Slashdot Mirror

V_IL_Len writes "The University of Wisconsin's original Amorphophallus titanum, or 'corpse plant' known as Big Bucky is ready to bloom and emit its intensely malodorous stench. The plant only blooms a few times in its 40 year life span and each bloom lasts only 2-3 days. Its stench attracts carrion beetles and flesh flies to pollinate it. See this link for photos and live stream of the bloom."

V_IL_Len writes "The University of Wisconsin's original Amorphophallus titanum, or 'corpse plant' known as Big Bucky is ready to bloom and emit its intensely malodorous stench. The plant only blooms a few times in its 40 year life span and each bloom lasts only 2-3 days. Its stench attracts carrion beetles and flesh flies to pollinate it. See this link for photos and live stream of the bloom."

opencity writes "A team of scientists at UW-Madison has successfully used single bacterial cells to make tiny bio-electronic circuits. Slipping between the electrodes, the microbes, in effect, become electrical "junctions," giving researchers the ability to capture, interrogate and release bacterial cells one by one. Built into a sensor, such a capability would enable real-time detection of dangerous biological agents, including anthrax and other microbial pathogens. Two mpegs -- 11MB and 35MB -- available here. Related by scale and buzzwords: physorg.com reports scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have developed a way to sneak nano-sized probes inside cell nuclei, where they can track life's fundamental processes, such as DNA repair, for hours on end. Related cool pictures and strange font choices on Nano-Bio Interface Center."

drphil writes " Dr. Tuck Wah Ng, a member of the Faculty of Engineering at the National University of Singapore uses an optical mouse as a cheap non-contact motion sensor in his research. If a resolution of a little less than 60 microns is sufficient, you really can't beat the price. Dr. Ng has studied the viscoelastic deformation of plastics using a hacked optical mouse - published in J. Chem. Ed. vol 81, p 1628, 2004. You'd need to be a subscriber of the journal to see anything but the abstract, but any university science/chemistry library would have a copy of this issue of the Journal of Chemical Education. (Viscoelastic deformation, in plain English, is the degree to which a plastic stretches when you pull on it)"

daveschroeder writes "The November Top 500 supercomputer list has been published at SC2004. Topping the charts is IBM and the US Department of Energy's 'BlueGene/L DD2' beta system, at 70.72 TFlops, followed by NASA's 'Columbia' at 51.87.TFlops. For the first time in several publications of this list, Japan's Earth Simulator is no longer in the number one slot, falling to third. Virginia Tech's 'System X' Xserve G5 cluster, while 20% faster than the original cluster that debuted at number 3 last November, has fallen to number 7 due to the new entries, but remains the fastest supercomputer at an academic institution. Here's an excellent cost comparison (Google cache) of the top machines ('System X' is significantly cheaper than anything else in the top 20, not to mention cheaper than many things far below it in performance)."

daveschroeder writes "According to this Indymedia.org article and AFP report, the request to seize Indymedia servers hosted by a U.S. company in the UK (covered in this previous slashdot story) originated from government agencies in Italy and Switzerland, not the United States. Because Indymedia's hosting company, Rackspace.com, is a U.S. company, the FBI coordinated the request and accompanied UK Metropolitan Police on the seizure under the auspices of the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT), an international legal treaty, but, according to an FBI spokesman, 'It is not an FBI operation. Through [MLAT], the subpoena was on behalf of a third country.'" Read on below for more.

daveschroeder continues: "Rackspace's statement reads, 'In the present matter regarding Indymedia, Rackspace Managed Hosting, a U.S. based company with offices in London, is acting in compliance with a court order pursuant to a Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT), which establishes procedures for countries to assist each other in investigations such as international terrorism, kidnapping and money laundering. Rackspace responded to a Commissioner's subpoena, duly issued under Title 28, United States Code, Section 1782 in an investigation that did not arise in the United States. Rackspace is acting as a good corporate citizen and is cooperating with international law enforcement authorities. The court prohibits Rackspace from commenting further on this matter.'"

