Slashdot Mirror

MCTFB writes, "According to CNN, human beings may have acquired a gene for developing bigger brains from Neanderthal man. Apparently, 70% of the world's population has a variant of a gene regulating brain size, with this variant being most common in people of European descent (where Neanderthal man lived alongside ancient humans), and least common in people of African descent (where Neanderthal man was non-existent). While modern day eugenicists might all too eagerly read into these findings to draw their own politically biased conclusions, people such as myself, who happen to be of northern European ancestry, may find it fascinating that somewhere in our lineage ancient humans and Neanderthals decided to make love and not war on the ancient plains of Eurasia."

Vicissidude writes with news from the IT front in India: "The software industry body Nasscom has warned that India faces a shortfall of half a million skilled workers by 2010. The country will need 350,000 engineers a year, but no more than 150,000 of the most highly skilled engineers will be available each year." This shortfall is fueling a new development, the exporting of Indian tech jobs to the US. But will there be workers in the US to do those jobs? Reader Jadeite2 writes with a word from Bill Gates, speaking to a business forum in Moscow, who said: "There is a shortage of IT skills on a worldwide basis. Anybody who can get those skills here now will have a lot of opportunity."

F34nor writes to mention a CBS news article about the depopulation of ocean species. According to a study by a scientist in Halifax, Nova Scotia and assisted by research from all around the world, the world's oceans will be emptied of large lifeforms by 2048. From the article: "Already, 29% of edible fish and seafood species have declined by 90% — a drop that means the collapse of these fisheries. But the issue isn't just having seafood on our plates. Ocean species filter toxins from the water. They protect shorelines. And they reduce the risks of algae blooms such as the red tide. 'A large and increasing proportion of our population lives close to the coast; thus the loss of services such as flood control and waste detoxification can have disastrous consequences,' Worm and colleagues say."

eldavojohn writes "As many of you know, the JPEG image compression is actually proprietary. This has resulted in many lawsuits between its owner, Forgent Networks, and other companies that have used it. Yesterday Microsoft and about 60 other defendants settled with Forgent to the tune of $8 million. For a company with annual revenues of $15 million, that's nothing to sneeze at. You haven't heard the last of Forgent yet, as the article states, 'It is currently pursuing claims against cable companies over a patent that it says covers technology inside digital video recorders.' Sounds like that one could be worth a little bit of cash, wouldn't you think?"

morcego asks: "As we are all too much aware, spam is an increasing problem. Each of us has our own set of tools and methods to try and reduce the amount of spam we receive, each with different pros and cons. Also, on a more broad front, we have options like SPF (+ SRS), Microsoft's own Caller-ID, and Yahoo's DomainKeys that we can use. These days, it is incredibly easy to implement any (or all of these), using publicly available frameworks and libraries (libspf2, and milter, to name a few). I have been using SPF for quite some time now with some measurable results, although nothing earth shattering. Which of these are you using, if any? Why, or why not? Do you think any of them really contribute anything to fight spam?"

Lifelongactivist writes, "A new free book about bird flu has been published by Michael Greger, M.D., the US Humane Society's director of public health and animal agriculture. Bird Flu: a Virus of Our Own Hatching (the site contains the entire book text) tells why modern industrialized agricultural methods, including factory farming, antibiotics misuse, and the use of animal refuse as a food source (!) for chickens and other livestock, have led to a staggering increase in the number of 'zoonotic' diseases that can leap from animals to people, and make a bird flu pandemic likely. The book discusses in practical terms what you can do to prevent infection and what to do if you do catch the disease. The book is especially timely given yesterday's news that a new, vaccine-resistant variant of H5N1 has been detected in China."
Update: 10/31 19:44 GMT by KD : Corrected to read "vaccine-resistant."

An anonymous reader writes "As the DOJ continues its investigation into RAM price fixing, it has started looking at Sony's operations. With all the negative press Sony has been getting, this couldn't come at a worse time." From the article: "The Japanese company received a subpoena from the Justice Department's antitrust division seeking information about Sony's static random access memory, or SRAM, business, company spokesman Atsuo Omagari said. 'Sony intends to cooperate fully with the DOJ in what appears to be an industrywide inquiry,' the company said in a short statement."

clndnng writes "Roughly 90% of web content consists of discussions of software patents, so it's a little surprising that Ben Klemens has written what may be the first dead-trees book analyzing their validity. It has a lot of ground to cover: you could approach the topic from the perspective of the geeks, the lawyers, the economists, or the businessmen. Klemens is equal-opportunity, addressing every perspective." Read the rest of the review. Math You Can't Use: Patents, Copyright and Software author Ben Klemens pages publisher Brookings Instituion Press rating 9/10 reviewer ISBN 0-8157-4942-2 summary Explains why patents don't make sense for software

The first question you are probably asking yourself is whether this book says anything that you haven't already read on Slashdot's pages. Barring any omniscient readers, the answer is probably yes, because the book covers so many different angles. You might already know what he will say about the Church-Turing Thesis, but you probably don't know the law of scènes à faire or contributory infringement. Slashdot chestnuts like Amazon.com's one-click patent and the SCO v IBM case make only passing appearances, leaving room for more interesting examples about Garbage Pail Kids and Banana Protective Devices.

Chapter two of the book gives a quick-and-dirty overview of the economic motivations for patent law. I should tell you that Ben Klemens and I were both students at Caltech's PhD program for Social Sciences, so I was half expecting him to whip out the infinite sequences of integrals over a Riemann manifold here. But he either didn't think the Greek relevant or chose to spare us mere mortals, because he keeps the theory pretty simple: patents are supposed to maximize the size of the market. If nobody is providing a good, patents should induce somebody to provide, but if many people are providing the good, then a good patent regime shouldn't diminish that number of providers to one.

