Internet this week, we will release it immediately as a legal download on iTunes, and get hard copies into the shops by the end of the month.' Is this the exact opposite of the Smashing Pumpkins' last album, which the band rushed to release on P2P networks, before it could hit the stores?"

binder520 writes "Wired has an article on how the latest Senate Bill, sponsored by Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), will hold technology companies liable for supplying devices or software that can be used to illegally copy music, videos, software, etc. It looks like it is time to write to your senators, because the verbiage in the bill is too subjective for any technology company to stand up to the media giants. Say good bye to your VCR, MP3 players, CD/DVD burners, etc."

binder520 writes "Wired has an article on how the latest Senate Bill, sponsored by Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), will hold technology companies liable for supplying devices or software that can be used to illegally copy music, videos, software, etc. It looks like it is time to write to your senators, because the verbiage in the bill is too subjective for any technology company to stand up to the media giants. Say good bye to your VCR, MP3 players, CD/DVD burners, etc."

Liora writes "Today at the 17th International Conference on General Relativity and Gravitation in Dublin, Cambridge University professor Stephen Hawking said in his talk titled The Information Paradox for Black Holes that he was wrong about the formation of an event horizon in a black hole, and that matter is not destroyed in a way defying subatomic theory, as he had previously believed. According to the talk's short, "the way the information gets out seems to be that a true event horizon never forms, just an apparent horizon." A New York Times story and a Wired story are available, both apparently based on Reuters information." (This is the formal announcement promised last week.)

b00le writes "There's a little story over at Wired about the genesis of the iPod from the point of view of Ben Knauss, a former senior manager at PortalPlayer, the company Apple Computer approached to help develop its player. There's some nice gossip about The Steve's involvement in the project, the extreme secrecy and so on, but for me, the kicker comes at the end: 'Knauss stayed on until near the end of the iPod's development, but quit shortly before it was released because he had no confidence it would be a success. "It was probably a mistake, but then you have to go with what you think at the time," he said.' "

Trinition writes "Kim Zetter wrote for Wired News that "While legislators in Washington work to outlaw peer-to-peer networks, one website is turning the peer-to-peer technology back on Washington to expose its inner, secretive workings." For once, we have a concrete example to point to when citing the merits of P2P."

r.jimenezz writes "Adam L. Penenberg, an assistant professor at New York University, has written an interesting piece over at Wired about the contrast between the New York Times' relevance in the real world and the dismal rankings it gets in modern search engines' results. Penenberg discusses some very interesting ideas about opening up the Times digital archive and the impact this would have on its cyber presence."

novakreo writes "Rafael Macedo de la Concha, Mexico's Attorney-General, now has a non-removable microchip in his arm, to track his movements and to give him access to a new crime database, according to Bloomberg. The article says that eventually around 160 Mexican officials will have a chip implanted." (Wired and CNN are both running the very similar Reuters report, too.)

whoda writes "When you think of a bicycle, you most likely think of 2 tires, a chain, some gearing of some sort, and other assorted mechanical bits. However, when Lance Armstrong, Jan Ullrich, and over 180 other riders get together to compete at the Tour de France every year, there is a lot of technology that comes along for the ride too. From Lance's Sunglass'/MP3 Player to the advanced use of composites seen on Tyler Hamilton's time trial bike, there are many examples of high technology making the racers faster through better training, materials and aerodynamics."

Jason0x21 writes "Wired News has an article about UNC Comp. Sci. researchers developing a transparent desktop overlay for video conferencing, allowing remote coworkers to literally point and interact with things on your screen. The researchers say that Apple's Quartz graphics engine let them go from idea to prototype in 'about 45 minutes'. Windows versions predicted in the future."

slimyrubber writes "Just when you thought that spam couldnt get any worst, Cell phones are becoming the latest target of electronic junk mail, with a growing number of marketers using text messages to target subscribers. Is cell-phone spam likely to evolve into something that big, something approaching the scale of e-mail spam? Not if you help to kill SMS spam where it starts. Hopefully."

