Slashdot Mirror

doodzed writes "A massive earthquake has just hit Taiwan. Many buildings have been toppled and over a hundred people are confirmed dead. It is hard to predict what the ramifications to the computer industry will be. Most of the world's motherboards and a lot of chips come from there. Those machines can't be reset overnight if they survived. I guess memory prices are going to go up again, but this pales in comparison to the human toll. Please pray for the victims." The story's at CNN.com - and everywhere else. Things don't look good in Taipei right now. Update:Spock_NPA writes "According to this article, the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company indicated at 6:00 PM PDT that the company's building has successfully withstood the effect of the earthquake." But according to this Reuter article, analysts in Seoul still expect to see higher chip prices.

doodzed writes "A massive earthquake has just hit Taiwan. Many buildings have been toppled and over a hundred people are confirmed dead. It is hard to predict what the ramifications to the computer industry will be. Most of the world's motherboards and a lot of chips come from there. Those machines can't be reset overnight if they survived. I guess memory prices are going to go up again, but this pales in comparison to the human toll. Please pray for the victims." The story's at CNN.com - and everywhere else. Things don't look good in Taipei right now. Update:Spock_NPA writes "According to this article, the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company indicated at 6:00 PM PDT that the company's building has successfully withstood the effect of the earthquake." But according to this Reuter article, analysts in Seoul still expect to see higher chip prices.

Pomme de Terre! writes "Patrick Naughton - Java-genius, Starwave CTO, & Infoseek VP - has been arrested for chasing 13 year old girls *and* having kiddie porn on his computer... and is probably going to be put away for a very long time. Very sad. " See also the Yahoo story. As executive vice president of products at Infoseek, was Naughton in charge of GoGuardian?

Kevin Miller asks: "I am setting up my first Linux based e-commerce site and need to do real-time credit card processing to fulfill software purchases. Are there any handy informational nuggets for handling credit card transactions? I am familiar with C++ and Perl but can learn with the best of tree swingers. "

A reader wrote to us with the news that SGI has doubled their original August estimates for # of layoffs, bringing the probable number to roughly 3000. However, SGI is seeing a return to profitability. The additional 1500 are not actually being laid-they are being offered new jobs with the new NT/Visual Workstations and Cray units, leading to the above erroneous information.

Richard Finney writes "Reuters is reporting that Lester Thurow, a noted economist, says "I don't think there is any example (of self-regulation) that has ever worked, unless government is standing behind it with a club" in a Yahoo! news story. His comments come in response to the Global Business Dialog on Electronic Commerce's comments on self-regulation of the Internet."

Note that this is (ba-dum-bump) yet another "self-regulation" effort. The companies' goal here is simply to head off legislation such as privacy laws, consumer protections and minimum standards for security of customer data, although they do seem to have mentioned porn regulation as well.

Sensei@bonsaipotato.com points us over to the latest move by IBM. IBM is rolling out their RS/6000 S80 and is aiming to beat Sun at all sides in the Unix universe, both with this roll-out, and their pending purchase of Sequent.

A reader wrote in with the news that Cobalt Networks has officially filed their S-1 to the SEC on 9/8/99. The full story is online, although quite brief. Be interesting to see how this one goes.

philg sent us linkage into a really amusing little story running over at Yahoo about computers generating advertising. Its pretty amusing since it showed that patterns could be used to generate commercials that were just as creative as ones that came from actual creative people. I worked at an ad agency for a few years, so this one made me grin.

Richard Finney writes "The Associated Press is reporting that Integrated Systems Inc. and Mitsubishi are teaming to create a new operating system in a Yahoo! News story here. The OS will be for new, portable gadgets that will feature high-speed Internet access."

mathowie writes "Here's my notes from the 30th Internet anniversary event that took place at UCLA on Thursday. This is a very long, very detailed piece, but worth your time to read if you're interested in learning where the Internet might be heading in the next 5 - 10 years. A Recap of the 30th Anniversary of the Internet Celebration at UCLA September 2, 1999 by Matthew Haughey

Thirty years ago today, the first communication between the Interface Message Processor (IMP) and a host computer took place in a Computer Science Lab at UCLA. The ARPAnet was born, with four nodes by the end of 1969. Today amid the current explosion of Internet growth, the pioneers gathered along with the forerunners of the internet revolution to commemorate that first event and talk about where we are today and where we go from here.