You can see where this is going: patents on software are often not necessary to induce code-writing, and when they do exist they seriously diminish what could have been a crowded market. He ties this to finding the optimal breadth of a patent, because a too-broad patent gives the owner a cheap monopoly over a range that could have held a large number of competitors.

The next chapter is the computer science chapter. He goes into detail about how we go from transistors to instruction sets, which turns out to be important in the next chapter when patent examiners try to draw a line between the two. He also talks about how one could write up a symbol table to translate any given program into lambda calculus expressions, which are pure math by any definition of the term. If pure math isn't patentable, and a program can be translated into a pure mathematical expression, then where does the program get off being patentable?

Chapter four shows how U.S. law went from disallowing software patents to letting through patents on anything sort of techy-sounding. The first alibi by the courts is that code may be pure math, but a machine on which is programmed pure math is a physical device, just like a toaster. Klemens tries to address this via the discussion above about how the transistors are soldered on at the factory, but the programs coded onto them are just states on a state machine. He brings up the breadth problem above: a patent for an algorithm on any general-purpose computer is a patent of huge breadth.

The second alibi by the courts is that the application of an equation to a useful purpose is distinct from the equation itself. As tenuous as such a distinction is, it hasn't held, so there are now patents on the books for math applied to useful purposes like a "Method for performing complex fast Fourier transforms," a "Method of efficient gradient computation," and a "Cosine algorithm for relatively small angles."

That's the thrust of the theory that Klemens covers. Most of the rest of the book shows how software patents in the real world create problems. He cites interviews with venture capitalists by a University of Texas researcher in which they say that they just expect to be violating patents left and right in the normal course of business. He cites another set of researchers who surveyed technologists in a variety of fields, and found that companies in most fields mostly patent in order to protect their inventions, while computing companies are most likely to patent so they can game the system.

Klemens seems to be downplaying the role of open source in all of this. In Chapter 6, he points out that the U.S. software market is evenly split between software companies (32.6%), consultants (36.4%), and in-house software (31.0%). That is, most software isn't written by software companies, and some of that not-software-company software is OSS. It's the decentralization, not the openness, that matters. Patents have never been applied to a decentralized industry before, and they don't work there because independent invention is not a valid defense against claims of patent infringement, and independent invention is inevitable in such a decentralized industry.

Finally, the book covers copyright, which makes sense because if patents really are going to be thrown out, then coders will be relying on copyright more. For example, the GPL is based on copyright protection. The recommendation here is that copyright be aimed at detecting plagiarism anywhere along the line, so if you cut and paste my FORTRAN code and run it through f2c, your C code is still infringing my copyrights. He points out that software is uniquely well-suited to enforcing copyright all along the development process, because coders have backups and RCS repositories that poets don't keep.

Klemens's anti-software patent position happens to be the position I believed when I started reading, so I can't say that he changed my mind. But he did point out many arguments, stories, and facts that I hadn't known (or had misheard) beforehand.

Klemens covers a lot of ground in an ADD-friendly manner, and if you don't like one of his arguments against software patents, he has ten more for you to try out. For me, he made the injustice in software patents salient, and by the end of the book I wanted to find a machine to rage against—or to at least send my copy of the book to my Congressman. In fact, on the Brookings Institution website, Klemens suggests political action, because Congress has patent reforms in process that won't fix software patents without a push from the rest of us. Hopefully, this book will be a step in the right direction.

You can purchase Math You Can't Use: Patents, Copyright and Software from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Salvance writes "Yahoo News (via ComputerWire) is reporting that Oracle and Red Hat are turning up the heat in the battle over Oracle's new enterprise Linux offering. While Oracle claims they'll be able to offer their 'Unbreakable' version of Red Hat's Linux offering for half the price, Red Hat asserts that all the important security and hardware certifications would be invalidated on Oracle's offering.

At this point, the only thing that's certain is that Red Hat needs to figure out how to keep their large Oracle Enterprise clients on board or risk becoming a takeover target (undoubtably, with Oracle leading the list of potentially bidders)."

An anonymous reader writes "Yahoo is running a story about a study that concludes that testosterone levels are falling across all age groups among American men. It says 'The testosterone-fueled American male may be losing his punch'" I leave it to you all to draw your conclusions about this, but I still wonder what my hours of laptop-fu does to me.

We got lots and lots of questions for Dean Hachamovitch, whose formal title is "general manager Internet Explorer at Microsoft Corp." Picking a mere 10 of those questions was not easy, and I wish Dean could have answered twice as many -- and so does he, but his schedule has been tight this week. Anyway, here are his answers to the Chosen Ten. 1) How about this...
by also-rr

Would you like to make available IE on other operating systems?

Dean Hachamovitch:

We did make versions of IE available on other operating system for a pretty long time, up through IE5 on Unix and the Mac. At the time we developed them, those offerings made sense. I don't see a good reason to make IE available on other operating systems at this time.

2) IE7 release time
by BeeBeard Why did IE7 take such a long time to release after IE6?



Dean Hachamovitch:

Basically because we were doing a lot of other things before we started work on IE7: a few releases of MSN Explorer, a lot of work on what turned out to be Windows Presentation Foundation, a lot of investment in what turned into IPv6 support in Windows Vista, and lot of security response, a pretty intense effort on Windows Server 2003 (and IE's "Enhanced Security Configuration"), and then a pretty intense effort on Windows XPSP2. You can read a more detailed answer here

3) Follow up
by LordEd

If you had more time, is there a new feature you would have liked to include in IE7?

Dean Hachamovitch:

Yes, several come to mind. None were more important than shipping. None were more important than the bug fix work we did in response to beta feedback.

The temptation to get "just one more feature in" is so strong... one more CSS fix, one more neat facility for developers, one more performance optimization, one more cool end-user feature. The thing that made it easier to resist the temptation and ship is the prototype and planning work we've started on the next release of IE.

