Slashdot Mirror

Moleman was one of the number of people who wrote in about the apparent move by the Japanese Government to restrict export of the Playstation 2. The reason? It has been apparently deemed to be a potential weapons development platform, in particular for missle guidance systems. Geez, get a couple and I can form my own rogue nation. The UK Telegraph has a more complete story - it's apparently only if you want to take two or more out of the country that they require permission - so you could fly and take one if you wanted without a problem.

kabloie writes: "This Cnet article at Yahoo! sheds light on the defense strategy of the folks at Napster in their suit with the RIAA, which invokes the service provider provision of the DMCA. The lawyers interviewed say that if Napster wins this one, the RIAA (et al.) will be heading back to the legislative well again . "

syrah_shiraz writes: "This article from G2 News gives very in-depth information on why Fernand Sarrat left Linuxcare and future prospects for Linuxcare and its plans to IPO. Definitely the first interview I've seen with Fernand Sarrat since he officially resigned. Apparently the problems weren't really financial after all--the article alludes to a number of different reasons for his departure. (Even 'sexual indiscretion'?) " Check out our original story on this.

ussphoenix writes: "NASA has issued a press release stating the the object Hubble photographed in 1997 is probably just a star. Originally, astronomers believed it was a proto-planet several times the mass of our own Jupiter. Oh well, there are other extra-solar planets."

PDG asks: "I've been using Linux for several years now and find myself wanting desperately to get involved with its source code, development, and future. Fine, I've compiled a million kernels and other binaries but don't know the first place to start when trying to understand what the hell half the libraries and header files are doing, let alone dealing with the C code itself (yes, I know C fine). Are there any resources or Web sites out there which may help me in my journey to be a Linux Code Jockey?"

Future Linux-Guru asks: "When Microsoft's stock price took a dive on the news of the judgment [last week], I wondered how many geeks were affected -- either because they held stock in MS, or because it was a holding in one of their mutual funds. What stocks do Geeks invest in? And how do Geeks invest for the future?"

enkidu writes: "Over at this article on macintouch there are some people who show how to extend Apple's airport range to 7km using legal signal boosting antennae. Connections at 50km+ are also mentioned. With enough base stations, you could even build your own private ricochet network in your neighborhood. " This should work with any WaveLAN cards ... looks like a fun hack.

kovacsp was the first to write to us about the announcement from Celera that they had completed mapping of the human genome. Note: This is /not/ the be-all, end-all. They have finished *mapping* one person's genes. With Celera's approach, this means that they now need to being assembling the information they've gathered. All in all, Celera plans to do the same process with four other people. The Human Genome Project, using a more traditional approach is still a couple years away, but the race is still pretty close.

Cy Guy writes "Lego has announced that they are buying Paul Allen's Zowie Intertainment. Zowie's toys let you animate your own cartoons by tracking the movement of character pieces on a play set connected to your PC. Lego plans to integrate the Zowie technology into its popular Mindstorms products. No word as to whether Allen was selling his toys because of the sudden devaluation of his MS stock. "

Joey the Lemur writes "I saw this article over at Yahoo! about the BSDI/Walnut Creek merger that has some good points concerning FreeBSD and Apple. The author talks about Apple's proposal to stay synced with FreeBSD (Darwin), and why they should actually follow through with it. It also has some good commentary on why BSD isn't as prominent as Linux. "

dewey writes "Tera, a new kid on the supercomputing block, has successfully completed its acquisition of the supercomputing pioneer, Cray (formerly owned by SGI). The new company will take Cray's name. Tera has a press release from a month ago that spells out some of the details of the deal. "

fremen was among the first to write with this news: "Yahoo is reporting the end of the mediation talks with Microsoft. Richard Posner has declared the discussions to be at an impasse, and the disagreements to be "too deep-seated to be bridged." The story can be found here." This is not an April Fools joke. Watch this space; we will update this story as more details become available. The outcome may be more dramatic than the strong hints of settlement had suggested. Updated 3:15GMT by timothy: Here's a more detailed article from The New York Times helpfully sent in by reader GenetixSW.