As I walked in, I caught Leonard Kleinrock in the lobby being mobbed by reporters doing interviews in front of the original IMP. As you can see in the photo, several local news and radio outlets covered the event. I had hoped to see some of the footage on the 11 o'clock news, but as I write this, it's just after 11:30, and I only saw a few seconds and quick mention on one of the network news shows.

After 20 minutes of mulling around past the original start time, The Chancellor started off the event with a quick welcome and general speech about how the internet has spread and enriched our lives. The Chair of the Engineering School at UCLA spoke next for about 15 minutes, discussing the impact of Leonard Kleinrock's achievements and Len's great rapport with his former students.

Len Kleinrock took the stage and recounted the 20th Anniversary event, which was a symposium held at UCLA, the 25th Anniversary event, which was held in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and a recent gathering just a few days ago up in Stanford. Those events, he said, focused on the rich history of how the ARPAnet was built and how it eventually lead up what we call The Internet today. Rather than delve into the past, he went on, today's event was going to center around where the Internet will lead us into the future. I was a bit surprised at first, but relieved that I wasn't going to see a rehash of the history, but a refreshing dialogue between the brilliant set of panelists of what they felt was to come.

Dr. Kleinrock then laid down the ground rules for the day. There would be four panels, and he would act as chair of the event, introducing each moderator. He introduced the first panel, titled "Gorillas", which was supposed to represent the proverbial 900 lb. gorillas of the Internet industry. Joining the moderator, Kipling Hagopian of Brentwood Venture Capital were Christine Hemrick of Cisco, Daniel Rosen of Microsoft, George Vradenburg of AOL, and Ronald Whittier of Intel.

Everyone on the panel was in good spirits and took some gentle jabs from the moderator. When the moderator made a joke about the justice department's crackdown on Microsoft, the representatives of Microsoft and AOL both praised the low regulation of the industry thus far and accredited their rapid and extreme growth with the "hands off" policy of the U.S. government. They also stated their support for ICANN and the deregulation of the Internet's domain namespace.

In response to a question about the growth of Cisco, Christine Hemrick praised openness and non-ownership of industry standards like TCP/IP. Since no one owned TCP/IP, she said, anyone could start a company that based their communications on that protocol. The moderator asked several questions about bringing broadband into the home, and whether cable or DSL would be the key technology. Ms. Hemrick stressed that wireless technologies might surpass the capabilities and availability of cable and DSL very soon, which was a good thing to hear.

The panelists were a sharp group of people. Whenever a question about upcoming technology was posed, they acknowledged the fact that the industry moves so fast that no one knows what we will be using in 5 years for any specific technology. They pointed to the audience several times and said that someone among us could start a new company tomorrow with technology that could blow away anything their corporations had done before. When the panel was asked about the longevity of their large corporations, they agreed that scalability was important, to grow with the industry, but trying to stay as close as possible to customers and continuing to address their needs was also important.

All the panelists talked about how hard it was to stay ahead of everyone, to continue as industry leaders with so many competitors on their heels. When asked about the future, one panelist commented that soon the term "e-commerce" would be meaningless, due to a blurring between conventional commerce and commerce done over the Internet. Someday soon, they said, every business would have some aspect of it that would be Internet related. All in all, the four panelists were charismatic, well-spoken, and a hip bunch, making a few jokes about Al Gore inventing the Internet.

The second panel was for the people behind recent industry successes, titled "Netpreneurs." It was moderated by Willem Mesdag of Goldman Sachs and the panelists were David Bohnett, founder of GeoCities, Eric Brewer, co-founder of Inktomi, Sky Dayton, founder of EarthLink, John Payne, CEO of Stamps.com, and Henry Sameueli, co-founder of Broadcom.