4) Simple questions
by Billosaur

IE has a dominating command of the market, although Firefox is slowly making inroads, due to innovations such as tabbed browsing that IE has had to incorporate to maintain that command. But where are the IE innovations? Why can't the IE team get ahead of the curve on Firefox? Is there anything you consider an innovation that is unique to IE that would plausibly be something the browser market would have to incorporate to stay competitive?

Dean Hachamovitch:

I think IE7 is the first browser with integrated real-time anti-phishing functionality, with an RSS platform and support for Simple List Extensions (see below), with "QuickTabs," with support for OpenSearch, and with shrink-to-fit printing on by default. In Windows Vista with Protected Mode, IE7 is the first browser to "put itself into a sandbox" and run with low privileges.

I think that during the IE7 beta process, you've seen other browser vendors copy some of these features and/or deliver add-ons for others. (IE has also delivered some functionality - like spell-checking in forms or in-line find, as add-ons; you can read more here.

I want to call out the Phishing Filter and RSS in particular. I think there's a clear difference between the protection offered in IE7 and other places. I suggest readers look here and here and decide for themselves. I was surprised when I read this because I think IE7 delivers real-time protection that respects user privacy at the same time.

I think IE7's RSS is pretty deep. First, the support for the Simple List Extensions that we made available under a Creative Commons license is cool - check out the links below in IE7. Also, the platform enables developers to deliver on some great scenarios, like sharing subscription information between different applications and services easily (from the new version of Outlook 2007 I run at work to IE7 at home via Newsgator). You can read more about that here.

- Amazon Wish List as an RSS feed

- eBay Search Result as an RSS feed

- Yahoo Music Top 10 list as an RSS feed

In regards to tabs, according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabbed_browsing, NetCaptor (an IE-based browser) was first.

5) My shot
by Njovich

What do you consider the greatest weakness of Firefox?

Dean Hachamovitch:

Hey, I've met a bunch of the Firefox folks and respect them and am not about to say mean things about them or their product, period. I have started to see some things that even some Slashdotters find a little confusing, like the whole Iceweasel thing.

6) Security
by Seto89

One of IE7's revolutionary features was supposed to be security, although it took less than 24 hours for Secunia to post an advisory about a security hole. Moreover, the bug seemed to be carried over from as early as IE5.5. What approach did you take to improve browser's security, and how come the vulnerabilities have been carried over?

Dean Hachamovitch:

The overall approach we took is called the secure development lifecycle. You can read more about it in general at http://msdn.microsoft.com/security/default.aspx?pull=/library/en-us/dnsecure/html/sdl.asp and http://www.microsoft.com/MSPress/books/8753.asp. The very short version is that we stepped back to analyze all the ways to attack a browser and then figured out the best ways to defend in depth against attacks. We reduced attack surface area, for example, turning off several feature and protocols by default and with ActiveX opt-in. We re-wrote a lot of the URL handling code in our networking layer. We ran a lot of tools against the source code to look for vulnerabilities. We listened to feedback from lots of smart people who are skilled in the art of attack.

As anyone who reads SecurityFocus or FullDisclosure will tell you, security is an industry problem and innovation in attacks is ongoing.

The MHTML issue is pretty interesting. IE calls another Windows component to handle some MTHML functionality. That component has a vulnerability. The important things here are (1) a malicious site can steal user data and (2) of course Microsoft cares about privacy and will fix this issue promptly. Some of the blogs over at zdnet - in particular George Ou's and Ed Bott's, have had some balanced opinion pieces on this issue.

While I was writing this, someone disclosed another issue irresponsibly. On the one hand, it's minor (a malicious site can make the address bar, when it's selected and in a pop-up window, deceiving... clicking in the pop-up window addresses the issue) and our anti-phishing technology helps a lot. The MSRC blog has more detail. At the same time, an attacker could draw a fake or misleading address bar in a pop-up window in a browser that doesn't automatically show the address bar in every window. Again, I think all this shows is that innovation in attacks is ongoing.

7) How about this....
by Toreo asesino

Let's pretend for a moment that Internet Explorer isn't the default web-browser built into Windows and instead, users are presented with a choice on first login (e.g. a message asking 'How would you like to browse the internet? MSIE, Firefox, Opera').

Would you expect IE to become as dominant as it is now if users had to specifically choose it over another?

Ignoring the slight impracticalities, if so (I'm guessing you do), on what basis would this be?

Dean Hachamovitch:

OK, I'll pretend. My first question is when we ask users this question... if it's in 1995, then Opera isn't on the list (Wikipedia just told me that its first public release was in 1996) and neither is Firefox. If it's today, then, candidly, we have 10+ years of people seeing the IE icon and all that that means to them.

The funny thing about your question is that in some ways, users are about two clicks from this scenario every time they run Windows XP: from the Start menu, select Set Program Access and Defaults. And it's not limited to the browsers you list, but any browser that they can download.

To answer your core question: I don't know how people would answer that question. I think we've asked users far simpler ones (like setup programs that ask "Do you want a typical or custom software installation?") that have proven frustrating to them. I do blog searches just about every day to read what people are saying about their browser choice, the browser I work on, and the other browsers you list. While it may surprise you, for many users, the differences between today's browsers aren't as clear and obvious as they may seem to many in the Slashdot crowd. I've read a lot of posts that say, "I tried IE7, I'm pleasantly surprised, and I'm switching back." (I read a lot of others for sure.) For some folks, having professional technical support to contact makes all the difference in their browser choice. During a press interview with a technical trade journal recently I asked the reporter "So what do you browse with" and he said "Mostly IE6, sometimes Firefox 1.5." That might surprise some of you.

8) Allowing Developers to Test for Compatibility
by miyako

IE7, like IE6, renders a lot of pages significantly differently than the other main HTML rendering engines available (Geko, KHTML, and Opera). At the same time, IE7 requires WGA to run - so that applications like Wine are unable to run it. This means that web developers who are using Linux and Mac OS X will have an extremely difficult time testing their sites with IE7. Was this intentional? If so what was the reason behind it (do you want to force developers to move to Windows for web development, or simply set IE aside as something different that isn't a regular browser and must be specifically developed for), and if not how do you plan to rectify the situation?