fremen was among the first to write with this news: "Yahoo is reporting the end of the mediation talks with Microsoft. Richard Posner has declared the discussions to be at an impasse, and the disagreements to be "too deep-seated to be bridged." The story can be found here." This is not an April Fools joke. Watch this space; we will update this story as more details become available. The outcome may be more dramatic than the strong hints of settlement had suggested. Updated 3:15GMT by timothy: Here's a more detailed article from The New York Times helpfully sent in by reader GenetixSW.

fremen was among the first to write with this news: "Yahoo is reporting the end of the mediation talks with Microsoft. Richard Posner has declared the discussions to be at an impasse, and the disagreements to be "too deep-seated to be bridged." The story can be found here." This is not an April Fools joke. Watch this space; we will update this story as more details become available. The outcome may be more dramatic than the strong hints of settlement had suggested. Updated 3:15GMT by timothy: Here's a more detailed article from The New York Times helpfully sent in by reader GenetixSW.

volk23 writes "Klaus -- pioneered by car maker Volkswagen AG -- drove in public for the first time around a German test circuit using three laser scanners, a stereo camera, video and satellite navigation systems and radar hooked up to a computer, VW said. "

2001: A Space Odyssey is one of the kings of science fiction movies, and widely regarded as one of Stanley Kubrick ^[?] 's best films. With the recent anniversary of the movie has come a spate of 2001 retrospectives. rombuu has reviewed one such work, titled The Making Of 2001: A Space Odyssey. The book is written in team format: Selections by Stephanie Schwam; Series Edited by Martin Scorsese; Introduction by Jay Cocks. The Making Of 2001: A Space Odyssey author Selections by Stephanie Schwam; Series Edited by Martin Scorsese; Introduction by Jay Cocks pages 326 publisher Random House, 01/2000 rating 8/10 reviewer rombuu ISBN 0-375-75528-4 summary A series of articles and interviews about the making of 2001: A Space Odyssey. The Scenario I remember being seven or eight when my father, who was all too aware of my love of science fiction at that age (well, Star Wars at least), sat me down in front of the television. "There is a movie coming on that you might enjoy," he said, although I don't think he had seen it. I remember being intrigued as the first strains of Strauss' Zarathustra blared out of the TV. Three hours later I was convinced I had just experienced one of the most interesting, puzzling, disturbing, confusing and at times beautiful things I ever had encountered. Twenty years later, and after more viewings that I would probably like to admit, my feelings toward this movie are largely the same -- although I'd like to think I have a little more insight about what happens to Dave Bowman at the end of the movie. (And I now have a computer than can actually primitively "talk" to me, which is more than I can say for my Timex-Sinclair 1000 back then.)

The Making of 2001: A Space Odyssey collects articles and interviews about the making of the first great science fiction movie. Starting with a reprinting of Sir Arthur C. Clarke's short story The Sentinel, which provided the seed for the movie, the book explores the writings and thoughts of those involved in the creation of both the book and the film. Clarke's diary entries show the slow and methodical creation of the story, and provides insights into the changes made over the four years between the beginning of the story-writing process and the final print of the film. For example, in some early drafts, all of the Discovery's astronauts make it into the room at the end of the film. The iconic monolith was originally conceived as a large transparent crystalline pillar with shimmering multi-faceted pictures appearing within, and later as a large ebony pyramid.

The book also includes articles on how the impressive effects on the film were achieved, such as Dave's run around the inside of the Discovery, or how the astronauts' walks in space were filmed without showing the wires, back in the days before CGI.

A selection of reviews from the original release of the film are included, showing the decidedly mixed reaction the film received in 1968. These are interesting just to see the befuddled attitudes of reviewers looking more for the bomb-tossing satire of Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb than the cold, almost clinical atmosphere of 2001. One New York Times reviewer, at the end of a not-particularly-pleasent review, complains that the monolith looks like "a 1950's chocolate bar."

The book ends with a collection of interviews with Clarke and Kubrick years after the movie's release, and Simson Garfinkel's excellent, if non-techncial, "Happy Birthday, HAL" in Wired magazine from 1997 (the year of HAL's "birth") showing the gap between where computer technology is now and where Clarke's film had projected it would be.

