Slashdot Mirror

pq writes: "The real world catches up with Neal Stephenson's 'Cryptonomicon' on Monday, June 5th, when a data haven opens on a WWII military fortress six miles off England's coast. Read the (nologin) NYT article here about the strange case of HavenCo and the independent principality of Sealand: yes, they'll host DeCSS, Metallica songs, even pictures of Natalie, all for a price." (More below.)

And reader JazFresh writes: " ... I went to Monkeybagel.com to find out what was new, and the site owner said he's stopped work on Monkeybagel to work on this new site instead. From the Web page:

'HavenCo will soon be offering the world's most secure managed colocation facility based in the world's smallest sovereign territory, the Principality of Sealand. As the security of sensitive data over public networks grows in importance, businesses, governments and organizations worldwide are realizing the need for a suitable facility from which to host their financial transaction, B2B and e-mail servers as well as sensitive data backups. A large part of a server's physical security is dependent upon the political system of the country in which the server is located. We will be providing the business structure in the world's first free-market location.'"

These were just some of the many submissions about this company. The story of Sealand is almost too bizarre for comprehension; read this April 3rd Sunday Telegraph piece for an eyebrow-wrinkling summary. All I know is, I'd like one of these passports, too, please.

Update: 06/05 13:53 by michael : Thought I'd update this with some pictures and diagrams. Nifty.

A whole load of people submitted questions related to this Inter@ctive weekly article but HarryHood got thru first "...and it got me thinking about the prevalence of offices completely free of Microsoft Office. Of all the communities on the Internet, I would think the /. community would have the largest comglomeration of users that work in such environments. So can we get an informal vote and some comments on the ideal Microsoft Office-less setup?" There are several issues which Free Software still has to address, the largest of which is compatibility. Read on for a choice helping of some related questions that have recently fallen into the bin.

One Clan Anonymous Coward member asks this question regarding viable alternatives to the entire suite: "The company for which I work is presently deciding on software and hardware standards for employee desktops. A couple of days ago a radical thought occurred to me: could the company use Sun's StarOffice suite in place of Microsoft Office? If so, it might save the company a lot of money! So I cadged some free copies from the local Sun sales office and spread 'em around. For an integrated office suite, it doesn't look half bad. And it may allow some of us to keep our 'nix desktops :-). The question is: can StarOffice really be used in place of Microsoft Office? The big concern is, of course, exchanging MS-Word and MS-Excel files with customers and vendors. Does anybody out there have any experience with deploying StarOffice in place of MS-Office on a company-wide scale?"

TigerPlish asks: "[I wish to] find or develop a cost-effective e-mail solution that'll support Microsoft Outlook. All the functions MS-Exchange provides must be supported, in particular, the ability to migrate an ACT2000 database into an Outlook contact list..complete with searches, etc. So far, the other geeks at work are pushing for MS Exchange, and Lotus Notes, both running on NT. My suggestion is HP's OpenMail, which I'm now starting to play and get familiar with - and it's turning to be quite a bear to configre. At least it sends and gets mail from the internet - tho the x.400 to internet name mappings are truly hideous. Other than HP's OpenMail..are there any other Outlook-compatible server solutions for linux? They can be either payware or open-source..."

Compatibility with Office's contact management features has been a big issue with many of the submissions I get regarding Office replacements, unfortunately I didn't get much information in this regard from the last time this question was raised. It would be interesting to see how much has changed in this area over the past 18+ months.

Lumpy asks: "Is there a program that I can use from Perl (or as a daemon/ etc..) that will converse with an Exchange server for sending and receiving email? Our corporate servers are only Exchange based, and will not open up a POP3/SMTP server for use by non-MS systems."

Which is, as most of us know, another way Microsoft locks offices into their infrastructure. Has there been any progress made on solutions to this problem? I ask this primarily for cases where where administrators are unwilling to go through the trouble of enabling POP3 and SMTP services for their all-Microsoft networks.

Here's a similar question from OldGrover: "Does anyone know any information on the format Outlook uses to talk to Exchange? Where can I find this info? I'd love to have a perl module that talks to an Exchange server and I see no such beast on CPAN, so I'm perfectly willing to write one, but obviously I need the data. If the data isn't available, what are my potential liabilities if I just figure this out myself? (Watching packets, or whatever). Where are the Evolution guys getting their info? If I could, I'd use something else, but there are an awful lot of companies out there using Exchange. My biggest beef with it is its lack of scriptability and transparency and a Perl module with all the power of Outlook (mailing list updates, querying, mailbox manipulation) would go a long way towards helping me resolve that. I'm willing to put in the time on this, but I have to know the lay of the land first. Comments?"