Dean Hachamovitch:

I think the core of your question is about giving away Windows licenses for free. We love developers, period. We're also not about to give away Windows client licenses. Because we want end-users to have a great experience on the web, of course we want web developers to have an easy experience working with IE and testing their sites with IE. That's why we published tools like the web developer toolbar and the Application Compatibility Toolkit and so much documentation during the course of IE7 development. I also respect that - as hard as everyone at Microsoft works to make Windows the best operating system for developers run - some developers will choose to run others. Mac developers have a fine solution - I've talked with hardcore Mac people who bought a copy of Windows that they run on their Mac with Parallels to test their work in IE. For other developers, I've seen some very clever solutions like BrowserCam that should help.

9) I asked Hakon about CSS and now I ask you:
by Chabil Ha'

This past summer Håkon Wium Lie was interviewed on /. and my question was selected concerning IE7's glaring lack of full CSS support. Why is it that MS has avoided meeting at least the ACID2 spec for CSS in order to bring some semblance of comformity for developers?

Håkon Wium Lie's response to these questions is boiled down to the fact that you do have the talent and resources to fix these issues and he says that "the fundamental reason, I believe, is that standards don't benefit monopolists" like MS.

How do you respond to his comments (the author of the CSS spec) and does MS have any near future plans to adhere to the existing CSS standard? If not, what would it take for MS to take a more proactive role in supporting it?

Dean Hachamovitch:

During IE7's development, we prioritized the work we did based on the web development community's real-world feedback. The engineering exercise here was choosing the best work for a finite number of developers to do during a finite period of time, especially given the compatibility impact of changing how IE behaves. The work that we delivered in IE7 simply has more positive impact and makes web developers' jobs easier than making an arbitrary (if terribly clever) web page render the way its author intended.

The Acid 2 test explicitly states that it isn't part of a formal compliance suite and it is not a "spec for CSS." It's a suite of tests of HTML, CSS, PNG, and data URL features that Mr. Lie thought were important. I'm glad that Mr. Lie - who is one of the authors of the CSS specifications - acknowledges that Microsoft's developers have the talent to address these issues.

The question here isn't whether we want to support those features or if we understand that web developers want them (we do), but simply prioritization. We focused on web developers' real world problems.

The real goal here is interoperability - something that Microsoft product teams believe in (remember, Microsoft has more than one product that works with HTML, CSS, and other web standards, and they have to interoperate too) and something that benefits customers (end-users, developers, IT Pros, et al.) across the board. The work in Windows Vista around IPv6 as well as the work we've done in IE7 with OpenSearch, RSS and with Certificate Authorities and other browser vendors on Extended Validation certificates are good examples of following through on that belief in interoperability.

Your question also asks about Microsoft's plans to comply with the existing CSS standard; there are actually several CSS standards, some still under construction (CSS level 3) and some made obsolete over time (e.g. CSS 2.1 fixing errors, removing ambiguities and changing required behavior from CSS 2). Just as we did in IE7, we're going to listen to the web development community and prioritize the remaining CSS work and deliver the parts we hear are most important first. We do intend to comply with the standard; no other browser I'm aware of has complete support of every feature in CSS 2.1, so it's clear that we all have to use prioritization to know where best to place our resources.

10) Why develop IE at all
by CmdrGravy

Given that you are not planning on selling IE 7 and the fact that there are already other browsers on the market which can allow Windows users to experience the web fully why is Microsoft investing so much time and effort in continuing the development of IE?

Dean Hachamovitch:

Windows customers expect the best, safest experience with their PCs out of the box, especially around the web browser. We're investing so much time and effort in IE in order to give Windows customers a great, secure, default experience. I'm glad that users can choose other browsers as they see fit - Windows is a platform. We're working this hard on IE because so many end-users rely on it and so many developers have built on the APIs that IE exposes as a part of the Windows platform.

-------

Editor's note: Next week's Slashdot interview guest will be a FireFox person. Only fair, right? :)

MBCook writes "At the Oracle OpenWorld conference, Sun's CEO Jonathan Schwartz announced on Wednesday morning that Java would be opened within 30-60 days, which would would mean about Christmas Day at the latest. Sun first announced they would do this back in May at JavaOne but didn't give a date. We've seen rumblings before on this topic. Schwartz also commented on the companies Sun Fire servers, Sun's relationship with Oracle, and general trends."

Rockgod quotes an article saying "With Microsoft now saying that its next major service pack for Windows XP will not ship until 2008, some Windows users are wondering whether the software upgrade will ever be released." and then later "Michael Cherry, an analyst with Directions on Microsoft, agrees that Microsoft may very well decide to drop XP Service Pack 3. "It absolutely could happen. Microsoft is under no obligation to produce any service packs, ever," he explains. "They feel that because these fixes are available through the auto-update that there's less need to create a service pack."

E writes "Technology is putting some new sparkle in the world of diamonds. Until recently, naturally occurring, mined diamonds were unchallenged in their quality and desirability. But now laboratory-created diamonds, which possess the same properties as naturals, are poised to give them a run for their money. A new company, Adia Diamonds, has quite the variety in their inventory. They have the same chemical and physical properties as a mined diamond and come in white, blue and yellow. Both GIA and EGL grading labs are offering certifications for lab created diamonds. Seems like a good, high-tech alternative to the DeBeers diamond cartel."

Xiaoxiaofreak2 writes "Via Joystiq, Reuters is reporting on a new fantasy sports title that draws on a new source — politics." From the article: "Fantasy Congress plays a lot like any other online Fantasy sports game. The game, officially launched on Monday, is a new spin on the popular online fantasy sports games where players chose a team of real-life players and tally points based on their statistical performance. In Fantasy Congress, found at http://www.fantasycongress.us/fc/, a player drafts a team of actual U.S. lawmakers and then competes against other teams. Andrew Lee, a senior at Claremont McKenna College in the greater Los Angeles area and one of the game's creators, said lawmakers were ranked based on the progress of their proposed legislation, picking up points on its journey to possibly getting passed into law."