It was amazing that no company represented on the panel was created before 1991, with most of them formed in either 1995 or 1996, yet they all had market caps of at least a billion dollars each. Overall, the second panel wasn't as interesting as the first bunch of panelists, some of their answers sounded like a press release. This was especially true for Sky Dayton, who sounded like he was repeating his radio commercials in response to every question he was asked. When asked how they became successful, each panelist talked about how their company filled a void not covered by a larger company, and how they could move faster than a large corporation. Sky Dayton stressed this, the size of your company compared to your competitors was unimportant. What mattered most was the speed at which you could respond to changes in the industry, economy, and customer base. He said that if you were starting a new company, focus on one specific area of the market, and stick to it. Don't try to be monolithic agencies that can do everything like Microsoft tries to be, he said, just do one thing really well and you can emerge as a market leader. He also pitched his new company eCompanies.com for budding entrepreneurs, they are setting up a clearinghouse of new ideas, and intend to fund business plans that catch their eye. When asked about the potential for new companies Dayton said something interesting, he estimated that the development of the Internet as a "thing" was about 20% done at most. That even in 1999, we were just barely scratching the surface of what is possible, he said. Overall the session was enlightening and I came away with a new found enthusiasm to get my ideas out the door.

The third panel was perhaps the most interesting. It was titled "eConsumers" and was moderated by Patt Morrison of the LA Times, who was joined by John Barlow, co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Jeffrey Cole, director of UCLA's Center for Communication Policy, Alan Kay, VP of Imagineering at Disney, and Dan Lynch, founder of Cybercash.

Although the panel was supposed to focus only on consumer issues, the topics discussed ran the gamut, from personal privacy issues to numerous "what if" scenarios of our future ultra-wired world, and the social implications of each. Patt Morrison moderated as a sort of devil's advocate, asking for the panel's reaction to several cynical questions like trusting e-commerce vendors, internet rumors becoming news, and how our lives may be hindered by the burden of technology. Surprisingly, the panel, which had varied opinions on most topics, all found something positive in each question and future scenario. An ebay deal gone bad meant a user could learn to be more careful of sellers, news could not be trusted and should be approached with skepticism, and our lives could be made much better by an increased use of technology by saving us time spent on mundane tasks like paying bills or waiting in lines while shopping.

Intellectual property and copyright issues were discussed, where John Barlow and Alan Kay agreed that intellectual property was dead, and that ideas should be given away freely. Mr. Barlow talked about how every article he's written is freely available online, which allows him to generate revenue from unwritten works. Publishers can see all his writing, he went on, and they pay for new pieces to be written. He said he didn't worry about copyright, because his most valuable ideas were the ones he hasn't had yet. John said it was the philosophy behind the Grateful Dead (whom he wrote songs for); they allowed their shows to be freely taped and exchanged, and they derived revenue from people wanting to see them perform live.

Alan and John also talked about how a lot of intellectual property is meaningless to much of the population, that a technical idea is so complex that few people understand it, regardless of whether or not it is in the public domain. Dr. Kay used Linux as an example of this, the kernel is so complex that one in a million people can understand it all and contribute programming expertise. But with the advent of the Internet, he added, finding that one in a million is easy, and 100 or more people can be brought together to work on it. He praised the development of the ARPAnet because it was open, allowing researchers from all over to contribute to a greater good, and said in today's climate a large corporation would probably try to make much of it proprietary and hinder its development.

When asked how Linux can generate revenue, Alan said that like the Grateful Dead example, giving away Linux meant that large fees could be found in consulting, helping companies use the technology to their advantage. He then mentioned something that dropped just about everyone's jaw: he said that the company with the biggest revenue in the computer industry was not Microsoft, but IBM's consulting business, which he said brings in double the revenue that Microsoft does selling software, just by showing companies how to use technology in their business (which Linux is a part of). Alan Kay stood out as an extremely articulate guy with numerous enlightened answers, and everyone on the panel had great things to say about what the future might be like.