The Importance of writes "And he wants to hear from the tech community. 'I am looking forward to an open, transparent and meritocracy-based communication -- attributes that bloggers are famous for!' Powell said on his blog. But does he really get blogging? He says he 'need[s] to hear from the tech community as we transition to digital television.' Perhaps we could discuss the broadcast flag? If you want to leave some comments on his blog, I suggest you do it before Howard Stern mentions it on his radio show."

Ant writes "Wired has a story on how to improve Mozilla and Firefox web browsers with various plugins/extensions (XPI installations). It lists some of the extensions that have been rated highly by Mozilla users like BugMeNot. One of them not listed and my favorite is PrefBar."

Baldrson writes "Wired News reports that Rutan's team says they have gotten to the bottom of the June 21 flight anomalies that affected the first SpaceShipOne sub-orbital flight: 1) A control surface actuator had run against a stop limiting its movement, and 2) Wind shear caused the 90-degree roll shortly after rocket ignition. Rutan also said with the problems now identified, the next time SpaceShipOne flies, it will be to win the prize."

theodp writes "After two rejections, Amazon was granted a patent Tuesday for the Extraction of bank routing number from information entered by a user, which covers the process of obtaining a routing and checking account number from information entered by a user from the face of a check. The patent application was filed in the week preceding Amazon's Call for Patent Reform."

LWATCDR writes "I have been saying this for a long time but now it is offical. From Yahoo News: 'The Department of Homeland Security's U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team touched off a storm this week when it recommended for security reasons using browsers other than Microsoft's Internet Explorer.'" In related news, rocketjam writes "According to Wired, the widespread Internet Explorer security exploit last week and CERT's subsequent recommendation that IE users should consider switching to another browser has resulted in a large spike in downloads of the Mozilla Organization's Mozilla and Firefox web browsers."

leviramsey writes "The US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit (covering Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island) has ruled that e-mail providers are not violating the law by reading users' e-mail without the user's consent. The decision finds that the Wiretap Act does not cover interception of communications where the communications are being stored, not transmitted. Perhaps OSDN should send the defendant, accused in 2001 of reading users emails in order to find out what they were interested in purchasing from Amazon, a T-shirt from ThinkGeek?"

GillBates0 writes "Wired's reporting that a social networking software company called Affinity Engines has filed a lawsuit against Google, claiming that much of the source code behind Orkut, the search engine's popular social service, was stolen by former engineer Orkut Buyukkokten. They claim that he illegally took the code the he had written for the company -- which he co-founded -- with him when he joined Google and that Buyukkokten promised Affinity Engines that he wouldn't develop a competing social network service for Google. '"In its initial investigation, AEI uncovered a total of nine unique software bugs ... in AEI's inCircle product that were also present in Orkut.com," according to the lawsuit.'"

An anonymous reader writes "The latest issue of Wired has an interesting article about Canadian tar pits that could result in a trillion barrels of oil when processed. It seems just when we think the oil will run out we find new reserves. Now excuse me while I gas up my Hummer."

AbstracTus writes "According to Wired, The Electronic Frontier Foundation is trying to get the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to re-examine 10 patents that were selected from public submissions. We slashdotters often curse patents that should have been rejected, but are not. Do you think that the EFF can have any influence on the U.S. Patent Office? Are there other actions that are more likely to work?" And sharkb8 writes "The Public Patent Foundation is searching for people with experience in all technical fields to help examine patents. This is the perfect chance for attorneys, law students, and geeks in general to do some pro bono work. PubPat is the group that recently challenged one of Microsoft's FAT patents."