An anonymous reader writes "Facial recognition software has been touted as one of the technologies that will change our future, particularly in law enforcement. How close are we to being recognized by a computer anywhere we go, as portrayed in movies like Minority Report? According to the industry's recent Public Relations releases, these products are closer than we think. The reality though, is that current products work only when utilizing a small comparative sample, and any attempts for an individual to disguise themselves typically throw off the results. To see how far this technology needs to go before becoming mainstream, one site utilized Government-tested face recognition software, available freely through MyHeritage.com, to compare hundreds of famous people, animals, and cartoons to a database of 2,000 celebrities. Some of the results showed promise for the technology, but most were just funny — for example, who would mistake Barbara Streisand for Shrek, or Lance Bass of N'Sync for a Teletubby?"

npwa writes to tell us Reporters Without Borders has released their annual worldwide press freedom index. While developing nations like Haiti and Mauritania continue to gain ground developed nations like France, Japan, and the US continue their downward spiral. From the article: "The United States (53rd) has fallen nine places since last year, after being in 17th position in the first year of the Index, in 2002. Relations between the media and the Bush administration sharply deteriorated after the president used the pretext of 'national security' to regard as suspicious any journalist who questioned his 'war on terrorism.' The zeal of federal courts which, unlike those in 33 US states, refuse to recognise the media's right not to reveal its sources, even threatens journalists whose investigations have no connection at all with terrorism."

wayne writes "Microsoft has now put the SenderID patents under the OSP. The Open Specification Promise was discussed on slashdot before in conjunction with web services and it is good to see that they are opening up even more. There are still technical problems with SenderID compared with SPF and, of course, SPF isn't problem free. Still, over the last year, the number of SPF records has more than doubled from around 1.7 million to 4.1 million, with rate of growth increased in the last 6 months."

junglee_iitk writes with news of an important archaeological find from Egypt. Grave robbers located a tomb and were arrested while digging; what they found turns out to be the graves of three dentists who took care of a Pharaoh's teeth. The graves are located in the shadow of the Step Pyramid at Saqqara, said to be Egypt's oldest, and are around 4,000 years old. From the article: "Although archaeologists have been exploring Egypt's ruins intensively for more than 150 years, [a senior archaeologist] believes only 30 percent of what lies hidden beneath the sands has been uncovered." Yahoo has a few pictures of the dig.

PapayaSF writes "Beginning January 1st, Germany will require payment of a license fee of 5.52 euros a month on computers and mobile phones that can access TV and radio programs over the Internet. Like the current TV and radio license fees, the money will support national and local public TV and radio stations. German companies with many computers are predictably upset." I'm not sure if this is the same story we discussed in 2004. Did this original fee go through, and this is another fee on top of the original?

General Lee's Peking writes to mention an Associated Press article about a sad development in the DARPA Grand Challenge. Because of some new DoD-related legislation, the organization will no longer be able to award the $2 Million prize to grand challenge winners. It's not all bad, though; they still get a trophy. From the article: "The absence of a lucrative cash prize has forced some teams to retool their game plan and others to drop out. Some fear it would be harder to attract corporate sponsors and hurt media coverage of the race, which drew a throng of reporters last year and inspired a PBS documentary. 'The icing on the cake is gone,' said Ivar Schoenmeyr, team leader of California-based Team CyberRider, which is retrofitting a Toyota Prius hybrid."

Vicissidude writes "A team of American and British researchers has made a cloak of invisibility. In their experiment the scientists used microwaves to try and detect a copper cylinder. Like light and radar waves, microwaves bounce off objects making them visible and creating a shadow, though it has to be detected with instruments. If you can hide something from microwaves, you can hide it from radar and visible light. In effect the device, made of metamaterials — engineered mixtures of metal and circuit board materials, which could include ceramic, Teflon or fiber composite materials — channels the microwaves around the object being hidden. When water flows around a rock, co-author David R. Smith explained, the water recombines after it passes the rock and people looking at the water downstream would never know it had passed a rock. The first working cloak was in only two dimensions and did cast a small shadow, Smith acknowledged. The next step is to go for three dimensions and to eliminate any shadow."

Sylentmode writes "A recent study by Brookings Institution's Brown Center shows that students who are good with math are less likely to be happy, and are likely to have low confidence. From the article "In essence, happiness is overrated" says study author Tom Loveless. I wonder if Loveless is just a nickname, because he is so good with math."

Tiny Tuba writes "PC World's Harry McCracken pulls together a compendium of vintage PC commercials posted on YouTube. There are commercials from the 1980s right up to the present. If you are looking for a laugh, you will have fun with the Atari 400, Commodore 64 and more." Worth it for the Shattner Vic-20 commercial alone, but the others are well-picked too. Naturally, the Apple 1984 commercial is included.

eldavojohn writes "Reuters is reporting on Time Warner's approach to YouTube's copyright problems. There has been much speculation that Google will be sued immediately over copyrighted material on YouTube but this is a case of Time Warner actually approaching Google to work out a deal on this issue. It appears artists and labels will have the choice when digging into Google's pockets either through a business deal or lawsuit. Which will they pick?" Meanwhile, the AP is reporting on the possible development of a technology to automatically screen content as it is posted to YouTube, which may sidestep some of these issues and disappoint users.

frank_tudor asks: "I am graduate student and work as a web developer. I am also getting a divorce and I have a son caught in the middle. I believe my profession had a part in it. For my graduate thesis I am writing a paper about Dads who work in the computer industry, divorce and custody. I think our industry causes a high rate of divorce but I need some help from the Slashdot community. My questions are: How many of you computer Dads have also gone through divorce and have retained either half or full custody of your children? Do you think your job had something to do with it? What were some of your hardest challenges and are your kids happy?"