What's Good? The book provides a great look at the evolution of the film and book 2001 from its infancy in Clarke's short story. Interesting articles include those about the technical challenges in filming Kubrick's vision of the movie and the advances in filmmaking he created during the production. The interviews with Clarke and Kubrick show some new (to me at least) insights into their creation -- interestingly, both of them view 2001 as very spiritual -- not religious, but spiritual, along with other insights that make me want to go fire up the DVD player right now and watch this great flick again.

What's Bad? Some of the more technical filmmaking details probably won't grab the attention of readers with little interest in the actual nuts and bolts of filmmaking. Some of the reviews, too, particularly Annette Michelson's Bodies In Space: Film As Carnal Knowledge (I'm not making this up, hell, I wish I could think this stuff up) are unbearable. Bodies in Space is 20 pages of the worst kind of torture that film criticism has to offer -- long winded, self-important, and largely irrelevant -- but is oddly enough one of the few positive reviews included in the book.

So What's In It For Me? If you love 2001 or Stanley Kubrick's other works, this book provides a fantastic glimpse into his creative process as work, both as a storyteller and as a technician. Although you may not gain any great insights into the film itself -- not really a bad thing since the process of digesting the ambiguity is a great deal of fun -- you will have a better idea of why this film was made the way it was.

Table of Contents

1. SK /
2. Jay Cocks
   The Production: A Calendar / Carolyn Geduld
   Credits / Carolyn Geduld
   The Sentinel / Arthur C. Clarke
   Beyond the Stars / Jeremy Bernstein
   Christmas, Shepperton / Arthur C. Clarke
   Shipbuilding / Piers Bizony
   First Day of Shooting
   Monoliths and Manuscripts / Arthur C. Clarke
   How About A Little Game / Jeremy Bernstein
   Filming 2001: A Space Odyssey / Herb A. Lightman
   Front-Projection for 2001: A Space Odyssey / Herb A. Lightman
   Creating Special Effects for 2001: A Space Odyssey / Douglas Trumbell
   Testimonies
   Ancedotes
   Reviews
   Happy Birthday, HAL / Simson Garfinkel
   2001: A Space Odyssey Re-viewed / Alexander Walker
   Stanley Kubrick Raps / Charles Kohler
   Free Press Interview: Arthur C. Clarke / Gene Youngblood
   How the Book Ends / Arthur C. Clarke
   Playboy Interview: Stanley Kubrick
   Appendix: Stanley Kubrick Filmography
   

2001: A Space Odyssey is one of the kings of science fiction movies, and widely regarded as one of Stanley Kubrick ^[?] 's best films. With the recent anniversary of the movie has come a spate of 2001 retrospectives. rombuu has reviewed one such work, titled The Making Of 2001: A Space Odyssey. The book is written in team format: Selections by Stephanie Schwam; Series Edited by Martin Scorsese; Introduction by Jay Cocks. The Making Of 2001: A Space Odyssey author Selections by Stephanie Schwam; Series Edited by Martin Scorsese; Introduction by Jay Cocks pages 326 publisher Random House, 01/2000 rating 8/10 reviewer rombuu ISBN 0-375-75528-4 summary A series of articles and interviews about the making of 2001: A Space Odyssey. The Scenario I remember being seven or eight when my father, who was all too aware of my love of science fiction at that age (well, Star Wars at least), sat me down in front of the television. "There is a movie coming on that you might enjoy," he said, although I don't think he had seen it. I remember being intrigued as the first strains of Strauss' Zarathustra blared out of the TV. Three hours later I was convinced I had just experienced one of the most interesting, puzzling, disturbing, confusing and at times beautiful things I ever had encountered. Twenty years later, and after more viewings that I would probably like to admit, my feelings toward this movie are largely the same -- although I'd like to think I have a little more insight about what happens to Dave Bowman at the end of the movie. (And I now have a computer than can actually primitively "talk" to me, which is more than I can say for my Timex-Sinclair 1000 back then.)