Decyphering the Outlook<->Exchange dialect would go a long way into opening up the office to other systems. A Perl module implementing such a thing could almost directly plug into CSCMail, for example. However, reverse engineering the protocol might prove problematic, even if it was done in countries where reverse engineering is legal, since Microsoft can still put heavy pressure on anyone choosing to use that information. What legalities would be involved here? Could such a feat be performed legally?

What about Calendar sharing? I know Outlook has functionality for scheduling meetings and appointments via e-mail. Are there any Open Sourced applications that perform something like this? Would such a thing be difficult to implement?

So there are still a few issues that need to be addressed before a Microsoft Office-free environment is practical, but it's currently possible with varying degrees of success. Now that the itch is being felt, even among the average user, getting it scratched is a matter of "when", not "if".

Beating plows into ploughshares, turning lead into gold, casting new light through windows opened only just last week, it's another spellbinding outbreak of Slashback. Stand back, breathe slowly as the scent of humble correction wafts over you, mingling with the essence of new and perhaps intriguing information. Bruce Perens, too.

"That's not censorship, mate. This is censorship!" Carnage4Life writes: "After causing a murder trial to be aborted last month CrimeNet has been ordered by the attorney general of the Australian state of Victoria to be shut down. If the site operators refuse to shut down they will face jail time. The story can be found here. In news which can only be considered related, an anonymous kangaroo wrote: "Found a reference to this article on LISNews. Seems the Aussie Parliament pitched a hissy fit when their internet access got filtered. Oh gee, how the fsck do you think the rest of the country feels?" How indeed. That's what happens when you start introducing clashing premises, I guess. Geese, ganders, sauce.

To the moon, Alice -- To the moon! We've frequently linked to NASA photos from Slashdot; what if they said "(registration required)" after them like links to the New York Times? MousePotato writes: "NASA announced today that it has entered into an agreement with Dreamtime Holdings to provide multimedia coverage of astronaut activities. The press release details "creating a state-of-the-art multimedia portal, www.Dreamtime.com, that will, with the click of a mouse, open the door to thousands of images, sounds, documents, blueprints and plans from NASA's currently underused archives. " Interesting to note about it is the fact that they will be using HDTV to give us as well as NASA engineers high quality video." Interesting, too, that billions of space research tax dollars are being used "to create new market opportunities in the multimedia arena."

Does this mean I can watch my -- errr ... "classics" again? The DVD-under-Linux story continues, specifically with an update on LinDVD; soon, the MPAA's claims that there are legal DVD players for Linux users may hold at least a sprinking of water; johnnick writes: "Another update in the DeCSS saga. One of the arguments for DeCSS was that there was no legal DVD decoder for Linux boxes. CNET reports that InterVideo, a licensee of the software that enables DVD information to be decoded, plans to release beta software called LinDVD this month that allows people to watch DVDs on Linux machines."

Microsoft not making a run for the border: Calz writes: "Both Microsoft and B.C.'s Investment Minister have denied that Microsoft is considering moving, as reported in this Yahoo article."

In other news from planet Microsoft, the indefatigable Bruce Perens has this to say about mixed-case licensing:

"Microsoft has been caught in a trivial, easily remedied, GPL violation, which is detailed here. They have been contacted, and their response was, well, dumb.

Why do companies get involved in trivial GPL violations? Because the company picks up Free Software as part of one of their products without making a commitment to do the simple, easy, inexpensive things that are required to comply with the Free Software license. Folks, if you can't comply with license requirements as easy as those in the GPL, find other software, please.

One of these examples comes up at least once a month, and I'm going to keep submitting these stories until the situation improves. Maybe that means forever. Today's wakeup call goes to Microsoft corporation, read the account from Tim Burlowski. "

As Bruce says, this looks like a relatively easy one to fix. It could be explained by the complexities of mergers and acquisitions, general confusion, alignment of planets etc, but eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, including as applied to software. Unless Microsoft would like to declare all EULAs null and void ...

Beating plows into ploughshares, turning lead into gold, casting new light through windows opened only just last week, it's another spellbinding outbreak of Slashback. Stand back, breathe slowly as the scent of humble correction wafts over you, mingling with the essence of new and perhaps intriguing information. Bruce Perens, too.