Undecided asks: "I will be graduating next April, and I have been fortunate enough to receive job offers from both Microsoft and Google. This has left me with a bit of a conundrum, however — I'm having real difficulty deciding which offer to accept. Putting aside compensation and other personal circumstances that will factor into my decision, what is the Slashdot community's take on this? Am I crazy not to go with Google? I am especially interested in the insight of others working in the computer science industry, in particular those who may have experienced what it's like to work at both companies."

[TheBORG] writes "The U.S. military has been testing software on laptops that translate English to Arabic and Arabic to English to have conversations with Iraqis without the need to have a Arabic linguist on hand. 'This year the military's Joint Forces Command has been testing laptops with such software in Iraq. When someone speaks into a microphone attached to the computer, the machine translates it into Arabic and reads that translation aloud over the PC's speakers. The software then translates the Arabic speaker's response and utters it in English.'" (See this related story from last year about this daunting machine-translation task.)

Slashback tonight brings some clarifications and updates to previous Slashdot stories, including: Spamhaus case tests ICANN; Getting your own OLPC (CM1) computer; Followup Agile commentary from Steve Yegge; Yahoo's time capsule permit revoked by Mexico; and Microsoft denies BayStar connection. Read on for details.

Spamhaus case tests ICANN. narramissic writes, "The U.S. court decision against the anti-spam black-lister Spamhaus Project Ltd. may trigger a 'constitutional crisis' for the Internet, say Internet experts. At issue is whether the U.S. court has jurisdiction over the U.K.-based project. Observers worry that any attempt by U.S. courts to exert control over ICANN could be bad for the Internet. 'It's a delicate time for ICANN right now,' said David McGuire, director of communications with the Center for Democracy and Technology... 'If a court were to order ICANN to remove a domain name, we think that would be a bad precedent because making ICANN a tool of the U.S. legal system in matters such as these would sidetrack ICANN from its very important duties.'"

Time is running out for OLPC sign-up. smilindog2000 writes, "Mike Liveright made news when he pledged, 'I will purchase the $100 laptop at $300 but only if 100,000 others will too.' The deadline for his challenge is October 31, and so far, only 3,330 of us have signed up. Surely, thousands of us Slashdotters would contribute $300 out of generosity. However, I'll do it for the rare privilege of owning an original edition One Laptop Per Child machine. Do other Slashdotters want one of these beasties as badly as me? My inner child has fallen in love."

More Agile commentary from Yegge. tmortn writes, "A couple of weeks ago Steve Yegge posted a harsh critique of Agile Methodologies that enjoyed a pretty spirited debate here on Slashdot and a few other sites. Recently he posted a followup to the mounds of return fire to his rant against Agile methodologies."

Yahoo's time capsule permit revoked by Mexico. prostoalex writes, "Yahoo's time capsule project has been jeopardized by the Mexican government, who revoked the permit given to Yahoo! previously. 'We did have the permit, but Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) told us Monday night that it could not be done,' Manuel Mazzanti, head of marketing at Yahoo Mexico, said on Wednesday. An INAH spokesman said the Yahoo event posed technical and operational problems that might damage Teotihuacan. 'We are the guardians of the heritage of Mexico,' the spokesman said."

Microsoft denies BayStar connection. walterbyrd writes to point out an InfoWorld article reporting that Microsoft has denied any financial connection to BayStar, the company that bankrolled SCO's anti-open source lawsuit.

Slashback tonight brings some clarifications and updates to previous Slashdot stories, including: Spamhaus case tests ICANN; Getting your own OLPC (CM1) computer; Followup Agile commentary from Steve Yegge; Yahoo's time capsule permit revoked by Mexico; and Microsoft denies BayStar connection. Read on for details.

Spamhaus case tests ICANN. narramissic writes, "The U.S. court decision against the anti-spam black-lister Spamhaus Project Ltd. may trigger a 'constitutional crisis' for the Internet, say Internet experts. At issue is whether the U.S. court has jurisdiction over the U.K.-based project. Observers worry that any attempt by U.S. courts to exert control over ICANN could be bad for the Internet. 'It's a delicate time for ICANN right now,' said David McGuire, director of communications with the Center for Democracy and Technology... 'If a court were to order ICANN to remove a domain name, we think that would be a bad precedent because making ICANN a tool of the U.S. legal system in matters such as these would sidetrack ICANN from its very important duties.'"

Time is running out for OLPC sign-up. smilindog2000 writes, "Mike Liveright made news when he pledged, 'I will purchase the $100 laptop at $300 but only if 100,000 others will too.' The deadline for his challenge is October 31, and so far, only 3,330 of us have signed up. Surely, thousands of us Slashdotters would contribute $300 out of generosity. However, I'll do it for the rare privilege of owning an original edition One Laptop Per Child machine. Do other Slashdotters want one of these beasties as badly as me? My inner child has fallen in love."

More Agile commentary from Yegge. tmortn writes, "A couple of weeks ago Steve Yegge posted a harsh critique of Agile Methodologies that enjoyed a pretty spirited debate here on Slashdot and a few other sites. Recently he posted a followup to the mounds of return fire to his rant against Agile methodologies."

Yahoo's time capsule permit revoked by Mexico. prostoalex writes, "Yahoo's time capsule project has been jeopardized by the Mexican government, who revoked the permit given to Yahoo! previously. 'We did have the permit, but Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) told us Monday night that it could not be done,' Manuel Mazzanti, head of marketing at Yahoo Mexico, said on Wednesday. An INAH spokesman said the Yahoo event posed technical and operational problems that might damage Teotihuacan. 'We are the guardians of the heritage of Mexico,' the spokesman said."