The Making of 2001: A Space Odyssey collects articles and interviews about the making of the first great science fiction movie. Starting with a reprinting of Sir Arthur C. Clarke's short story The Sentinel, which provided the seed for the movie, the book explores the writings and thoughts of those involved in the creation of both the book and the film. Clarke's diary entries show the slow and methodical creation of the story, and provides insights into the changes made over the four years between the beginning of the story-writing process and the final print of the film. For example, in some early drafts, all of the Discovery's astronauts make it into the room at the end of the film. The iconic monolith was originally conceived as a large transparent crystalline pillar with shimmering multi-faceted pictures appearing within, and later as a large ebony pyramid.

The book also includes articles on how the impressive effects on the film were achieved, such as Dave's run around the inside of the Discovery, or how the astronauts' walks in space were filmed without showing the wires, back in the days before CGI.

A selection of reviews from the original release of the film are included, showing the decidedly mixed reaction the film received in 1968. These are interesting just to see the befuddled attitudes of reviewers looking more for the bomb-tossing satire of Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb than the cold, almost clinical atmosphere of 2001. One New York Times reviewer, at the end of a not-particularly-pleasent review, complains that the monolith looks like "a 1950's chocolate bar."

The book ends with a collection of interviews with Clarke and Kubrick years after the movie's release, and Simson Garfinkel's excellent, if non-techncial, "Happy Birthday, HAL" in Wired magazine from 1997 (the year of HAL's "birth") showing the gap between where computer technology is now and where Clarke's film had projected it would be.

What's Good? The book provides a great look at the evolution of the film and book 2001 from its infancy in Clarke's short story. Interesting articles include those about the technical challenges in filming Kubrick's vision of the movie and the advances in filmmaking he created during the production. The interviews with Clarke and Kubrick show some new (to me at least) insights into their creation -- interestingly, both of them view 2001 as very spiritual -- not religious, but spiritual, along with other insights that make me want to go fire up the DVD player right now and watch this great flick again.

What's Bad? Some of the more technical filmmaking details probably won't grab the attention of readers with little interest in the actual nuts and bolts of filmmaking. Some of the reviews, too, particularly Annette Michelson's Bodies In Space: Film As Carnal Knowledge (I'm not making this up, hell, I wish I could think this stuff up) are unbearable. Bodies in Space is 20 pages of the worst kind of torture that film criticism has to offer -- long winded, self-important, and largely irrelevant -- but is oddly enough one of the few positive reviews included in the book.

So What's In It For Me? If you love 2001 or Stanley Kubrick's other works, this book provides a fantastic glimpse into his creative process as work, both as a storyteller and as a technician. Although you may not gain any great insights into the film itself -- not really a bad thing since the process of digesting the ambiguity is a great deal of fun -- you will have a better idea of why this film was made the way it was.

Table of Contents

1. SK /
2. Jay Cocks
   The Production: A Calendar / Carolyn Geduld
   Credits / Carolyn Geduld
   The Sentinel / Arthur C. Clarke
   Beyond the Stars / Jeremy Bernstein
   Christmas, Shepperton / Arthur C. Clarke
   Shipbuilding / Piers Bizony
   First Day of Shooting
   Monoliths and Manuscripts / Arthur C. Clarke
   How About A Little Game / Jeremy Bernstein
   Filming 2001: A Space Odyssey / Herb A. Lightman
   Front-Projection for 2001: A Space Odyssey / Herb A. Lightman
   Creating Special Effects for 2001: A Space Odyssey / Douglas Trumbell
   Testimonies
   Ancedotes
   Reviews
   Happy Birthday, HAL / Simson Garfinkel
   2001: A Space Odyssey Re-viewed / Alexander Walker
   Stanley Kubrick Raps / Charles Kohler
   Free Press Interview: Arthur C. Clarke / Gene Youngblood
   How the Book Ends / Arthur C. Clarke
   Playboy Interview: Stanley Kubrick
   Appendix: Stanley Kubrick Filmography
   