"That's not censorship, mate. This is censorship!" Carnage4Life writes: "After causing a murder trial to be aborted last month CrimeNet has been ordered by the attorney general of the Australian state of Victoria to be shut down. If the site operators refuse to shut down they will face jail time. The story can be found here. In news which can only be considered related, an anonymous kangaroo wrote: "Found a reference to this article on LISNews. Seems the Aussie Parliament pitched a hissy fit when their internet access got filtered. Oh gee, how the fsck do you think the rest of the country feels?" How indeed. That's what happens when you start introducing clashing premises, I guess. Geese, ganders, sauce.

To the moon, Alice -- To the moon! We've frequently linked to NASA photos from Slashdot; what if they said "(registration required)" after them like links to the New York Times? MousePotato writes: "NASA announced today that it has entered into an agreement with Dreamtime Holdings to provide multimedia coverage of astronaut activities. The press release details "creating a state-of-the-art multimedia portal, www.Dreamtime.com, that will, with the click of a mouse, open the door to thousands of images, sounds, documents, blueprints and plans from NASA's currently underused archives. " Interesting to note about it is the fact that they will be using HDTV to give us as well as NASA engineers high quality video." Interesting, too, that billions of space research tax dollars are being used "to create new market opportunities in the multimedia arena."

Does this mean I can watch my -- errr ... "classics" again? The DVD-under-Linux story continues, specifically with an update on LinDVD; soon, the MPAA's claims that there are legal DVD players for Linux users may hold at least a sprinking of water; johnnick writes: "Another update in the DeCSS saga. One of the arguments for DeCSS was that there was no legal DVD decoder for Linux boxes. CNET reports that InterVideo, a licensee of the software that enables DVD information to be decoded, plans to release beta software called LinDVD this month that allows people to watch DVDs on Linux machines."

Microsoft not making a run for the border: Calz writes: "Both Microsoft and B.C.'s Investment Minister have denied that Microsoft is considering moving, as reported in this Yahoo article."

In other news from planet Microsoft, the indefatigable Bruce Perens has this to say about mixed-case licensing:

"Microsoft has been caught in a trivial, easily remedied, GPL violation, which is detailed here. They have been contacted, and their response was, well, dumb.

Why do companies get involved in trivial GPL violations? Because the company picks up Free Software as part of one of their products without making a commitment to do the simple, easy, inexpensive things that are required to comply with the Free Software license. Folks, if you can't comply with license requirements as easy as those in the GPL, find other software, please.

One of these examples comes up at least once a month, and I'm going to keep submitting these stories until the situation improves. Maybe that means forever. Today's wakeup call goes to Microsoft corporation, read the account from Tim Burlowski. "

As Bruce says, this looks like a relatively easy one to fix. It could be explained by the complexities of mergers and acquisitions, general confusion, alignment of planets etc, but eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, including as applied to software. Unless Microsoft would like to declare all EULAs null and void ...

ocipio writes "The article on sfgate.com discusses the use of FreeBSD on the largest Internet companies in the world. FreeBSD is used by Yahoo!, Hotmail, MindSpring, UUNet, and Verio. BSD will also get an indirect boost next year as Apple releases Mac OS X. Comparing the BSD family to Linux, BSDi's Rose said, "We think we have a product that's more reliable, scalable and robust for high-performance, infrastructure-grade computing." Yahoo!'s Chief David Filo agrees, noting he couldn't imagine moving to a proprietary system. "

Dionysus asks: "We have some internal utilities running on Windows NT (using Visual C++) that we would like to port to Linux. The problem is, Microsoft, in its infinite wisdom has extended the language and introduced new types (like CHAR, WCHAR, TCHAR), and new functions (like MultiByteToWideChar()), which makes it impossible to do a straight compile. Note, we are not using WIN32 specific stuff (like MFC, COM etc). Are there any libraries out there that would make the porting easier?"

matty writes: "A judge has said that Bidder's Edge could no longer use its crawler to gather information from eBay. 'Even if its searches use only a small amount of eBay's computer system capacity, Bidder's Edge has nonetheless deprived eBay of the ability to use that portion of its personal property for its own purposes.' So what about Yahoo! and all the other search engines? Don't they use similar technology? Read the article and see for yourself." Or maybe it's not such a bad precedent; it'd be interesting if such a ruling helped discourage hard-drive searching by software which searches for "undesirable" content without your consent or knowledge.

Ant writes: "Yahoo posted the press release that 3dfx Interactive® Inc. has temporarily delayed the release of its Voodoo5(TM) 5500 AGP. The press release states that the company is taking this action to ensure that it meets its own high standards for product quality."