The fourth and final panel, titled "Beyond Today's Internet" was moderated by Stephen Segaller of WNET, the PBS station behind the Triumph of the Nerds series. He was joined by the four pioneers of the original ARAPnet, Vinton Cerf, now with MCI, Robert Kahn, now with the Corporation for National Research Initiatives, Leonard Kleinrock, of the UCLA Computer Science Department, and Lawrence Roberts, now of Packetcom

Along with the theme of the day's event, the forefathers of today's Internet focused solely on the future. Since they all have networking backgrounds, the first question was whether or not the network could keep up with client demands. The four panelists unanimously agreed that the capacity of the network would continue to expand at a rate greater than our immediate needs. They acknowledged the limits of the current IP naming system, and that IPv6 would expand the limit of addresses to near 10^38. Len Kleinrock had a problem with these imposed limits and Vint Cerf joked that 10^38 IP addresses would mean enough for "a web page for every molecule on earth." Len clarified his protest and stated that we should instead design variable length solutions to the problem, solutions that offer unlimited means. When asked about limits of physical devices like routers handling packet switching, they agreed that packet switching would probably be replaced by an unknown technology, and that physical capacities of networks would increase with the increased use of fiber. Len said instead of digital packets traveling through copper wire, in the future, it would just be pulses of light traveling along fiber. They all spoke of the proposed growth of the Internet, to surpass one billion people online in the next decade, and they mentioned something that was discussed briefly on an earlier panel; that someday soon, anything you buy over a certain price, say $25, would offer connectivity to the internet for a specific reason. Not a toaster that checks email, but each appliance would use the Internet for communication purposes.

This was another reason Len used to support unlimited IP addressing, due to the fact that billions of devices would need to access the internet. Questions asked by the moderator were mostly big picture, and the panel discussed them at that level. They talked about distant futures, when billions of people would be interacting with billions of devices, we would see drastic changes in Human-Computer interaction. They even alluded to the similarities between an enormous interconnected network of people and machines approaching the complexity of organic beings. The panel agreed with earlier panels that what were are witnessing is bigger than the industrial revolution. The knowledge explosion, as many called it, was going to fundamentally change how we do everything in the future.

Overall, it was an amazing experience. Among all the speakers and panelists, there were several messages that came across. The mood of everyone thinking about the future was one of optimism and opportunity. The interconnecting of everyone person on earth will trigger a knowledge revolution that will have deep, drastic changes on our lives and those around us. But if these future developments are met with some skepticism, and intelligence, it will undoubtedly be a good thing.

Matthew Haughey September 3, 1999

My photos from the event can be seen here

"

JDC writes "Apparently, Intel has first silicon on their IA-64 processor. I wonder how long till I can play Descent on one of those babies... ;) " Linux has been working on the simulators, and is reported to work on the actual silicon. However, contrary to prior reports, Windows does boot and run on the engineering prototype.

Dredd13 writes "Amazon.Com announced today that they are rethinking their position on Purchase Circles. They are going to permit people to remove their purchases from being added to Purchase Circles, as well as allowing companies to opt-out of the Purchase Circle listings. Personally, I think that it should be explicitly opt-in for companies, because it is far too easy for a company to have its secrets unknowingly leaked to the world via its book purchases. If a precedent is set allowing Amazon.Com to do this, then before a company allows purchases from an online retailer, they may have to spend time and energy researching the company making sure silly things like Purchase Circles don't affect them. " Opt-out sure is an interesting choice. I know one of my old employers is actually quite upset by the whole idea of purchase circles.

ewen writes "Ted Nelson has at last released the source to Xanadu, the extremely rich but never-quite-finished hypertext system. There was a couple of sessions at the O'Reilly Open Source conference yesterday, which Jon Udell has written up, and Dave Winer has posted some background material and thoughts at his website, www.scripting.com. "

Shawn writes "Interesting article on wearable PCs. Brief mention given to Linux / Beowulf, and 'an undershirt with 64 linked processors.' " God I'm a sucker for this stuff. "Hi, I'm Rob, and I wanna be a borg". This isn't anything really breaking or exciting, but its still neat.

dpreformer writes "Belluzzo has resigned and Bob Bishop is now acting head of SGI. We copuld probably all see this coming with the recent news of SGI spinning off its NT workstation and Cray divisions. Morale at SGI must be pretty low about now. 1500 layoffs, another couple of thousand working for spinoffs." A lot of good engineers over there, ya gotta hope things can be sorted out soon.

nsanch writes "I just noticed this article at Cryptome. It's one of the better explanations of quantum computing I've ever read, and it's pretty thorough too, detailing some algorithms, including one that the author wrote. Seems it'll be a while before we ever get to see one in action though. " It's true-it'll be sometime before a true quantum computer is actually in use. Very good article, tho'.