Microsoft denies BayStar connection. walterbyrd writes to point out an InfoWorld article reporting that Microsoft has denied any financial connection to BayStar, the company that bankrolled SCO's anti-open source lawsuit.

Feelyat writes "NASA is reporting that a small storm that formed on Jupiter last year has changed color from white to red. According to an article in Yahoo News, scientist Amy Simon-Miller speculates that the storm might have gained strength as it decreased in size, similar to how 'spinning ice skaters go faster when they move their arms closer.' She says that the storm has probably 'picked up red material from lower in the Jupiter atmosphere, most likely some form of sulfur which turns red as part of a chemical reaction ...' Well, we might be one planet down, but our Solar System can still surprise."

prostoalex writes "If your company uses 17" or 19" monitors, 30" monitors will make the employees more productive, Apple-sponsored research says. MacWorld reports: "Pfeiffer's testing showed time savings of 13.63 seconds when moving files between folders using the larger screen — 15.7 seconds compared to 29.3 seconds on the 17-in. monitor — for a productivity gain of 46.45 percent. The testing showed a 65.09 percent productivity gain when dragging and dropping between images — a task that took 6.4 seconds on the larger monitor compared to 18.3 seconds using the smaller screen. And cutting and pasting cells from Excel spreadsheets resulted in a 51.31 percent productivity gain — a task that took 20.7 seconds on the larger monitor versus 42.6 seconds on the smaller screen."" Calling such task-specific speed jolts "productivity gains" seems optimistic unless some measure of overall producivity backs up that claim, but don't mention that on the purchase order request.

slidersv writes "Reuters is reporting discovery of radioactive snails in the area where three hydrogen bombs were lost by US in the 1966. The radioactive creatures crawl up from underground, where authorities suspect deposits of uranium and plutonium may be located."

Warlock7 writes "Well, it's official. The pre-orders have begun ... and mostly ended. I just got mine ordered and four hours later there are already units on eBay. Some acutions have already gone north of $1000 USD. The guys at EBGames told me that the most units going to any one store was 36 and that there were an average of 8 units being distributed to each store. The one I went to reported that they were going to be getting a total of 16 units. They waited this long to take pre-orders because they wanted to be sure that they weren't going to get burned like they did for the XBox 360 launch." The reports from across the internets are varied, with long lines netting nothing for some, and others reaping the sweet rewards.

eldavojohn writes, "Yahoo is compiling a time capsule (Flash required). This massive project, which accepts donations from anyone, is no ordinary time capsule, though. This time capsule will be digitized and beamed into space from the ancient pyramid of Teotihuacan in Mexico. From the article: 'Starting on Tuesday, enthusiasts from around the world will have a chance to submit text, images, video and sounds that reflect human nature to be included in the message.' I highly doubt this 'time capsule' will reach anyone, but it is a neat idea. After browsing through some of the pictures posted, I would hope extraterrestrial life would be more hesitant to exterminate us — if not for anything else than curiosity. We constantly strive to have our legacy live on in the galaxy." Yahoo worked with Internet artist Jonathan Harris on this project.

Alex Pontin writes, "This article from the BBC shows how vulnerable XP Home really is. Using a highly protected XP Pro machine running VMWare, the BBC hosted an unprotected XP Home system to simulate what an 'average' home PC faces when connected to the internet." From the article: "Seven hours of attacks: 36 warnings that pop-up via Windows Messenger. 11 separate visits by Blaster worm. 3 separate attacks by Slammer worm. 1 attack aimed at Microsoft IIS Server. 2-3 "port scans" seeking weak spots in Windows software." The machine was attacked within seconds of being connected to the Internet, and at no time did more than 15 minutes elapse between attacks.

Kra Z Joe asks: "I've been having difficulty locating a laptop that has an anti-glare, WSXGA 15.4" or WUXGA 17" display AND a gaming-capable graphics system. As for anti-glare displays, I can find the standard WXGA 15.4" screens on laptops with graphics systems capable of running today's games, and I can find the higher resolution displays used with either an integrated Intel 'Extreme' graphics system, or some dedicated 'business' graphics systems. Unable to locate a major brand PC that meets my requirements — I've also attempted to find an add-on anti-glare product to use with those glossy-screened laptops. It seems that nobody makes a working product without also tacking on some type of 'privacy' guard, or some plastic frame that would prevent me from closing the laptop. Does anyone know a reputable laptop maker that would like my money, or where I can find a good anti-glare covering that works without limiting my ability to view from the side?"

tessaiga writes "The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Google is in talks to buy YouTube for about $1.6 billion. YouTube users watch more that 100 million videos daily, and the site's market share tops that of similar services offered by Google and other popular Web sites. This comes after a story earlier this morning that co-founder Sergey Brin is pushing for Google to cut back on the volume of products being offered, complaining that 'I was getting lost in the sheer volume of the products we were releasing'. Guess Google Video is one of the products making the approved shortlist."

The Living Fractal notes: "Yahoo! Business has an article about workplace socializing. Apparently, those who drink alcohol and socialize make more money on average." According to the article: "Regular drinkers make 10% to 14% more money than those who do not drink, according to the study, conducted by the Journal of Labor Research, published quarterly by the Department of Economics at George Mason University, and the Reason Foundation, a Los Angeles-based think tank." Fractal wonders: "This article spawns a few questions. Do those 'regular drinkers' end up spending that extra 10-14% on booze? Who here is a social drinker? Finally, have you noticed this in your workplace?"

endychavez writes "Executives and politicians may be starting to realize that privacy is dead and secrets can no longer be kept in the information age. There is always a technological trail, and transparency is pervasive. Just ask Patricia Dunn and Mark Foley. In a piece at eWeek, Ed Cone from CIO Insight talks about the specific technologies that brought them down." From the article: "Foley may have thought his IMs were disappearing into the ether as soon as they cleared his computer screen. Instead, the messages were saved, and his career was ruined, and the House leadership is left to fight for survival. We talk a lot a about transparency as a virtue in the age of the web, and hold it up as a marketing technique and a better way to run an enterprise. Sun's blogging CEO, Jonathan Schwartz, is lobbying the SEC to allow more financial information to be disclosed online. Corporations are using all manner of web-techs to speak more directly to stakeholders. But transparency needs to be understood as more than a slogan or a strategy. It's a reality. It can be imposed on you by the Internet, whether you want to be transparent or not."