Sax Maniac writes "There is a story on Yahoo! that reports on a new study that says Napster cuts into record sales. " It'd be a more informative study if the study also included the fact that a huge number of college students buy their music online now, which would also drive down sales in the local area - looks like a piece of FUD in MP3 War.

Update: 05/25 12:08 by michael : I can't help but jump in with a link: Pirates Steal Negative $1,400,000,000 from Music Industry.

Penguin_99 writes "Wired.com has an article about a Lucent Technologies' Bell Labs researcher (Lov Grover) who came up with a quantum algorithm that is able to instantly search a massive database (of websites or whatever you might have) and return amazingly precise results even if the input is vague or incomplete. This particular algorithm can be used for other things besides searching for instance solving equations. Apperently this algorithm is only one of a handful of quantum algorithms in existance. The down side is that it requires a quantum computer so you are not likely to see Yahoo! using it anytime soon. Imagine a day when you do not have to wade through pages of usless websites after performing a search. "

cbull writes: "Yahoo! has an article that indicates the judge in the Microsoft case thinks splitting Microsoft into three companies is attractive to him. This is based on a friend-of-the-court brief filed by the Computer and Communications Industry Association and Software and Information Industry Association." And mfinke wrote: "Just saw the CNN article here about Judge Jackson's ruling that DOJ's proposal to split the company will still be considered when he rules. " Finally, mizhi pointed out this ZDNet coverage of the proceedings, saying "Basically, the government says that instead of splitting Microsoft into an operating system company and applications company, it should also split it into a third independent company for Internet Explorer."

cbull writes: "Yahoo! has an article that indicates the judge in the Microsoft case thinks splitting Microsoft into three companies is attractive to him. This is based on a friend-of-the-court brief filed by the Computer and Communications Industry Association and Software and Information Industry Association." And mfinke wrote: "Just saw the CNN article here about Judge Jackson's ruling that DOJ's proposal to split the company will still be considered when he rules. " Finally, mizhi pointed out this ZDNet coverage of the proceedings, saying "Basically, the government says that instead of splitting Microsoft into an operating system company and applications company, it should also split it into a third independent company for Internet Explorer."

Anton asks: "This is a question about Linux failover in business situations. We are a growing B2B company; our product runs on Apache/Linux. We contracted professional services to properly set up our network. After all the hellishly expensive CISCO hardware had been set up it turns out that for our servers to be configured for failover, each one needs two dual-port NICs configured for one IP connected to two different switches, furthermore the driver needs to intelligently switch the ports when the active port fails ... We've never heard of such beasts for Linux and a net search revealed nothing. Our consultant however claims that 'Linux is biting itself in the foot' for not supporting that, and that other industrial strength OS's like solaris in fact do support this. Has anyone run into this before or have other ideas? " [nik suggests]: Take a look at Polyserve Understudy, which might be an alternative. FreeBSD and Linux versions are available (and bundled with FreeBSD 4.0).

Shibumi writes: " Penthouse.com is starting to pursue legal action against persons who post material to Usenet from their pay site." At least they're going after the poster and not the usenet servers.

frinsore, John Leeming and several other readers passed on word of the decision of a French court that Yahoo is responsible for making it impossible for French citizens to access auctions featuring Nazi-related items. As John writes, "It appears France is now defining censorship on U.S. Web sites; in particular, Yahoo! and its auction sites. For all those who have in the past believed immunity of action exists because you live in a different country or under different laws, this CNN/Reuters article is an interesting glimpse into future international jurisdiction problems for the Internet, and why we need to watch for the manner in which governments decide to deal with it." Here's NewsBytes' coverage of the same story.

BMIComp writes "Yahoo! news is reporting that Intel is going to introduce their Pentium III Xeon Chip, today. " .18 microns, 700 Mhz, and integrated cache. The article talks quite a bit about how the new Xeons are going straight for Sun's throat.

BMIComp writes "Yahoo! news is reporting that Intel is going to introduce their Pentium III Xeon Chip, today. " .18 microns, 700 Mhz, and integrated cache. The article talks quite a bit about how the new Xeons are going straight for Sun's throat.

Vulgrin the MAD asks: "I've been interested in ebook / datapads for a while. I can't wait to get rid of all of this paper I need to lug around. While the Palm Pilot is great, I'm also looking into ebook style devices like the Rocket Ebook. Has anyone used these devices and what are your thoughts on this technology? Do you think its in prime time yet, or should we let it get settled down some more? Also, how long do you think it'll be before 90% of all works are published electronically, along with paper? "

Red Leader. writes: "Hey. Here's an interesting article on flywheels and the future of batteries from Wired Magazine (8.05). Nothing super-promising yet (as always; vapourware) -- but down the road, these could make your laptop 'spin' a little longer." I'm a big fan of simple machines, and flywheels are one of my favorites. The mention of carbon nanotubes is especially interesting -- it'd be neat to see that technology enter the mainstream.