Chacham sent us some interesting Intel tidbits from Yahoo! News: First, they're cutting prices on P-II and P-IIIs between 26% and 41% (depending on model) tomorrow. Second, this October they plan to release a new line of 600 MHz+ Celerons using their recently-developed 0.18 micron manufacturing process, which isn't "new" news, but the referenced article goes into more detail than previous ones on the subject so it's worth a quick scan.

Chacham sent us some interesting Intel tidbits from Yahoo! News: First, they're cutting prices on P-II and P-IIIs between 26% and 41% (depending on model) tomorrow. Second, this October they plan to release a new line of 600 MHz+ Celerons using their recently-developed 0.18 micron manufacturing process, which isn't "new" news, but the referenced article goes into more detail than previous ones on the subject so it's worth a quick scan.

Chacham sent us some interesting Intel tidbits from Yahoo! News: First, they're cutting prices on P-II and P-IIIs between 26% and 41% (depending on model) tomorrow. Second, this October they plan to release a new line of 600 MHz+ Celerons using their recently-developed 0.18 micron manufacturing process, which isn't "new" news, but the referenced article goes into more detail than previous ones on the subject so it's worth a quick scan.

ion-flux writes "Sun Microsystems said several army bases in the U.S. are testing Jini to quickly create tactical operation centers which control, execute, and monitor battlefield maneuvers." No matter how smart you are, when you're under fire (literally) you can't deal competently with complex interoperability procedures. Of course, back in my Army days, we didn't even dream about things like Jini. Sure would have made our lives easier (and safer).

Alowishus writes "Dell's contest to find the oldest PC still in use has found a winner. It's a MITS Altair 8800b, being used by a lawyer, who has had it for 22 years. Dell's submitting it to a museum and giving the lawyer a bunch of modern hardware. "

PDA Buzz wrote to us with the latest privacy-invasion scheme. The Clinton Administration plans to ask Congress to give police authority to go secretely into people's computers, search for passwords and override encryption programs, "using devices, if needed".Investigators would need to have a sealed warrant to carry this out, but privacy groups are casting this as an invasion of the home. Shades of the Clipper Chip, anyone? Check this out for another report as well.

chigs writes to us with the news that Motorola, chip maker extraordinaire, is planning to purchase Metrowerks, creators of CodeWarrior. Hopefully this will not effect Metrowerks expansion into the Linux-area, but Motorola said it plans to leave Metrowerks as a stand-alone company.

Kevin Remhof has submitted us a piece on an area of Linux that a lot of you might not be familiar with, but may wish to be: Linux and X-Ray Astronomy. Talks about some of the things you can do, as well as common applications to do them with. Check it out. The following was written by Slashdot Reader Kevin Linux and X-Ray Astronomy

by Kevin Remhof

On July 23, 1999, NASA deployed the Chandra X-Ray observatory from the Space Shuttle Columbia. This telescope is a major leap forward in X-Ray astronomy. It will enable scientists to study dark matter, black holes, and other objects with great detail. I was checking out the information on the Chandra website and started to wonder about the software behind this telescope. So, I did a little searching on NASA'as website and found some interesting information. What I found is that X-Ray Astronomy is depending more and more on Linux for analyzing the data.

Background

X-Ray astronomy has been around since the early days of the space program. X-Ray telescopes work much the same as a regular telescope, but rely on X-Rays to view objects. The earth?s atmosphere absorbs most radiation from space. So, in order to use these telescopes, they have to be lifted out of earth?s atmosphere. The first X-Ray telescope sent into space took pictures of the Sun. Since the Sun is so close to earth, it was not hard to focus this crude telescope. Modern X-Ray telescopes are much more refined. The Chandra telescope could read the letters on a stop sign from 12 miles away.