Project Massive, a Carnegie Mellon University study into the habits and tendencies of Massively Multiplayer Gamers, has completed research into their first wave of questions. The results are available on their site, and include some interesting observations (nearly 30% of players spend time in a MMOG to interact with real-life friends). If you're interested in participating, their second wave of questions is available. Similar projects include Nick Yee's The Daedalus Project, the TerraNova Blog, and Constance Steinkuehler's Selected Papers. Thanks to clampe for the submission.

das writes "Apple released Security Update 2004-06-07 via Software Update. From the brief description: 'Security Update 2004-06-07 delivers a number of security enhancements and is recommended for all Macintosh users. [...] Mac OS X will now present an approval alert when an application is to be run for the first time either by opening a document or clicking on a URL related to the application.'" This also fixes some related security problems with Terminal.app, Safari, and DiskImageMounter. No word in given regarding how the average user should know whether or not to approve the request.

das writes "Apple has introduced AirPort Express (specs), a palm-sized, portable 802.11g base station with 10/100 ethernet, USB printer sharing, and analog and optical audio output, for connection to a stereo system or powered speakers for streaming your music collection via 'AirTunes.' It supports multiple profiles for easy use at multiple locations It can plug directly into the wall as a "power brick", or use a longer power cord, similar to the newer PowerBook AC adapters. AirTunes requires iTunes 4.6, expected to be available soon."

Paul Howe writes "Roaming around my school's computer science webserver I ran across what struck me as a great (and very prescient) idea: a fault tolerant scripting language. This makes a lot of sense when programming in environments that are almost fundamentally unstable i.e. distributed systems etc. I'm not sure how active this project is, but its clear that this is an idea whose time has come. Fault Tolerant Shell."

unassimilatible writes "Wired reports that Wisconsin has decided to join a controversial interstate antiterrorism database that holds billions of records of ordinary Americans' activities known as the MATRIX, or Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange. Is your state next?" Update: 03/10 19:05 GMT by T : Thanks to reader philthedrill for a correction: according to an article in the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Daily Cardinal, Wisconsin has backed out of the Matrix, effective yesterday.

Rob Kennedy writes "A story at The Daily Cardinal is reporting that UW-Madison researchers are looking to mine the moon for helium-3 as an energy source, which supposedly would yield about 1000 times more energy per pound than coal. Although there are several hurdles that would need to be cleared, The Associated Press mentions one catch in particular: 'The researchers still are working on building a helium-3 reactor that would produce more energy than it takes in.' Indeed. SciScoop has a more in-depth discussion of the prospect."

purduephotog writes "Xiaochun Li of The University of Wisconsin-Madison has come up with the ultimate gift for those high-tech wine and cheese connoisseurs: A cheese slicing laser. More detailed information is available at Optics.Org."

purduephotog writes "Xiaochun Li of The University of Wisconsin-Madison has come up with the ultimate gift for those high-tech wine and cheese connoisseurs: A cheese slicing laser. More detailed information is available at Optics.Org."

Dave Santek writes "In development since the early 1970s, the McIDAS [Man computer Interactive Data Access System] software celebrated its 30th anniversary in October 2003. McIDAS is used to integrate and visualize weather information. The software was originally run on a Datacraft /5 and has gone through 4 major hardware configuration changes over the last 30 years. It is a supported software package that remains in use at more than 100 locations worldwide. A history of the first 25 years (pdf) is available. A freeware version of the software is also available."

Dave Santek writes "In development since the early 1970s, the McIDAS [Man computer Interactive Data Access System] software celebrated its 30th anniversary in October 2003. McIDAS is used to integrate and visualize weather information. The software was originally run on a Datacraft /5 and has gone through 4 major hardware configuration changes over the last 30 years. It is a supported software package that remains in use at more than 100 locations worldwide. A history of the first 25 years (pdf) is available. A freeware version of the software is also available."

Dave Santek writes "In development since the early 1970s, the McIDAS [Man computer Interactive Data Access System] software celebrated its 30th anniversary in October 2003. McIDAS is used to integrate and visualize weather information. The software was originally run on a Datacraft /5 and has gone through 4 major hardware configuration changes over the last 30 years. It is a supported software package that remains in use at more than 100 locations worldwide. A history of the first 25 years (pdf) is available. A freeware version of the software is also available."

Dave Santek writes "In development since the early 1970s, the McIDAS [Man computer Interactive Data Access System] software celebrated its 30th anniversary in October 2003. McIDAS is used to integrate and visualize weather information. The software was originally run on a Datacraft /5 and has gone through 4 major hardware configuration changes over the last 30 years. It is a supported software package that remains in use at more than 100 locations worldwide. A history of the first 25 years (pdf) is available. A freeware version of the software is also available."