Back from his stint in juvenile detention, it's hemos with a review of John F. Sundman's technothriller Acts of the Apostles. And you don't even have to buy it until you're hooked. (Read more to find out why.) Acts of the Apostles author John F. Sundman pages 400 publisher Rosalita Associates rating 8/10 reviewer hemos ISBN 192975213X summary Fast-paced, impossible-odds story with a grasp of modern technology. The path that Acts of the Apostles took to get to me is an interesting path to start with -- and that should have been an indication to me what the book would be like.

Rob noticed this guy at April's Geek Pride Festival in Boston. The guy in question was obviously trying to reach Rob and talk to him, but was having a hard time getting there. (CT:I think John and I suffer from the same problem: We're both pretty shy, and this was a really crowded place) When he did finally reach Rob, he gave him the book, asking him to read it -- or pass it on to me for reading.

That's very similar to the opening of the book, in which the book's protagonist has a computer disk dumped into his world, after enduring some interesting testing times. From there, the thriller develops ranging the world, encompassing favorites like nanotechnology gone bad, mind control, multinational corporate intrigue, computer chip design, seances, and running from the law.

The book is purportedly about Gulf War Syndrome and its causes, but that's only the starting point: The plot itself is believable, for a thriller. I've described it to friends as "What Tom Clancy would write if he were smart." The plot devices, the characters and topics are all very familiar to the geek audience, and it's quite refreshing to read a book that understands the mindset its audience will have.

There a few drawbacks to the book -- as the author's bio states, this is Sundman's first book, and that is readily apparent. While it's well written, there are sections of the book that feel stilted and artificial, and portions of the dialogue feel unnatural. But in light of it being a first novel, I think these are forgivable. Lastly, the story line suffers from some too-familar devices, including the overused theme of an evil multinational corporation as bogeyman.

I salute the publisher and author for their decision to put the first 13 chapters online. Acts of the Apostles comprises 7 "books" with 62 total chapters, so the online chapters give you a very good feeling for the book. I will also say that the writing and story get better as the plot unfolds, something worth keeping in mind while reading the initial section of the book. One of the more amusing parts of the book's Web site is the section regarding John's travels. I would imagine he's quite a guy.

Summary: Good book. It's easy to pick up after being away from for a while, but good enough that you'll want to read it straight through. Support small publishing and purchase this book from fatbrain. With summer coming up, and a bit more free time, this is a good book to keep around to read during kernel compiles.

You can also grab the book from Softpro.

Pocky asks: "A company called IDT Wireless is making a couple of pagers that use a calling-party-pays service model. They are making two models, Beep2Talk (numeric) and Beep2Talk Alpha (alphanumeric recieve-only). Today's Best Buy flyer appears to advertise the numeric model for a one-time fee of $39.95. Has anybody bought one of these pagers? Any ideas how this company makes money? They can't exactly ask the caller for a credit card number, can they? Perhaps the alphanumeric model requires you to send from a web site which displays ads, but this doesn't explain the numeric model. I may head to Best Buy to check them out and see if I can dig up any more info." Great, now it's even more affordable for companies to leash their employees to the job!

"This is from a press release on their web site:

The technology utilizes a proprietary "calling party pays" application which will eliminate the fees that subscribers are currently forced to pay for incoming pages and calls in the U.S. 'This technology is the culmination of more than four years of research and development on the part of IDT's Cellular Division engineers,' said Howard Jonas, IDT Chairman and CEO.

The rest of their web site is similarly vague. An AltaVista search and Google search revealed no further information on this company, so I tried calling the 1-800 number listed on their web site and was greeted by a message telling me to call back during normal business hours."

hwestiii was the first to e-mail with the word that the oft-troubled merger between Corel and Inprise/Borland has been called off. The press release has made its way onto Yahoo! so far, with the given reason being the decline of Corel's stock price making the deal impossible to close.

thelonius writes "According to this press release, Google is traipsing down that questionable path of content filtering. They are partnering with SurfWatch, anyone know their track record for overzealous or politically skewed blocking? Let's hope Google deploys this as an option which can be turned off..." I expect they will. SurfWatch is one of the few censorware packages that blocks by keyword-match on URL; e.g. this anti-pornography page is blindly blocked because of its URL.