saavyone writes to tell us Yahoo! News is reporting that while teleportation may not quite be a reality yet a team of Danish scientists have raised the bar on this line of research. From the article: "The experiment involved for the first time a macroscopic atomic object containing thousands of billions of atoms. They also teleported the information a distance of half a meter but believe it can be extended further. 'Teleportation between two single atoms had been done two years ago by two teams but this was done at a distance of a fraction of a millimeter,' Polzik, of the Danish National Research Foundation Center for Quantum Optics, explained. 'Our method allows teleportation to be taken over longer distances because it involves light as the carrier of entanglement,' he added."

An anonymous reader writes "Yahoo is reporting the release of "Google Gadgets", 1,220 dynamic applications for use on your web pages, without needing to connect to Google. 'Google Gadgets range from a miniature look-up for Google Maps or Google Calendar to independent applications ranging from financial information to sports to communication tools and jokes, horoscopes or geometric puzzle game Tetris.'"

Criceratops writes, "Almost every fringe-geek worth their salt has read 'The Illuminatus! Trilogy,' or at least the 'Principia Discordia,' and much of the enlightenment therein came from Robert Anton Wilson. On the eve of 'Xena' being officially named Eris, Douglas Rushkoff's blog reveals that the extremely ill Mr. Wilson can't make his rent. Another testimony to how our society refuses to reward those who enrich it... but not if we can help it!"

Looks like the Zanga attack on MySpace last summer was a bellwether. Tiny Tuba writes, "Parents and social network users have one more thing to worry about. According to a PC World article, increasingly bad guys are booby-trapping sites like My Space and Webshots with malware in the form of links, ads, bogus invitations to view pictures, and more." From the article: "Like pickpockets at a festival, money-minded malware authors are drawn by the huge crowds visiting social networking sites."

saintory writes to mention a Dallas Morning News article about Gamestop's annual new product conference. Employees and new vendors were given a chance to take a look at the upcoming next-gen consoles, and a few details about the Wii retail strategy were revealed. For example, Gamestop will be the only place to demo the Wii prior to the November 19th launch. More frustratingly, "GameStop has not yet decided when, or even if, it will offer pre-orders for the new systems ... Last year, at the launch of Microsoft's Xbox 360, GameStop accepted more pre-orders before Christmas than it was able to satisfy. Microsoft's manufacturing problems turned into GameStop's angry customer problems. 'We did learn a lesson last year,' said Steve Morgan, president of GameStop. 'I think the lesson is caution and optimism at the same time.'" Update: 10/03 18:20 GMT by Z : Okay, there is *some* pre-order news. I was told last week to contact the Gamestop folks today (Tuesday) for details. At least at my local Madison store, they're going to be accepting preorders as of Monday the 16th (two weeks from yesterday). One would assume they're not some sort of 'rebel' store, so this is probably along the lines of what we can expect nation-wide.

saintory writes "Ars Technica has an article up looking at how the Wii was born. It's a nice overview of how Nintendo's culture came up with the 'new-gen' system." More from the article: "'Diverging from the road map takes a fair amount of courage,' [Engineer Shiota] said, 'especially when we didn't have a clear image of what we were going to do with this hardware.' However, once he saw the power level reduction (from one-third to as little as one-fourth that of current hardware) he was very excited. Instead of competing on 'how many more times the CPU is going to be faster, how much more memory is going to be on the machine, and how many more polygons can be rendered' he saw Nintendo as being able to do something different and unique."

rubberbando writes "Yahoo news is running a story about a plan by a UK cell phone company to help reduce cell theft. Apparently, this new cell phone can be sent a signal after its owner has realized that it has been lost or stolen. The signal tells the phone to wipe all of its data and begin emitting a very loud and obnoxious sound. The sound will only stop if the battery runs out or is removed, but it will begin again as soon as the battery is replaced or charged. Even replacing the sim card will not help."

Aditi.Tuteja writes, "Yahoo has announced it will give away the browser-based authentication used in its email service, considered to be the company's 'crown jewels.' Yahoo made the announcement ahead of a 24-hour 'Yahoo Hack Day,' where it had invited more than 500 mostly youthful outside programmers to build new applications using Yahoo services. Considering the different needs of its huge user base (257 million people use Yahoo Mail), Yahoo has decided it can't build or buy enough innovation, so they are enlisting the worldwide developer community." The code will be released late in 2006. Yahoo notes that there are 'no security risks' since they keep absolute control of usernames and passwords.

inKubus writes to mention an AP article about the approval of a warrantless wiretapping bill by the house. The legislation's goal would be to legitimize the wiretapping program President Bush previously authorized, with a few new restrictions. Despite this victory for the President, "Leaders concede that differences between the versions are so significant they cannot reconcile them into a final bill that can be delivered to Bush before the Nov. 7 congressional elections. The Senate also could vote on a similar bill before Congress recesses at the end of the week. For its part, the White House announced it strongly supported passage of the House version but wasn't satisfied with it, adding that the administration 'looks forward to working with Congress to strengthen the bill as it moves through the legislative process.'"

For the moment, the rush to legislate the ban on online gambling has been slowed. Senator John Warner, (R) from Virginia, has refused to allow a ban on online gambling to be tacked onto an upcoming defense bill. Opponents of online gambling were hoping to tack their measure on to a "must pass" bill but will apparently be forced to delay. Congress recesses in one week, giving only a few days left if this measure is to be passed before the November 7th elections.