VernonNemitz asks: "Light-Emitting Diodes (LEDs) have been around for decades, and they come in all colors. Here are the basic principles behind their operation, information on what's currently in production , and other practical info. Now, you would think it obvious that video displays should be made from LEDs, to take on the various competitors. Certainly this has been done on a large scale, and I am not the first to be interested in LED display technology for home viewing. The apparent goal of silicon LEDs these days seems to be tied up with optical communications between circuits, have they forgotten the possibility of making high-resolution display panels?"

"Achieving a good image will require smaller pixels, and now I have a better understanding of what has been holding it up, so would like to share what I found out. Basically, unlike a lot of electronic technology, LEDs are mostly -not- made from silicon. So, while silicon diodes are common, and large arrays of them are also made (for sensors), LEDs are not easy to incorporate into standard integrated-circuit manufacturing. Nevertheless, researchers have been pursuing and steadily making progress toward integrating silicon-based LEDs. Even whole arrays, 'suitable for large two-dimensional areas', of silicon laser LEDs have been made, as far back as three years ago."

trystanu writes "If Microsoft Built Cars, occasionally your car would just die on the motorway for no reason; you'd accept this, restart and drive on -- at least that was the joke a few years ago. ZDNET reports that Microsoft has persuaded a number of carmakers to use its slimmed-down Windows CE operating system to power a variety of in-car electronics, from navigation systems to music players to information devices. BMW, in particular, has gravitated to Microsoft systems, although the company has announced wins with Honda, Volvo and others as well. Perhaps the recent trapping of Thai dignitaries inside a BMW should be a warning to us all."

BSD Forums writes "While Unix has roots in document formatting and layout, configuring printers has always required more black-arts arcana. This hasn't been helped by the appearance of low-cost commodity WinPrinters. Fortunately, tools like Ghostscript, gimp-print, and Apsfilter make configuring printers much easier. Michael Lucas demonstrates quick and dirty -- and working -- printer configuration."

daveschroeder writes "BBC World's Click Online has a video report (with text transcript) on Virginia Tech's new 1100-node dual 2.0 GHz G5 Terascale Cluster. The report quotes the performance as 17.6 Tflops. As a point of reference, the cluster would be number 2 on the most recent June Top 500 list, behind only Japan's Earth Simulator, and considerably more than doubling the performance of the current number 3 1152-node dual 2.4 GHz Xeon MCR Linux cluster. Assuming the performance figure accurately reflects the LINPACK score (which it should; since the deadline for submissions for the upcoming list of Oct 1 has already passed, one would imagine VT would quote that figure), and depending on new entries for November's upcoming list, the cluster should almost certainly rank in the top 5 - all for only US$5.2 million. The video report is available in Windows Media 9 and Real formats; the relevant portion starts at 13:00."

numatrix writes "For the last few months, hundreds of thousands of netgear routers being sold had hardcoded values in their firmware for ntp synchronization, causing a major denial of service to the University of Wisconsin's network before it was filtered and eventually tracked down. Highlights how not to code embedded devices." A really excellent write-up of the incident.

teutonic_leech writes "According to an MSNBC report FTC chairman Tim Muris has indicated that the antispam laws being considered by Congress 'just won't work and may even be counterproductive - some of the proposed laws could be harmful, or at best useless.' He further concluded that 'In the end, legislation cannot do much to solve the spam problem, because it can only make a limited contribution to the crucial problems of anonymity and cost shifting.'" Other spam bits: an anti-spam service has a funny interview with one of their users, and reader der.hans submits a story and some pretty pictures discussing the quantity of Sobig.f virus emails.

carambola5 writes "No, this isn't a dupe from a year ago. The University of Wisconsin-Madison team has taken the FutureTruck title for the second year in a row. The overall goals of the competition are to modify an existing Ford Explorer (make and model dependant on year) to improve fuel economy and greenhouse gas emissions while maintaining or exceeding customer expectations. The University of California-Davis team took 2nd, with Michigan Tech, Georgia Tech, and Penn State following close behind. Speaking as a member of the winning team, I am quite sure that all of the students and advisors from the participating teams are well-deserving of appreciation after those many, many hours of preparation." Too bad Ford isn't actually using any of this hard work. One thing to note: The FutureTruck website still has to be updated with the winning info.

carambola5 writes "No, this isn't a dupe from a year ago. The University of Wisconsin-Madison team has taken the FutureTruck title for the second year in a row. The overall goals of the competition are to modify an existing Ford Explorer (make and model dependant on year) to improve fuel economy and greenhouse gas emissions while maintaining or exceeding customer expectations. The University of California-Davis team took 2nd, with Michigan Tech, Georgia Tech, and Penn State following close behind. Speaking as a member of the winning team, I am quite sure that all of the students and advisors from the participating teams are well-deserving of appreciation after those many, many hours of preparation." Too bad Ford isn't actually using any of this hard work. One thing to note: The FutureTruck website still has to be updated with the winning info.