Let's start this off with bio2's link to "the tube": an unrollable laptop:super crazy hardware. seizer sent us the most amusing firewall circumventer: a TCP/IP Email Tunnel. While on the subject of bizarre technology, John Petz sent us a webserver running on an Atari 800. Still not in shock? hool sent us a hack over at x42.com which uses the hostname as input to a calculator. tdunn linked us to a place that lists odd things found inside PC cases. It includes a *shudder* severed finger tip. For more wierd tech support, yeahbensteres submitted iamanidiot.com which has some tales that you may or may not believe. Pike sent us 94 Uses for Old Altoids Tins: Who eats 94 tins of altoids? Oh... wait. OwenF sent us linkage to the latest robotic pet craze. Look out AIBO, here comes Robotic Fish! Slashdot's own jamiemccarthy points us to TimeCube.com for all your wierd-science needs. You econ majors might be interested in Yhetti's link to the fortune-cookie market index. Bradley noted a story about a man who changed his name to 'Oxford University' to avoid domain squatting charges from Oxford University. If you have a mission:impossible scheduled next week, Dr. Manhattan sent us a link to a Swiss company that is developing self-destructing CDs. The CIA has some on back order. An anonymous reader pointed us to EarthKam, which has several really beautiful pictures of earth from space. Check out their top 10 ... if only they were bigger they'd make great background art. And finally for those of you who are sick of all the naughty language on TV, deepak saxena sent us a machine that claims it will filter all the damn swearing from TV and video. I'm waiting for a version that filters out Regis.

Slackeress writes "Looks like Astronomers searching the skies for distant planets have detected two Saturn-sized worlds orbiting distant suns, the smallest planets found thus far outside our solar system. "

Vux writes "PBS is airing a show involving the Netscape team. Quoted off the PBS website sectio about the show: "The year is early 1998 and a small team of Netscape code writers frantically works to reconstruct the company's Internet browser. The fate of the entire company may well rest on their shoulders. Facing new competition, sales for Netscape's once world-changing browser have sunk to zero. If this gambit fails, their company, their community and their vision of the future might not survive. Welcome to the epicenter of the new American Dream. Welcome to Silicon Valley." I don't agree with some of the propaganda for the documentary, but it should be an interesting hour flick to watch. " The documentary, according to the PBS site, is airing this evening, through the US. Check local show times and such on the site.

bumppo writes "This BBC News story hasn't really dented domestic news services aside from AP: seven-year Beirut hostage Terry Anderson and his family were awarded $341 million (including $300 million in punitive damages) against Iran and its Ministry of Information and Security. Ass-kicking Microsoft finder-of-fact and presiding judge Thomas Penfield Jackson oversaw the case, and determined the verdict. "

The judgment against Iran has never been recovered, but it does show a willingness to hit the loser in the pocketbook. According to the Bill Gates Net Worth Page, though, if Judge Jackson were to declare so paltry a figure as sufficient to settle the antitrust suit, Bill could cry all the way to several largish banks.

sarchasm writes, "Ex-Beatle Paul McCartney's publishing company MPL Communications is suing MP3.com. It's good to see that another poor starving artist is helping to fight the big bad MP3 movement. For more info, see the story on Yahoo. "

joshamania writes "There's an article on Yahoo entitled "Why the Net doesn't belong to America." The article references some good examples of "side-stepping" government regulation on the Internet. " This is gonna become much more important in upcoming years. What will it mean, and how will it affect all of us?

cjoh345 wrote: "Celera Genomics has just sequenced all the genes in the fruit fly. Apparently the scientists involved are amazed at the genes that we share with this dorm-room annoyance. This discovery also validates Celera's "shotgun approach" to mapping out this stuff. And yes, the genome is available free of charge via Genbank. Good form, Celera!" What would Mendel have thought of this? How about Watson and Crick? This makes me want to break out my copy of The Double Helix .

sharv asks: "I'd like to hear what you all think of the relatively new online bill payment services offered by sites like OnMoney and Yahoo Bill Pay - they both seem to be powered by the same engine, from an outfit called PayTrust. I'm curious if anyone's using one of these services and what, if any, technical issues people are concerned about. Any privacy concerns? How about any problems arising from not having snail-mail copies of your statements immediately available? Any of the meatspace bureaucracies having problems dealing with this latest incarnation of paperless personal finance?"