Iphtashu Fitz writes "We've all seen it. The e-mail forwarded to us from a friend who got it from a coworker whose sister's cousin's roommate's great aunt knows somebody at Microsoft. The one from Bill Gates himself offering you cash to forward the e-mail to others in order to test out their new e-mail tracking system. If you haven't received that one you've undoubtedly gotten other e-mail hoaxes offering anything from gift certificates to free computers to free airline tickets. How do these sorts of hoaxes start and who starts them? Well Jonathon Keats at Wired Magazine decided to track down the origin of the Bill Gates e-mail tracking hoax. After a few dead ends he finally located then-student Bryan Mack, who created the hoax on November 18, 1997 while at the University of Houston. In Mack's own words: 'It was just a joke between a couple friends' that eventually got out of hand. One of his buddies had gotten a make-money-fast spam and Mack said 'I can come up with something better than that.' Three minutes later, Bill Gates' email-tracing program was born. At first he just sent it to a few friends, but those friends sent it to other friends (and so on), and it didn't take long for the e-mail to transform from a joke to a full-fledged hoax."

Iphtashu Fitz writes "We've all seen it. The e-mail forwarded to us from a friend who got it from a coworker whose sister's cousin's roommate's great aunt knows somebody at Microsoft. The one from Bill Gates himself offering you cash to forward the e-mail to others in order to test out their new e-mail tracking system. If you haven't received that one you've undoubtedly gotten other e-mail hoaxes offering anything from gift certificates to free computers to free airline tickets. How do these sorts of hoaxes start and who starts them? Well Jonathon Keats at Wired Magazine decided to track down the origin of the Bill Gates e-mail tracking hoax. After a few dead ends he finally located then-student Bryan Mack, who created the hoax on November 18, 1997 while at the University of Houston. In Mack's own words: 'It was just a joke between a couple friends' that eventually got out of hand. One of his buddies had gotten a make-money-fast spam and Mack said 'I can come up with something better than that.' Three minutes later, Bill Gates' email-tracing program was born. At first he just sent it to a few friends, but those friends sent it to other friends (and so on), and it didn't take long for the e-mail to transform from a joke to a full-fledged hoax."

leifbk writes "Wired has a very interesting feature article on how Darl McBride and his sidekick Mike Anderer rose to fame. Some particularly juicy parts are about Anderer: 'He's supercompetitive,' said one. 'If he knows you'll faint at the sight of blood, he'll cut himself just to watch you pass out.'" A very thorough retelling of the legend that is SCO.

TexasDex writes "Wired reports: The NASA Space Solar Power project--a method of collecting solar energy efficiently from space and beaming it down to earth--was canceled in early 2001 after enjoying intermittent attention from scientists. NASA officials cited a policy shift toward the International Space Station and the space shuttle program. But there is still hope for it yet. A conference this month in spain hopes to advance the cause, dispite the fact that there is no public funding available in the US for this project. Some even claim that microwave power is essential for farther explanation. Accordong to the folks at Maxis, Microwave power should be available around 2020, depending on which version of SimCity you play."

XopherMV cuts-and-pastes from Wired: "In an article from Wired, 'Consider the progress of just the past 15 years. There are now robots that can get around on two legs, participate in simple conversations, and manipulate objects in rudimentary ways. Of course, we don't yet have a bot that can navigate downtown Manhattan, tie its shoelaces, or even tell a chair from a desk. MIT's Cynthia Breazeal holds out hope that within five years, robots will cross a critical threshold, becoming partners rather than tools - in other words, we'll have friends, not appliances.'" Reader ptorrone adds: "In Los Angeles, CA at the Century Plaza Hotel for the 4Site conference, our favorite robot vacuum/military supplier, iRobot, showed off the tactical mobile robot! The 'Tactical mobile Robot' has its own brochure and site: www.packbot.com. The rad thing about this platform is its skateboard design, where it appears to support various plug-in modules. Here are some photos of the packbot!"

dogfart writes "Amateur rocket hobbyists are bearing the brunt of Federal anti-terror efforts. Cumbersome regulations (which include extensive background checks) are pushing many to abandon the hobby. Even clubs associated with colleges (such as Kettering) have ended up folding under the pressure. Quoting the article: '"If we're in an environment where the government says you've got to get fingerprinted and background checked, and spend three to four months to do it, (adults are) not going to participate in my hobby," said Mark Bundick, president of the National Association of Rocketry. "We need more kids. It helps them learn technology. It's the technological base here in the country that we need to protect, and this hobby is a good introduction for kids that are interested in technology. If I lose those adults, then I will not be able to train those kids."'" We wrote about these regulations before, and followed it up with a Slashback.