carambola5 writes "No, this isn't a dupe from a year ago. The University of Wisconsin-Madison team has taken the FutureTruck title for the second year in a row. The overall goals of the competition are to modify an existing Ford Explorer (make and model dependant on year) to improve fuel economy and greenhouse gas emissions while maintaining or exceeding customer expectations. The University of California-Davis team took 2nd, with Michigan Tech, Georgia Tech, and Penn State following close behind. Speaking as a member of the winning team, I am quite sure that all of the students and advisors from the participating teams are well-deserving of appreciation after those many, many hours of preparation." Too bad Ford isn't actually using any of this hard work. One thing to note: The FutureTruck website still has to be updated with the winning info.

daveschroeder writes "Jon "Hannibal" Stokes has posted a long-awaited, very detailed analysis of the IBM PowerPC 970 at Ars Technica. Notable quote: 'The 970 was made for Apple'."

Makarand writes "A unique diamond film with DNA attached to it coupled with sensitive microelectronics might be the sensor needed to sniff out harmful biological agents. If DNA is attached to diamond it is possible to electronically detect the electrical response when biomolecules bind to the DNA-diamond surface. A DNA-Diamond interface deposited on a silicon surface can act as a sensitive biosensor. These inexpensive and compact sensors can make it possible to continuously scan public places like airports and subways and send out security alerts to agencies if required."

Wolffman writes "University of Wisconsin-Madison scientists have solved a long-standing puzzle about how the influenza virus assembles its genetic contents into infectious particles that enable the virus to spread from cell to cell, scientists have opened a new gateway to a better understanding of one of the world's most virulent diseases."

Webbsurfer asks: "I recently returned home from school from winter break, and discovered a good chunk of spyware on my parent's computer. I've ran ad-aware and cleared out the obvious P2P programs, but there's one I can't seem to get rid of. It generates pop-up ads, which come from the burstabit.com domain. Any ideas who these guys are and how to get rid of their junk?"

fist_187 writes "Here's a link to an interesting chemistry video about "magic sand", a hydrophobic solid. I've seen something like this done before with a certain type of pollen. But, this is the first demonstration I've seen that uses a material actually more dense than water."

carambola5 asks: "Because we all know the world needs more inattentive drivers... I am a member of the champion UW-Madison FutureTruck team, which was the subject of this Slashdot report from June. Well, we're gearing up for next year and I'm on the sub-group that puts in all the cool interior stuff. Besides the Clarion joyride unit already in there, we're looking for other ideas (for example: a CF card that could act as both a key and remote access device for use in a handheld). What kind of little toys would you want in a car?"

carambola5 asks: "Because we all know the world needs more inattentive drivers... I am a member of the champion UW-Madison FutureTruck team, which was the subject of this Slashdot report from June. Well, we're gearing up for next year and I'm on the sub-group that puts in all the cool interior stuff. Besides the Clarion joyride unit already in there, we're looking for other ideas (for example: a CF card that could act as both a key and remote access device for use in a handheld). What kind of little toys would you want in a car?"

azav writes "University of Wisconsin-Madison Scientists have created "atomic scale" memory using individual atoms of Silicon." A cool photo can be found on the site as well.

azav writes "University of Wisconsin-Madison Scientists have created "atomic scale" memory using individual atoms of Silicon." A cool photo can be found on the site as well.

emmons writes: "The University of Wisconsin has won this year's FutureTruck Competition by reducing the greenhouse gas index of a Ford Explorer by 50% and increasing over-the-road fuel economy by 45%. The modified Explorer uses an aluminum/steel hybrid frame, a titanium exhaust system and sports a hybrid bio-diesel/electric engine. I saw the vehicle on campus a few months ago and got to talk to some of the team members- it's really quite impressive."

emmons writes: "The University of Wisconsin has won this year's FutureTruck Competition by reducing the greenhouse gas index of a Ford Explorer by 50% and increasing over-the-road fuel economy by 45%. The modified Explorer uses an aluminum/steel hybrid frame, a titanium exhaust system and sports a hybrid bio-diesel/electric engine. I saw the vehicle on campus a few months ago and got to talk to some of the team members- it's really quite impressive."