X-Ray telescope data needs to be decoded before it is useful. This is similar to the concepts behind the SETI@Home project. Astronomers are allocated time to use the telescope. Chandra has about a 55 minute viewing time during each or bit around the earth. The telescope first gathers data without interpreting it. That data is then transferred to earth. Scientists then pick up chunks of that data for analysis. It is then that the power of X-Ray telescopes can be seen. X-Ray pictures are a little strange. Although attractive pieces of art, they are not easily understood by the general public.

The Linux Connection

Astronomers have used UNIX as their standard platform for years. Sun, HP, DE C/OSF were all commonplace. That is until Linux came along. Linux is becoming more and more popular and is threatening to take over as the platform of choice. Linux is now the darling of NASA. It is easy to powerful, easy to use, and porting applications from UNIX is not too difficult. NASA even uses Beowulf clusters for various projects which need large amounts of computing power.

Linux is a great choice for X-Ray astronomy because of the wide available of the OS and the software for it. Two popular programs are XANADU and FTOOLS. Both of them began as UNIX programs and have now been ported to Linux.

One astronomer, Ken Ebisawa has even written a HOWTO on "Linux for X-Ray Astronomers ". He details how to get Linux up and running and some of the various tools useful in X-Ray astronomy. According to the Goddard Space Center?s website, & quot;Ebisawa hopes to resolve the mystery of the Milky Way's so-called diffuse X-ray emission, a ubiquitous cloud of X-rays that blankets our galactic plane and whose origin is unknown. To do so, Dr. Ebisawa will look at a region of space where this cloud varies in X-ray brightness but where there seems to be no distinct energy sources to produce it." Ebisawa will use his Dell Inspiron laptop to analyze his data.

Open Source Software

The latest development in X-Ray astronomy is Open Source. Another program for analyzing X-Ray data is called SAOimage. Currently, it is being redesigned and updated using Open Source practices. Open Source is a natural for this because users often want to extend the software by combining it with other systems to come up with a research environment. It also helps to reduce some of the costs associated with development of such complex systems. Using the bazaar model of software development allows multiple developers to maintain and upgrade this complex code. It also allows the shared development of key pieces of code and functionality while satisfying individual needs of users.

Conclusion

Linux is rapidly becoming the OS of choice for X-Ray astronomers. This is yet another credit to the flexibility and power of Linux. More information on the Chandra scientists can be found here.

grunkhead writes "Stephan Somogyi, aka the Darwinist, at MacWeek has an interesting take on Linux on the PowerPC in the wake of IBM's release of a free motherboard design for the G3/750, suggesting the PPC could be the preferred Linux platform of the future. "

Sawopox writes "A bunch of guys a lot smarter than I am managed to find evidence of matter being sucked into a blackhole at roughly 6.5 million mph. " Yeah, but what kinda mileage does that matter get?

Spectre writes "This has to be the most honest Y2K policy I have seen to date (from Hart Scientific). I'm going to include a printed copy of this in my company's "Y2K notebook" even though we have never done business with these people... " One of the funniest things I've read in awhile. Including these long drawn out messages from clueless folks warning me that Slashdot is not y2k compliant (because dear god, if the URL of stories contains 00 all hell is gonna break lose ;)

Lawrence_Bird writes "Reuters put a piece out overnite commenting on the use of Linux in web appliances. It has a few quotes from Linus and comments specifically on TiVo Inc. " Comments on the RH IPO, Linux on Merced, and a few other bits.

Yep, it's that time again! Nghia gave us a link to some "Jedi Academy" trailers. Several folks wrote in to say that the guys at Themes.org have a new look. forehead graciously provided an "interesting" bit, based on this "Richard Stallman-as-Marx" posting. "I decided to rework the whole song". Orbitz pointed us at a web-controlled RC car with camera. Next is my favorite, as submitted by Electric Keet, Stick Figure Porn. Thyla pointed us in the general direction of Carbonated Borscht for the Evil Geek's Soul, with a thanks to Illiad. Crazy Man on Fire gave us a link to upcoming distributed.net projects coming out soon. poink threw us a link to The Cereal Page (Ok, someone has waaaay too much time on his hands...) J. Pierpont gave us a link to more info on Episode II and III. Now, from Armin Lenz submitted a link to a CPU Gurus, a new CPU site discussing various current and future processors. Finally, Mike Healy, one of The Bazaar dudes, sent us a status report. Read more for the skinny.