Ed Matthews asks: "In an attempt to become an ever more informed consumer, I'm looking for a web site where you can enter a product or product type and find out where the raw materials for it come from, where processing and assembly occur, environmental impact etc. Ideally, it would list each step of production, country where it occurs, and as much other information as possible. Lumber is a particularly sensitive product. When I purchase exotic woods at my local home improvement super store, where can I find out which Latin or South American country produced that wood, and what the environmental costs are? Computer chips? Monitors? Coffee? If it just started with houses and automobiles, that would be pretty substantial.Anyone know of a site or sites like this?" While I doubt that there is one site which encompasses all of this functionality, I wouldn't be surprised if there were a few sites that did this for specific products.

Remember the plan, in the U.S. and Canada, to tax DAT and send the profits to the music labels? Bubblehead writes "GEMA successfully sued HP over the fact that music CDs can be copied with CD-Rs. Now HP has to pay DM17 (US$8) for each CD burner sold since February 1998. So far I only found a German article on this (AP). You can translate with Babelfish. I think this is going too far - it's like adding a surcharge to a camera, because you might take a photo of an expensive painting."

dagnabit writes "At Yahoo News, there's a story about a company which is investing in/supporting the PostgreSQL crew. Ultimate goals include "a planned expansion to 120 employees and the ultimate possibility of going public." So that enterprise-class open-source RDBMS may not be too far off after all... "

Leo Comitale writes "According to this press release the Linux Standard Base and the Linux Internationalization (I18N) project have merged and are calling themselves the Free Standards Group. I think it is really important for Linux to have a basic, low level standard for file system layout and support for international languages. These areas are critical to keeping Linux from splintering into a bunch of incompatible variants, and it seems these efforts are not getting as much support as they probably should be."

A number of people have written in with the initial news blurb that the RIAA ^[?] has won the initial battle against Napster. The US District Court in San Fransico has ruled that Napster is not just a "mere conduit" for files, but that it is actually liable for material transfered by the program. This comes on the heels of MP3.com's recent loss to the RIAA as well. Ouch.

Kailden asks: "I've run across several references to Ruby, a scripting language that claims to be a hybrid of Perl and Python. Supposedly, this language has taken Japan by storm. I'm looking for Slashdot's verdict before jumping in. Has anyone outside the Ruby site used this language? What advantages/disadvantages have you found?"

Deepak Jagannath wrote to us with a piece that talks about why a Web site shouldn't use MySQL for critical RDBMS. Do people agree or disagree?

Members of the band Metallica have agreed, through their publicist, to answer questions from Slashdot readers about their recent legal actions against Napster and Napster users. They did a live chat interview Tuesday on the subject with a crowd rounded up by artistdirect.com and Yahoo!. Now it's our turn, so let's give them a fine, thorough, Slashdot-style grilling. (more)

Notes before you post:

1) Due to an anticipated high volume of questions, please confine yourself to one question per post, and keep it short! As usual, we'll allow 24 hours for posting and moderation, then select 10 - 15 of the highest-moderated questions and send them to our interview guest(s) by e-mail. Answers will be posted as soon as we get them back, hopefully within the next week.

2) Please read some of what other people have had to say before posting; Richard Stallman made some comments about Napster and Metallica in his interview here earlier this week. Bruce Perens has written an interesting piece on Napster and Free Software which we also suggest reading, along with Jon Katz's most recent editorial about this brou-ha-ha. We also suggest a fast look at this story (and the comments attached to it), and possibly a quick perusal of other material on the subject previously published here and elsewhere.

3. Credit where credit is due: Emmett Plant set this up. It wasn't easy. Please thank him profusely. He deserves it.

Eupolis writes "Reuters reports that Linuxcare has withdrawn its IPO filings, and is now cutting staff to try to keep from running out of money. " As well as the report from Reuters, News.com has an analysis of the situation as well.