swight1701 asks: "I remember seeing the MAC G4 case open for the first time and it was like a ray of light dropped down from above, and the Case was good. This has to have been the easiest access case in history, to be able to flip down the motherboard without removing any card from your PCI slots, genius. So why is it, like most of Apple's more frivilous case designs , and colors, was it not copied by other case manufacturers? If anyone HAS seen this, or know the reason why it wasn't, please tell us all!"

jpsc was kind enough to send in coverage of the Linux Accessibility Conference at CSUN: "There was a flurry of activity in the Linux accessibility world at CSUN 2002, one of the most widely attended, well known, and longest running conferences on technology for the disabled. Accessibility, for those who do not know, is the practice of making software accessible or usable by the disabled (e.g., blind or low vision); under United States law, software, including Linux, must be accessible for it to be used by the government. Similar laws exist in other countries. " Coverage continues... On Thursday, March 21st, Sun Microsystems presented the UNIX Accessibility sessions, which ranged in subject matter from panel discussions about the general importance and state of UNIX accessibility, to overviews of the structure of GNOME 2 and the GNOME Accessibility Architecture, to presentations about new Assistive Technology (AT) for the platform. Most notable were demonstrations of Gnopernicus, a GNOME screen reader, magnifier, and Braille outputer and GOK, the Gnome Onscreen Keyboard. Sun also announced that a team of engineers in China is working on making Mozilla accessible through the GNOME Accessibility Architecture and that several engineers are doing the same for Nautilis. Overall, Thursday?s sessions were representative of the great progress made in the last year in the Linux and UNIX accessibility world, specifically in the GNOME, GTK+, and X Windows arenas.

The next day the 2nd Linux Accessibility Conference, also at CSUN 2002, served as the stage for more in-depth and technical material as well as group discussions about the community?s direction. Presentations were given on subjects such accessibility checklists and guides for application developers, modifying the Linux kernel to speech-enable console applications, and Linux accessibility in the United States government. Among the most prominent parts of the conference was a roundtable on interoperability and collaboration, which lead to the formation of lengthy and detailed TODO list. As with the 1st Linux Accessibility Conference, this year?s meeting allowed developers to share their work and plans for the coming months and hopefully better coordinate them.

Overall, in two days at CSUN, UNIX, Solaris, and Linux showed themselves to be increasingly capable platforms for disabled users. The Linux accessibility community continues to grow and is looking, now more than ever, for new developers and volunteers. E-mail JP Schnapper-Casteras and with your skills and experience (experience with accessibility not required) and he will put you in contact with the appropriate people and projects.

URLs:

• TODO items
• Notes from the conference
• Free Desktop Accessibility Working Group (FDAWG)
• GNOME Accessibility Project (GAP)
• Gnopernicus - An integrated screen reader and magnifier for Gnome
• Gnome Onscreen Keyboard - Aims to enable users to control Gnome without a standard keyboard (with alternate input devices).
• Linux Accessibility Resource Site (LARS)

"

GizmoDuck writes "I'm working in a computational chemistry lab, and we find ourselves using memory and CPU hogs like Amber and Gaussian. The CPU hogging isn't a problem, thanks to Condor, but when submitting one of the jobs that request (and pretty much require) all the physical RAM in the machines, Linux promptly starts swapping so hard that the mouse pointer in X stops moving, NFS and NIS halt, and things don't get back to normal for five minutes. I've tried toying a bit with the settings in /proc/sys/vm/kswapd to no avail. I've done some poking around on the 'net looking for answers. Faster disks and swap partitions at the beginning of the drive aren't really an option at this point. I haven't found a good solution yet. I was wondering if the /. community has any input on how to keep the system from locking during periods of necessarily high swap activity?"

Adam asks: "I'm an undergraduate math and CS major, and as such, I would like to write some programs that do basic math, from finding perfect numbers to solving basic algebraic equations--just for fun. However, I only have experience with Java, and BigInteger and BigDecimal suck pretty hard as far as writing equations with them is concerned. So, to all you mathematicians and math lovers, what languages do you program mathematics in, and why?"

AMANDA writes: "Ice Cube is a neutrino telescope located at the south pole. It has just received the congressional support for $15 million dollars from the NSF. It will be the largest scientific instrument in the world. It promises a view into the most energetic phenomena in the universe." The idea is to use a cubic kilometer of Antarctic ice as a detector. Impressive.