After we ran this story about running NetBSD on an i-opener (and this earlier story from a Linux perspective), MrPoopyPants writes "I was considering buying one of the Netpliance I-Openers with intent to modify it but when I followed the link I discovered this notice. It appears that they will no longer sell their products without the service and they have renderd the devices immune to modification." Netpliance have also issued a press release announcing the same thing. This is somewhat ironic, as their developer's corner page says "Netpliance believes in open source development. As part of our effort to support the community, we will be developing a site that will be the premier source of i-opener product information. Please watch this site for more details." Netpliance are soliciting ideas and feedback, to devcorner@netpliance.com.

phydeaux2 writes " Yahoo! TV Coverage reports that the project to remake Planet of the Apes has gotten the green light. " Wow. I'm stunned. Tim Burton...and Planet of the Apes.

ooky writes: "Scientists at NASA have claimed to have found conclusive proof that gases from outside the solar system can arrive on Earth (and other planets, presumably) in neat little buckyball cages! They've found a type of helium 3 that does not exist (nor, presumably, has ever existed) in our solar system in these fullerene packages, deposited in a layer around the Earth dating from the 65 MYBP dino-killing asteroid collision. Some of our own atmosphere may have arrived this way during the Age of Bombardment! For more info on buckyballs and what they are, see here and here." The article is boundingly enthusiastic rather than the least bit skeptical, so take it with a few mols of (fullerinzed) sodium chloride. Still ...

mwillis was the first of those who deluged us with this story: Robin Williams is set to sing the South Park song "Blame Canada" at the Oscars. There's been some...discussion as to who would actually sing the song (I just can't understand why Anne Murray ^[?] refused *grin) but it appears Williams will be the man of the hour. I might even watch this time.

liber wrote to us with the press release on Yahoo! regarding the upcoming release of Netscape 6, aka Mozilla. It's a beta, not a full release, but the piece does a good job of talking about consumer anticipation, as well as the big companies that are behind it. Don't wait until the crowd hits. Get started now.

kerskine writes,"It seems that there's strong demand for Caldera's upcoming IPO CNET reported that they've raised their strike price to $10-$12. This news is in sharp contrast to more negative appraisals such as this article from Forbes.com." I only know of a small number of Linux Developers who got "The Letter" from Caldera on their IPO. Gotta wonder about that.

Someone from PenguinRadio was one of the first contributors to write about what may be the ultimate fate of the Iridium network: "For those who were wondering what would happen to all the Iridium satellites that are floating around in space, reports out today say they will be brought down into the atmosphere in a massive burn out. The flames should be just about as cool as watching $5 billion in cash burn in a big bonfire pit, which, coincidentially, is how much it cost to put them up." Or $7 billion, depending on who's counting. Divided by 66 satellites, that equals one very expensive meteor shower.

A few weeks ago we ran Keep It Legal to Embarrass Big Companies , detailing Peacefire's decryption of X-Stop's blacklist. Then just a few days ago, we noted that CyberPatrol's encrypted list had also been cracked. Well, Mattel, the maker of CyberPatrol and a Big Company, decided it didn't like to be embarrassed -- so it's filing suit against the coders in Canada and Sweden. In addition to demanding the removal of the decryption utility, Mattel is also seeking the logfiles of the Swedish ISP that hosts the decryption utility, to identify everyone who has downloaded it to date. Update: 03/16 6:50 PM EDT by J : Today's news was filled with Mattel's PR lies about their suit. Analysis follows.

Update: 03/16 6:50 PM EDT by J : The problems started with the AP story (cited above). The decryption software posted by the activists was described as "a method for kids to deduce their parents' password and access [pornographic] Web sites."

This was the spin that Mattel's PR people put on the story. They surely didn't want the news media reporting that activists had posted software that exposes their secret, hidden blacklist to the light of day. That wouldn't sound so good - it might get people to ask "why are these blacklists encrypted at all?"

Instead, Mattel's PR decided to say that the decryption software allows kids to view pornography. Predictable - this is the same smear that's always dragged out - but the media swallowed it uncritically. (The AP story was repeated on cnet, and everywhere else that uses the AP feed.)

Even the normally-critical Declan McCullagh wrote a story for Wired whose opening sentence was corporate propaganda. "Toy-maker Mattel has sued two programmers who revealed how to circumvent its CyberPatrol blocking software." Thankfully, the rest of his article gave the full story.

Mattel is not upset about CPHack's minor feature of circumventing the program when installed. Peacefire has been distributing their own instructions to disable Cyber Patrol for months now, and hasn't been sued. (They're pretty simple instructions, too.)