TheGhola writes "There is a story in Yahoo which mentions a bill proposed on Tuesday by Sen. John McCain(R-Ariz.) and Sen. Joseph Lieberman(D-Conn.) which calls for the banning of "video games, video programs, movies and music" unless those industries agreed to a uniform rating system for implementation. What's strange about this story is that a) it doesn't include "television" in the bill, and b)both a Republican and a Democrat are the sponsors on the bill [President Clinton is even in favor of it]. Think it's weird? Think it's stupid? Find out more here. "

TheGhola writes "There is a story in Yahoo which mentions a bill proposed on Tuesday by Sen. John McCain(R-Ariz.) and Sen. Joseph Lieberman(D-Conn.) which calls for the banning of "video games, video programs, movies and music" unless those industries agreed to a uniform rating system for implementation. What's strange about this story is that a) it doesn't include "television" in the bill, and b)both a Republican and a Democrat are the sponsors on the bill [President Clinton is even in favor of it]. Think it's weird? Think it's stupid? Find out more here. "

TheGhola writes "There is a story in Yahoo which mentions a bill proposed on Tuesday by Sen. John McCain(R-Ariz.) and Sen. Joseph Lieberman(D-Conn.) which calls for the banning of "video games, video programs, movies and music" unless those industries agreed to a uniform rating system for implementation. What's strange about this story is that a) it doesn't include "television" in the bill, and b)both a Republican and a Democrat are the sponsors on the bill [President Clinton is even in favor of it]. Think it's weird? Think it's stupid? Find out more here. "

Phexro extended our congratulations to Bruce and Valerie on the birth of Bruce 2.0, otherwise known as Stanley Charles Perens. this is jimmy asked us all to compete in the great Beltsander Races. Need to send crazy Aunt JoAnne some E-mail? Try something from the Great Spam Archive, sent in by Jones. Nezumi-chan wasn't the only one to write in with this one, but all I can say is Oh, yes. ahaning wrote in to tell us about the Obsolete Computer Museum. Want something to plug them into? blizzard shared Electricity from Giant Artichokes. Also, check out the Ultracade, which is cool unless you're a video game purist like me. Dropkick wrote in about a cyber-riffic washing machine. Last but not least, Penguin_99 writes in about cool photos from Galileo. That's it, folks. Thanks to AfterY2K for the title inspiration.

Kailden writes: "O'Reilly has an interview with Antony Fountain, co-author of Volume 6B: Motif Reference Manual, 2nd Edition, in which he claims that both QT for KDE and GTK+ for GNOME don't compare to Motif (and mentions that Java is the only thing that comes close). " The interview's old -- but the response from user comments adds more to it. Yeah, I know the article's a couple of weeks old -- but it's a good one.

C. Adam Kuether asks: "I like the concept of the open directory project and am considering joining the effort and contributing my bit to organizing the Web. I am concerned about the ownership rights to this compilation. The useage agreements seem reasonable enough now, but what assurance is there that this work will not become just another asset of the Time/Warner/AOL (read Netscape) media empire? Could this project convert to a legally enforceable open and free use license? Are the existing open content licenses practical? "

ghoul asks: "Hi, I already have Linux 6.1 on my hard disk in a separate partition with LILO in the FAT. Now I am planning to install BeOS 5 which according to their site can work out of Win 98 (which is what I have on my other partition) by just double clicking it as a Win application The site also says the way this works is that the OS boots out of a large file in the FAT. What will this do to LILO and is this dangerous? I would rather not try out anything with Be than trash my Win Partition as I have a lot of important assignment work on it."

The Code Hog was among the first to write with the news that "CNBC is reporting that MP3.com lost its court case with RIAA; the court finding that MP3.com is infringing on 'thousands' of artists property." Alert readers like Szyzyg and SethJohnson contributed links to coverage on zdnet and on yahoo respectively.

usgrant writes: "The Robotics Club of Yahoo has grown to 500+ members over the last two years, and now they have created a little something of their own. A few months ago they released their own public robot kit called TRaCY. The kit goes for $89 and has the basic features: IR detection, BASIC Stamp II programmable chip, bump sensors, light sensors, servo motors ... The chip is programmable and is made by Parallax. Write the code on your comp, and upload to the robot through a serial port. The wizards at TRCY even added sample source code to have the 'bot wander the room. (Sorry, I don't think the software has been ported to Linux...) They also released the 'parts' list and a PDF manual for instructions. Lots of people contributing to this on their free time, and looks like some new developments are coming in the near future. "

DP asks: "I'm getting DSL relatively soon, and I need a router/firewall, one that has DSL ports, Ethernet, and HomePNA, and preferably runs Linux, although as long as I can telnet in to change things it's fine. I've seen/read about various such devices, but can't really remember much other than they exist. Most I can spend is $500 or so. And don't tell me to just get an old 486 box, power consumption sucks and it doesn't have HomePNA."