AMANDA writes: "Ice Cube is a neutrino telescope located at the south pole. It has just received the congressional support for $15 million dollars from the NSF. It will be the largest scientific instrument in the world. It promises a view into the most energetic phenomena in the universe." The idea is to use a cubic kilometer of Antarctic ice as a detector. Impressive.

Michael Buckbee writes: "After Dan's page got too slashdotted to view, I ran a quick search on Google for more more fun Ferroliquid sites and stumbled into a collection of movies that I wish had been taken in my chemistry classes. Almost all of the experiment descriptions lean heavily on the phrase "EXTREME DANGER" and many contain other fun words like: "Explosion", "Toxic", "Detonation", and "Diazotization"."

backtick writes: " Yup, they're making the Watchpad. 'Besides telling time, the WatchPad comes with a calendar-scheduling application, a pager-like application for sending and receiving short messages, and a Bluetooth chip for wireless communication with notebooks, handheld computers and cell phones'" If they'll make a watch that runs Linux and takes pictures like Casio's camera watch, I might just switch back to a digital. Gerdts points out that the watch's battery life is either up to six hours, or only six hours, depending on how you look at it.

Nick G Superstar writes "From the site: 'NPRQuake attempts to capture the elements of different drawing techniques, and immerse the viewer in worlds drawn entirely in the prescribed style. If you have ever imagined running around inside a painting or a drawing, you are beginning to get the idea.' Warning: the site is slow." Update Remember this story when we first ran it? Hemos doesn't. Obviously he was a bit pre-occupied this morning. Wonder why.

More on the Battlebots trademark dispute, proof that some of your are listening to Dr. Who on the Beeb, and a memorial -- finally -- for Alan Turing, in tonight's round of updates, corrections, and further info.

That eerie, eerie theme music will get in your head all day. sideshow-voxx writes: "The BBC has announced that there will be more installments of the Audio Adventure Dr Who - Death Comes to Time available on the web in the New Year."

This is cool news (the accompanying art is a nice touch with this Dr. Who presentation), but it would be nice if they would put the episodes into more audio formats as well.

Things always seem to get more complicated. Eric Molitor, ("Linux hacker and Builder of Violator - Linux powered BattleBot that competed in May") wrote about the BattleBots vs. Battlebots story of the other day, saying:

"As a BattleBot competitor I was horrified when I noticed your article but here are some corrections... BattleBots INC != BattleBots the show.

BattleBots INC is suing and not the TV show. (Comedy Central tapes the tournaments and airs portions of the finals on a TV show. But thats just like showing NFL games mostly. The TV company just pays a licensing fee to broadcast the event.)

Do a little research and the guy registered his domain at least a year after the first BattleBots competition in Long Beach. (Early 1998) In fact the battlebots.org domain was registered after BattleBots.com, and after BattleBots applied for their TM.

So this kid (running a script kiddie hosting service no less) registers a domain after somebody applies for the TM and then asks for $5K to give it up. Sounds like cyber-squatting to me. Also take a look at the dates on the website for the replies, etc. Things don't look right ....

Still BattleBots is dumb not to have registered the .org domain.

For a little history on BattleBots and the law suits, etc. that RobotWars got into that nearly destroyed this sport take a look at http://www.robotcombat.com/history.html.

Greg and Tray gave up a lot and everybody got together to dodge RobotWars/Profile records lawsuits to prevent the sport from happening. I'd hate to see them unfairly get a bad name."

Thanks, Eric.

Something to see in England. slathering wrote with news that the Alan Turing memorial written about in this Slashdot story has finally materialized. He writes: "I read about this in this months IEEE Annals of the History of Computing (who doesn't have a website). But I found the website for the memorial itself. Apparently funding was found for the Alan Turing Memorial since it was unveiled June 23, 2001 in Manchester, England. It was funded without any donations from the computing industry."

Bob Plankers writes: "It seems that the world's largest and smelliest flower is about to bloom for the 12th recorded time in captivity. The Amorphophallus titanum ("Titan Arum"), or corpseflower, stands up to ten feet high and when it blooms it emits a putrid odor, not unlike that of corpses. The University of Wisconsin -- Madison Botany Department is home to this rare bloom." Better jet for Madison for this rare opportunity.

icemind writes "And you thought Panoramic Quake was cool. NPRQuake is actually three renderers which make Quake levels look hand sketched, like they're blueprints or even done with brushstrokes, all in real time. Very cool, although if this interview is anything to go by it sadly isn't being updated anymore." I'm not sure if making Quake look like that Aha's Take on Me video is an idea that will make quake playable, but is really sweet.