Mattel is upset that people can see the flaws in their software which were previously hidden by encryption. They want to continue selling bad software and will use the full force of law to prevent you from learning how bad it is. Legal papers have already been served and the proceedings will presumably begin shortly. Stay tuned - and don't trust press releases.

A few weeks ago we ran Keep It Legal to Embarrass Big Companies , detailing Peacefire's decryption of X-Stop's blacklist. Then just a few days ago, we noted that CyberPatrol's encrypted list had also been cracked. Well, Mattel, the maker of CyberPatrol and a Big Company, decided it didn't like to be embarrassed -- so it's filing suit against the coders in Canada and Sweden. In addition to demanding the removal of the decryption utility, Mattel is also seeking the logfiles of the Swedish ISP that hosts the decryption utility, to identify everyone who has downloaded it to date. Update: 03/16 6:50 PM EDT by J : Today's news was filled with Mattel's PR lies about their suit. Analysis follows.

Update: 03/16 6:50 PM EDT by J : The problems started with the AP story (cited above). The decryption software posted by the activists was described as "a method for kids to deduce their parents' password and access [pornographic] Web sites."

This was the spin that Mattel's PR people put on the story. They surely didn't want the news media reporting that activists had posted software that exposes their secret, hidden blacklist to the light of day. That wouldn't sound so good - it might get people to ask "why are these blacklists encrypted at all?"

Instead, Mattel's PR decided to say that the decryption software allows kids to view pornography. Predictable - this is the same smear that's always dragged out - but the media swallowed it uncritically. (The AP story was repeated on cnet, and everywhere else that uses the AP feed.)

Even the normally-critical Declan McCullagh wrote a story for Wired whose opening sentence was corporate propaganda. "Toy-maker Mattel has sued two programmers who revealed how to circumvent its CyberPatrol blocking software." Thankfully, the rest of his article gave the full story.

Mattel is not upset about CPHack's minor feature of circumventing the program when installed. Peacefire has been distributing their own instructions to disable Cyber Patrol for months now, and hasn't been sued. (They're pretty simple instructions, too.)

Mattel is upset that people can see the flaws in their software which were previously hidden by encryption. They want to continue selling bad software and will use the full force of law to prevent you from learning how bad it is. Legal papers have already been served and the proceedings will presumably begin shortly. Stay tuned - and don't trust press releases.

fReNeTiK writes, "RealNetworks have announced their licensing of the Microsoft Windows Media streaming format. That brings the number of codecs supported by RealPlayer to 9. CNet story here, Heise News (German) here. This, of course raises an important question: Realplayer being available under Linux, will the next version include the new codec, bringing WMF streaming to Linux and Unix in general?" Based on how slowly RealPlayer has ported their clients to Linux and Unix in the past, it may be a while until we find out. I would personally prefer an open source media player if the codec patent issues can be handled, but sometimes (sigh) you just have to make do with hand-me-downs because they're all you're going to get for a while.

NoProb writes "Yahoo has a story that describes Steven King's new book Riding the Bullet, which will be released in electronic format only. It also states that Barnes & Noble will be giving the book away for free today only. After that it'll cost you $2.50 to download it. " OK, sure the first major book in electronic format is cool, but part of the story that I thought is interesting is that Softlock, who's actually doing the selling part has buckled under the strain. The demand for electronic information continues to grow.

NumberCruncher wrote to us from the rendering front, where Alias|Wavefront has announced that it has shipped Maya Batch Renderer for Linux. The software does optimized tile-based rendering and selective ray-tracing.

tgw writes, "According to the stats page of Election.com, 35,765 people cast votes remotely in what the Arizona Democrats believe to be the first legally binding public election in the world conducted via the Internet. This number is almost triple the 12,800 people which voted in Arizona's 1996 Democratic Primary. For those unable to view the stats page a screenshot of it is available here. 'Remote Voting' in the Arizona Democratic Primary was allowed via any Internet-connected computer from Tuesday (3/7) through midnight on Friday (3/10). The election concludes on Saturday (3/11) when people can cast votes only from the 124 designated polling places - using either a computer or paper ballot to cast their vote."