Mike Healy writes "Since Steve Blood, our event chairman, is out of the country - he is actually checking out a solar eclipse in Austria - i've taken it upon myself to give you all an update on the Bazaar. I'd wait for steve to get back, all bleary eyed, by i must squelch the rumors being promulgated by certain sales guys for other events, that we folded. This couldn't be further from the truth. Fact of the matter is we are scheduled, locked and loaded and PUMPED for December 14-16 at the javits NYC.

The Bazaar will be the first large scale conference on opensource software to hit the east coast and will stress program, program and program. Our Theory is that if you build it, they will .com

Not only does EarthWeb, by nature of being an IT content HUB have access to the freshest most imperative material, but we have also brought in an indstry expert, lydia Bennett of Dialogos fame, to aggregate and work closely with conference chairs and advisory board to make sure all tracks and tutorials are epic.

Check out the website for more on the program. The exhibit floor will be refreshingly unlike any you have seen in this space being made up of customed designed, turn key demo stations. This not only makes it a breeze for vendors , but also adds integity to the exhibit floor. No huge booths with revolving marquis, No loud PA systems. No freak shows. This is the wrong event to come to if you want to see Trumps daughter in a g string handing out T shirts... This is the right event if you want to meet some of the biggest brains out there and get no nonsense answers regarding opensource free software... Anyway, thats it for now.. More from Steve when he gets back"

MattJ writes "The AP reports that Shamir (the 'S' in RSA) has revealed more details of his optical 512-bit cracking machine, TWINKLE, at a cryptography conference. " It's a pretty darn cool machine, and at only 2 million dollars, it'll be a bargain *grin*!

lionrampant writes "MSNBC has an article that discusses how Gateway is going to revive the Amiga computer, except it's not really an Amiga, it's more like an information appliance. I guess they're betting that the name will attract people. " Meanwhile rumors run rampant of a new Amiga with a Transmeta CPU and a Linux Kernel to be released in the next couple months.

Quite a number of you have written in with the news about Sony and Nippon Zeon Co Ltd announcing plastic hard drives. The current estimate is that it will cut production costs by 30-40%, on 5 gig drives. No word, however, on when production/testing will start.

Steve Rojem writes "This press release at Yahoo details the porting of Maya et al to Linux." Very cool, and probably one of the first of many similar announcements we'll be seeing this week with LinuxWorld going on (though as an astute reader pointed out, this one was due to SIGGRAPH, which is also going on presently). Maya should show up in December, and it won't come cheap (US$3k).

Richard Finney writes "The Associated Press reports that U.S. District Judge Thoms Penfield Jackson has ordered Microsoft and the Department of Justice to present their versions of the 'facts.' This is a step forward to a final verdict: 'GUILTY!' I hope. Yahoo! News has the story here."

malacai sent us another article in a long stream about Red Hat's Impending IPO. This one talks a bit about Be's IPO, as well as assorted other stuff related to it. It's a good piece (and one that for a change is about the actual IPO and its implications and not the E*Trade/SEC fiasco)

StirFry writes "The AP Wire has this story about the whole crack Windows 2000/crack LinuxPPC situ. And they even use and define the term 'crackers'. Best bit: 'But a log posted on the computer showed at least nine crashes caused by problems with Microsoft software, not the weather. Questioned about that, the spokeswoman said the computer was expected to be off line for some periods of time ``as customer feedback is assessed and integrated into the system.'' " Apparently the Linux box is still standing.

dewey writes "This article [from Yahoo! News] says that SGI is expected to announce another business restructuring next Tuesday. No details about the reorg yet, but the buzz is that the focus will be away from big customers buying high-end machines and more toward being better able to 'compete on the Web' -- whatever that means." Update: It may mean more Linux support; jho sent in a link to the new SGI Linux page. A ray of hope in SGI's otherwise gloomy future, perhaps?