uncadonna writes "ZDNet is reporting that corporate web servers are infecting visitors' PCs. The combination of two unpatched IE security holes and hacked corporate websites is apparently distributing malware via several high-credibility sites. ZDNet says users have 'few options' other than alternative browsers or platforms." Update: 06/25 14:50 GMT by J : A reader points out Microsoft's What You Should Know page. Here's the short version for avoiding this Critical severity attack: you must install add-on software, and change multiple settings in multiple programs, thus causing "some Web sites to work improperly." By changing more settings, you can regain functionality for a particular site if "you trust that it is safe to use," which you have no way of knowing. Or try Firefox. Update: 06/25 19:30 GMT by J : Reuters reports the attack installs a keysniffer which can steal credit card numbers, passwords, and so on. The story offers safety tips, but fails to mention that, after patching the hole, many users will be infected without their knowledge. Shouldn't the "fix" include ceasing to type anything important into your computer until you purchase software which can detect and remove the Trojan? And will you be downloading that software with Mastercard or Visa?

scottfk writes "Wired news has an article exposing the fact that still more customer data recorded by airlines were turned over to the TSA for their CAPPS II testing. From the article, 'Delta, Continental, America West, JetBlue and Frontier Airlines secretly turned over sensitive passenger data to Transportation Security Administration contractors in the spring and summer of 2002, according to the sworn statement of acting TSA chief David Stone. In addion, two of the four largest airline reservation centers, Galileo International and Sabre, also gave sensitive passenger information, including home phone numbers, credit card numbers and health data, without disclosing the transfers to travelers or asking their permission.'"

joeldg writes "Wired is reporting that NASA is considering offering cash prizes for space innovation. 'Lembeck said NASA would consider offering $10 million to $30 million in prizes to encourage private investors to develop space vehicles. Such prizes appear compatible with the vision for space exploration released last week by a White House commission that studied President Bush's plan to send Americans back to the moon and possibly to Mars.'"

An anonymous reader writes "Today the RIAA said they have sued another group of people, 482 to be exact, for copyright infringement. The RIAA used their 'John Doe' litigation process in this round of law suits, because they do not know the names of the copyright infringers. After appeals court ruled that Verizon does not have to provide names of customers to the RIAA, the RIAA started using the 'John Doe' litigation process." (Similar stories at Wired News and CoolTechZone).

to_kallon writes "A company called Kereos is developing a pair of nanotechnologies to identify tumors that measure just 1 mm in diameter, then kill them with a tiny but precise amount of a chemotherapy drug."

Ralph Lee writes "Is it time to enlist? Wired News is reporting that the US Army has set up a video game studio to model training and recruit soldiers on the heels of the successful America's Army title: 'The America's Army Government Applications office was quietly opened in January in Cary, North Carolina, with a team of 15 video-game creators, simulation specialists and ex-Army personnel. Many of the studio's employees come from local video-game companies like Interactive Magic, Timeline, Vertis, SouthPeak Interactive, Vicious Cycle Software and Red Storm Entertainment.'" It's also noted that "the office is working with a team of 24 video-game creators in Monterey, California, on the latest edition to its main franchise, America's Army: Overmatch, which will be released in March 2005."

Mirkon writes "Back in mid-February, the news was broken that Webmonkey, one of the web's most prominent web development tutorial and reference resources, was "shut down," in that no new content would be delivered. A little over four months later - though Wired News (another child of Webmonkey's parent company, Terra Lycos) says nothing, and the Webmonkey Blog (hosted on Tripod, another Terra Lycos subsidiary) hasn't seen an update since January - the Webmonkey home page boldly declares: "We're totally back! Webmonkey is alive and kicking, serving up new articles all hot-n-fresh like a stack of banana pancakes. With syrup." Is this the end of the end for Webmonkey?"