LocutusMIT writes, "Scientists have discovered the bones of what could be largest meat-eating dinosaur ever to walk the Earth -- a needle-nosed, razor-toothed beast that may have been more terrifying than even Tyrannosaurus rex." No word on when the findings will be properly published in a scientific journal.

Anonymous Coward writes: "Check this out! Motorola has a cable modem that also supports Ethernet, USB AND HomePNA! The modem doubles as a NAT, firewall and dhcp server -- Awesome!" Cable modems aren't new, but it seems that both service providers and manufacturers are finally catching the idea that TOS agreements are not about to head off the wave of home networking. Products like this will make the idea of households paying per-connection fees even more laughable.

thing12 wrote to us to say that the fine folks of Perl have a 5.6.0 release candidate announced.

YAH00 writes: "The 4.0 release of xfree is now available!!! I'm downloading it from ftp.xfree86.org as I type!!! " I've played around with the preview releases, and 4.0 looks to be a much needed improvement over the 3.3.x tree, with xinerama ^[?] features and improved performance for many graphic chipsets.

Jonas writes, "I spotted that ATI has announced their next generation intentions where the 3D industry is concerned with their "Charisma Engine" and "Pixel Tapestry" technologies at this year's GDC. There's also an interesting article discussing the technology involved on their next gen 3D part. "

richi wrote to us about the all optical switch that was announced from Agilent. The primary reason for the coolness factor is that an optical switch means that an optical signal doesn't need to be converted into electric at the switch, then back to optical.

Moo-ha-ha. CmdrTaco is on vacation (and sending his e-mail to /dev/null, so please don't even try), so I'm doing Quickies this week. On to the good stuff. DigitalDaedalus wrote in to tell us about the SGI 404 pages. Cute. For those with that not-so-fresh feeling, dodobh wrote in to tell us about the Slashdot Purity Test. No, I won't tell you my score. In the 'ear candy' bin, casret told us that they posted the results of the XMMS plugin contest. Time for some stuff from the 'exploding stuff' bin. Aardappel wrote in about Fisheye Quake, and Kintanon caught my eye with Fun With Grapes. Charles Helfenstein told us about the anti-cubicle. Very cool. Fanmail used the force and wrote in about George Lucas In Love. With all the X-Men hype going on, Link wrote in about Mutant Watch. Smurfy cared to share AIEEE, the Acronym Interaction, Expansion and Extrapolation Engine. fwfr told us about the Sim-William Shatner. You'll need Flash. Last but certainly not least, The Welcome Rain wrote in to tell us about your friend and mine, Robot Frank.

A reader sent us the word that there's been yet another entry in the Linux Distro Population Index. Yes, Motorola has released a distro they are calling High Availibility Linux. It's released for x86 and PowerPC platforms and is intended to be for embedded systems that need to be "99.999% uptime". They've also released details on their Web site about the system. Their main target is telecom development, according to their press release.

Carnage4Life writes, "Here's an interview with the creator of Napster on ZDnet where he talks about various issues including designing Napster, what plans he has for Napster and the growing number of bans on Napster in college campuses due to the fact that it is a bandwidth hog." Beyond the issue of "bandwidth hog," something that more colleges/unis are being threatened with is lawsuits from the recording industry because of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. You'll be seeing some more on the DMCA from us this week.

linuxguru wrote to us with the news that some wacky folks have ported OpenGL 1.1 to PalmOS. Current version is .2, and it's released under the LGPL ^[?] .

cgi-bin writes, "IBM has reportedly developed technology to create "tens of billions" of transistors on a single chip. Intel's pentiums only have 27 million or so. The technique uses electron beams instead of the traditional optical lithography. "

rjamestaylor was the first to write to us about the news that DoubleClick is reversing its decision to cross-reference individuals' information with their online habits. There's a great quote from Kevin O'Connor, DoubleClick's chief executive, who said in a statement, "I made a mistake by planning to merge names with anonymous user activity across Web sites in the absence of government and industry privacy standards." Privacy Advocates have won this battle, but we need to remain vigilant against future scenarios like what DoubleClick wanted to do. Moreover, look for what you can do to help establish legal consumer privacy laws where you live.