Rob (not Malda) sent us this story about how UC Berkeley astronomer Derek Buzasi found that a satellite with a malfunctioning main telescope had a perfectly functional "spotting" scope that could still be used to gather valuable data. Now, because of Buzasi's inspiration, the Wide Field Infrared Explorer (WIRE) satellite NASA had written off as a $73 million piece of space trash is a useful astronomical tool that makes approximately 750,000 observations per day.

sbeitzel writes "According to this story on Yahoo!, Sony will be producing more "home entertainment robots" next year, and tooling up to start producing a whole line of different 'bots. " Maybe this time I can have/keep a sample. And Rob will stop complaining about not having one. (Are you listening, Sony?)

sbeitzel writes "According to this story on Yahoo!, Sony will be producing more "home entertainment robots" next year, and tooling up to start producing a whole line of different 'bots. " Maybe this time I can have/keep a sample. And Rob will stop complaining about not having one. (Are you listening, Sony?)

Durinia writes "Here is the official press release from SGI about their new Linux server. It also looks like they've struck a deal with Red Hat. " SGI continues its support (and perhaps its last hope) with Linux-do you folks think this will be enough to restore them?

Durinia writes "Here is the official press release from SGI about their new Linux server. It also looks like they've struck a deal with Red Hat. " SGI continues its support (and perhaps its last hope) with Linux-do you folks think this will be enough to restore them?

Lorgo_Numputz writes "Salon Magazine has an article on an MP3 crackdown in progress, with an interesting stab at a solution. (And RIAA thinks they have it bad in the U.S.). It's not a "crackdown" in the U.S. sense, with lawyers and courts, but rather an appeal to the public's sense of fairness. But it's an interesting tactic, and whether it works or not, it's certainly a nicer way to deal with online music piracy than the RIAA's.

An anonymous reader wrote in to say that earlier this morning, discussions about the Red Hat IPO fiasco started appearing on the E*Trade stock board at Yahoo. E*Trade stock holders are worried about class action suits, complaints to the SEC, and even cracking of E*Trade's servers. I've heard many things (nothing official yet) that all the major outstanding issues will be resolved on monday. I still don't know if I'm eligible, although I did get the letter.

nsanch writes "The BBC is reporting that there may be an ocean of oil on Titan, the only open sea on a planet (other than Earth) that's in our solar system." And in other news, thanks to Corrado for the pointer over to the Deep Space 1 Mission Log, chuck-full of details from the recent Asteriod Braille fly-by. Amazing how much info you can get at 35,000 Miles per Hour.

Marc Merlin writes "This excerpt from Yahoo News tells it all:
(...) But according to marketing materials from Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq:CSCO - news), the No. 1 maker of computer networking equipment, cable companies will be able to work behind the scenes with sophisticated software included in Cisco products to slow down and limit access to selected Web sites. " As you would imagine, this has got the hackles of consumer groups up-Cisco brochures are saying that this stuff would allow cable companies to make competing sites appear more slowly then preferred ones. I'm speechless.

geekd sent us a link to a Linux Today story by ESR where he says that Microsoft is right. Here is a quick quote from the article: "Indeed do we live in interesting times. Today Microsoft, the Borg from Redmond, is on the right side -- the open-source side -- of a dispute about network standards. I expect water to begin flowing uphill any second now, and look out for pigs on the wing." Its about the Internet Messaging battle between AOL and MS. Check it out.

According to a company press release published today on Yahoo!Finance, TurboLinux is now the top-selling Japanese computer operating system. Not just the top-selling Linux distribution, but the top-selling OS, period, with sales almost as great as those of the Windows 98 commercial release and the Windows 98 commercial update combined. If only new commercial OS sales, not upgrades, are considered, things look even rosier for TurboLinux, which claims 24.09% of total market share as opposed to 13.25% for Win98 and 10.23% for Macintosh.

According to a company press release published today on Yahoo!Finance, TurboLinux is now the top-selling Japanese computer operating system. Not just the top-selling Linux distribution, but the top-selling OS, period, with sales almost as great as those of the Windows 98 commercial release and the Windows 98 commercial update combined. If only new commercial OS sales, not upgrades, are considered, things look even rosier for TurboLinux, which claims 24.09% of total market share as opposed to 13.25% for Win98 and 10.23% for Macintosh.