Mirkon writes "Back in mid-February, the news was broken that Webmonkey, one of the web's most prominent web development tutorial and reference resources, was "shut down," in that no new content would be delivered. A little over four months later - though Wired News (another child of Webmonkey's parent company, Terra Lycos) says nothing, and the Webmonkey Blog (hosted on Tripod, another Terra Lycos subsidiary) hasn't seen an update since January - the Webmonkey home page boldly declares: "We're totally back! Webmonkey is alive and kicking, serving up new articles all hot-n-fresh like a stack of banana pancakes. With syrup." Is this the end of the end for Webmonkey?"

smack-pot writes "Wired News has an article about how the Digital Biology Interest Group at University College, London is using genetic algorithms to breed superfast Formula-One race cars. 68 design parameters were configurable in the cars, and the generated designs were tested using the racing simulation software developed by the game developer Electronic Arts. According to the research it is possible to shave off 88/100th of a second per lap by using genetic algorithms to tune the cars. In an industry where a tiny fraction of a second matters, that's significant."

CygnusXII writes "As reported over @ wired.com. It seems that Homeland Security isn't the only govermental body wanting to keep a database on the good old U.S. population. 'The bill would allow Pentagon intelligence agents to work undercover and question American citizens and legal residents without having to reveal that they are government agents. That exemption currently applies only to law enforcement officials working on criminal cases and to the CIA, which is prohibited from operating in the United States.' Kinda adds a whole new meaning to 'We want you!', or should it be 'We want all your secrets'?"

angkor writes "'Word 5.1 is 13 years old in 2004. Many people still swear by it. Powerful features, stable application, without bloat. Nirvana by Microsoft. It's been all downhill from there...' I always thought WordPerfect 5.1 was pretty good as well. I still use it alongside my OfficeXP."

Jason K writes "Hi, webmaster of PhilipKDick.com here. Thought that the Slashdot community might like to see this exclusive report that was just added to the official Philip K. Dick web site by his daughters about the 'A Scanner Darkly' film production. The film production of A Scanner Darkly is based on the classic PKD drug novel of the same name. It is directed by Richard Linklater (Slacker, Dazed and Confused, School of Rock) and stars Keanu Reeves, Winona Ryder, Robert Downey Jr. and Woody Harrelson. Linklater is using a more sophisticated version of the 'rotoscoping' animation technique that he debuted in 'Waking Life'. This is shaping up to be the most faithful adaptation of a Philip K. Dick novel or story to date." Waking Life was a little odd.

Alex Moskalyuk writes "Remember the Best Buy commercial where a puppet asks a woman for a laptop computer, and upon hearing that it's a 'wireless' laptop, starts imagining his life free of strings and limitations? That guy doesn't know it yet, but soon the harsh reality will kick in, ironically kicking him off the wireless network periodically if he uses Microsoft Windows Wireless Zero Configuration or if he wants to run Linux on a laptop with WiFi card that doesn't support Linux. This book, however, is not just about getting your Linux laptop onto the wireless network. Granted, WiFi plays a big role in today's business and personal networks, and three chapters are dedicated to exactly that purpose, but behind that wireless adjective we have a variety of technologies." Read on for the rest of Alex's review of Linux Unwired, from O'Reilly. Linux Unwired: A Complete Guide to Wireless Configuration author Roger Weeks, Edd Dumbill, Brian Jepson pages 300 publisher OReilly rating 8 reviewer Alex Moskalyuk ISBN 0596005830 summary Complete guide to wireless configuration on Linux

Infrared, Bluetooth, 802.11 (in current a, b and g offerings, 802.11i is also being discussed), wireless access points friendly to Linux, United States commercial cellular networks and GPS systems are all covered in a single title that surprisingly fits all of this information into 284 pages. All the chapters can be subdivided into two large parts - familiarizing yourself with the technology (the primer on GPS is pretty good) and running Linux on it (with code and shell command samples and lots of URLs).