Kyudosha asks: "I have just purchased an IBM tablet thinkpad 730T. My main intention in buying this computer was to take real-time notes in my classes, and drawing embedded pictures within these notes (sort of like in Word). Unfortunately, the Pen Point os has been wiped off for resale reasons. Searching for a free pen-based O/S on the Web yielded nothing. I would very much like to see this computer in operation, and I have heard rumors of Linux-based pen o/s's or non-commercial o/s's in the same vein, but I cannot find any information. I have pleanty of PCMCIA hard drives, and a laptop capable of placing software on them, but like I've said...nothing. Can ANYONE help me?"

patrixmyth writes "A default password of "Q" in the standard Red Hat 6.2 installation of the Piranha module opens a Web server to intrusion, according to Internet Security Systems. The problem was discovered during a review of Open Source code, and the fix is already available. Another victory for Open Source! The MSNBC article is here. The fix is here, or you could just reset the password yourself for the Piranha module."

Michael Holve writes: "It seems the ISS (International Space Station) is slipping 1.5 miles per week closer to Earth. Seven astronauts are set to use the Atlantis to push it 19 miles back out into space until mid-July, when the Zvezda module arrives, which was meant to keep the ISS in orbit and provide living quarters for three astronauts."

PxT writes: "According to this AP story, the remains of a 66 million-year-old dinosaur suggest that the extinct creatures were warmblooded - not coldblooded as once believed - and capable of the swift and sustained motion typical of modern birds and mammals. A whole site dedicated to the discovery of this specimen is here."

wtfcca asks: "deja.com decided to revamp again. What are the chances it will drop its Usenet archive/search section in the future? Are there alternatives to Deja.com for searching/archiving Usenet? What would it take to set up a Usenet archive/searching site? Besides the obvious hardware requirements, anybody know if deja.com's Usenet searching software is available? I'd consider donating time/equipment to archive a subset of Usenet if so (since I happen to like Deja's power user interface). Some time ago Deja News said it would acquire old article archives, dating back to the mid-80s or some such. Did that ever happen? Every once in a while I see an old articles, but not consistently to lead me to believe that it did."

Patrixmyth wrote to us with the CNN story about the U.S. Army's attempt to build Jedi Soldiers. Yes, they're going to dress up Sir Alec Guinness...er, rather Jedi is Joint Expeditionary Digital Information, which, essentially, is the Wired Soldier of Tomorrow. Palmtops, GPS, satellite up-links, oh my!

Slak asks: "Just wondering if the laws under which the U.S. Government is pursuing the DDoS attacks on Yahoo! and Amazon could be applied to telemarketers. I mean, here we have a group that is using a public network to bother end users. " This is a good point. We now have fledgling laws against unsolicited commercial e-mail. What about unsolicited commercial phone calls? They are both forms of harassment. However, protections in the digital world have caught up and surpassed the legal protections we have in meatspace against such annoying practices. Could such laws be written without becoming Draconian in nature? Updated

I should clarify. When I speak of "commercial" phone and "commercial" e-mail, I mean unsolicited contact from a company with the intention of selling you something. Telemarketing has become a large problem in the past decade and I see the spammer as the digital cousin of the telemarketer. However, we now have protections from SPAM yet no protection from the telemarketer (believe me, I've tried ... there was no way I could get an anonymous call block in my area and most telemarketers will not identify themselves via CallerID).

How does the Denial of Service attack fit into all of this? It may not be "commercial" traffic, but it is unsolicited and dealing with it does consume your precious time to get the problem fixed. It's yet another form of harrassment, albeit a different and malicious form. It's like someone calling you up every five minutes and then hanging up. Sure it's harmless, but what happens if someone is trying to make an important phone call to you and can't get through?

Will laws be written to combat such behavior? Can such laws be written?

I'd be interested in hearing what you think.

Update: 04/19 05:49 by C : CuriousGeorge113 beamed us this little tidbit: "There's a very interesting SPAM article over at Salon.com today. The article talks about a new SPAM law soon to be in front of Congress, why it won't work, why people SPAM, and why ISP's dont bother to sue SPAMers." so it looks like our protections against SPAMers although in-place rather ineffective. This situation bears watching.

Frustrated Programmer asks: "I'm a programmer with seven years of experience on various platforms/languages. The past few years, I've primarily freelanced, building my expertise in C/Unixes/Oracle, dabbled in Perl a bit. Since my last contract, I haven't been able to find any work at all. I've learned Java2 to update my skills, I know C++ from university, however, I can't seem to get a break from any companies. I get the same response, no Java experience, or no OOP experience. I'm wondering if this is a problem systematic of Canadian companies (specifically here in Montreal), or do any of my American cousins have run into the same problem? Anybody care to share their experiences?"