Introduction

The authors start up with introduction to wireless, intended for Linux geeks who are not quite up to speed on radio technologies. The concepts of waves, spectrum and radio wave behavior are explained, so later the reader can explain what a retracted radio wave is. Then the first chapter moves on to explain antenna behavior, wireless infrastructure modes and some common problem, like a hidden node in ad-hoc infrastructure. The chapter is well-written, and you're not expected to have an advanced radio degree or ARRL membership to understand the terms.

WiFi cards

Chapters 2, 3 and 4 deal with connecting a Linux desktop or notebook to a wireless 802.11 network. The first issue is that of chipsets used in the wireless card, and even though enough research has been done already, authors discuss different quirks relevant to Intersil Prism, Lucent WavelLan/Orinoco, Aironet/Cisco, Symbol, Atmel, Atheros and Broadcom chipsets. We need to discuss chipsets instead of discussing the actual wireless cards, since some hardware may be shipped under the same brand name with different internals. "A good case in point: the D-Link DWL-650. This radio card initially shipped with a Prism II chipset and was very popular, because it worked on a Linux box. However, D-Link changed chipsets when it released the DWL-650 Version 2, choosing the ADMtek chipset. It is very difficult to tell from the packaging which version of the DWL-650 you are purchasing".

The chapters are done in traditional walk-through mode. They are not HOWTOs or compendia of reference information, available from the manufacturer's Web sites. The authors made an effort to ensure the reader is capable of starting up a wireless connection on Linux box, knowing nothing about it while learning important technology in the process. Certain wireless drivers need to be compiled into Linux kernel, so the task is not for the meek, but with detailed explanation, plenty of URLs and nice fonts and paragraph formatting O'Reilly Publishing uses to differentiate between the text, commands entered at the shell, and URLs, the book is easy to read.

Chapter 3 (available in PDF) teaches the reader how to connect to existing wireless network once the wireless card has been recognized by the system and proven functional. By the time the book hit the stores it was already a bit out of date, since the very first hotspot operator, Cometa Networks, shut down in May 2004. Chapter 4 discusses wireless security, touching WEP settings, a $20 Linuxant utility allowing the user to implement WiFi Protected Access, as well as authentication utilities wpa_supplicant and XSupplicant.

WiFi access points

The issue of WiFi access points is not trivial either, as many vendors out there will ship the product with a Windows app being the only way to set it up. However, for the access point setups that are Web-based, a browser in Linux will do the job. The most Linux-friendly access point include Linksys, Netgear, D-Link, Cisco, SMC, EnGenius, Belkin, US Robotics, Microsoft and ActionTec. Again, harsh reality kicked in between the time the book was written and went to press, and it's sad to see yet another Linux-friendly access point vendor quitting the market.

Not satisfied with commercial offerings out there? Chapter 6 takes the reader into the task of building your own access point. Don't forget that an access point doesn't need to be a compact portable - your old 486 with Linux on it and a wireless card connected to it might serve the purpose. Unfortunately, after all the hardware is bought and assembled, the final product might still cost you the quadruple (in case you go with smaller form-factor motherboards and CompactFlash cards for software storage), so consider this more as a geek project, not a viable solution. The authors use LinuxAP distribution for this task.

16 pages are dedicated to hacking Linksys WRT54G access point with Sveasoft, described as disruptive technology by Robert X. Cringely. The authors also take a brief look at Wifi-box and OpenWRT.

Other wireless technologies

Bluetooth, Infrared, cellular and GPS chapters follow the same chapter plan - first the basics of the technology and simple use case scenarios of what you might use it for, then the hardware needed to implement the wireless technology, available Linux software to do the jobs, accompanied with the list of shell commands to successfully talk to a wireless product, and after that typical applications of the working link.

The authors tested various wireless data plans in the United States, although this data, once again, is constantly changing as the operators buy one another and introduce new data plans. The winner of the quality and the fastest download tests, by the way, was a Motorola v120e phone on Verizon Wireless network. In upload speed tests a Merlin C201 PCMCIA card on Sprint PCS network won. T-Mobile also offers a PCMCIA card for its GPRS network, so the authors install and run it under Linux in Chapter 9.

The last chapter discusses using Linux computers with GPS devices and open-source GPSdrive project for reading GPS data.

The book

For those just venturing into the wireless world, the book would be useful. All the information provided on WiFi connectivity can perhaps be googled and found in various HOWTOs. With wireless operators, GPS systems and Infrared connection one would have to rely on enthusiast sites and newsgroups. Having such informative title that covers all of the technologies would be very useful to a Linux enthusiast.

With that, the book can be quite overwhelming, although it's probably not intended to be read from page 1 to the end. There's usually more than one correct way to do things in Linux, and for each successful project another competitor appears on SourceForge the next day. I like the authors' approach of dedicating most of the chapter space to one, leading, Linux package that seems to be dominant in the field, and then briefly mentioning the others. A notable omission is Intel's Centrino drivers for Linux, as the company is bound to become a leader in the chipset marketplace with 42% of notebooks shipped in 2003 running Centrino chipsets.

But overall the book proved to have a high informational and educational value, not only you follow the steps on setting up wireless technologies on Linux, but you also learn the internals of the technology and why certain things are done that way, but not another.

You can purchase Linux Unwired from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, carefully read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

sirshannon writes "Apparently caving to pressure from Slashdot readers (or maybe it was all their peeved members), The League of Women Voters rescinded its support of paperless voting machines on Monday."

Thanks to Wired for its article discussing the rise of casual, Web-based online gaming from websites such as EA's Pogo.com and Microsoft's Zone.com. Particularly interesting is confirmation of post-Pandora's Box projects for an extremely famous game designer: "Today, Tetris is the model for how to reach the increasing number of middle-aged and elderly Americans online. The creator, Alexey Pajitnov, is a designer at Microsoft, where Gates & Co. are hoping he can repeat his magic." The piece names Zone.com games Mozaki Blocks and Hexic as Pajitnov creations, although they're not heavily promoted as such, and explains of Mozaki Blocks: "MSN's marketing team took Pajitnov's Atari 2600-style lo-res math game and sexed it up with an Eastern flair: smooth, rounded tiles, Chinese letters... [and] a gong-shaped progress bar."

joncrie writes "The Telegraph is reporting that British MoD scientists are now testing a new electric armor to protect light armored vehicles against RPGs. The new electric armour is made up of a highly-charged capacitor that is connected to two separate metal plates on the tank's exterior. When an RPG warhead fires its jet of molten copper, it penetrates both the outer plate and the insulation of the inner plate. This makes a connection and thousands of amps of electricity vaporises most of the molten copper. The rest of the copper is dispersed harmlessly against the vehicle's hull. The initial development was mentioned previously."

twitter writes "The New York Times is reporting the US Labor Department's first assessment of International Offshoring. The report claims that less than 3% of Q1 2004 jobs were lost to offshoring. Companies were asked if workers had been replaced and taken at their word. A Federal Reserve governor is also quoted as dissmissive. Estimates by Goldman Sachs are 20 times higher. Despite Washington's IP fetish, no one quoted is worried about the export of US research and knowhow. Your job and 830,000 others are gone."

colonist writes "Wired News reports on the Personal Satellite Assistant (PSA), a spherical robot about the size of a softball that uses air jets to move in the microgravity environment of space vehicles and habitats. Described as a cross between Star Trek's tricorder and Star Wars' lightsaber training droid, the PSA has 'sensors for measuring gases, temperature, and air pressure' and performs 'video conferencing and can communicate with electronic support devices such as computer servers, avionics systems, and wireless LAN bridges'." We mentioned these a few years ago - looks like they've come a long way since then.