Slashdot Mirror

DarkNemesis618 writes "NASA decided on Tuesday to delay the launch of Space Shuttle Discovery until July, squashing all hopes that it would launch in May. The external fuel tank is again the culprit, but this time it's not the foam. One of the four fuel sensors in the fuel tank that control when the space shuttle's main engines cut off was discovered to be faulty. This delay does however, give NASA the time it needs to decide what to do about the small crack found on the robotic arm. Over a week ago, a worker bumped the arm leaving a small crack in it. The arm is key to this next mission as the cameras and lasers used to inspect the shuttle for damage are mounted on the robotic arm. All things aside, NASA engineers are saying that the next possible launch date will be July 1st."

Zeno Group for Oracle writes to tell us that Oracle just announced the availability of their new, free, database development tool, 'Oracle SQL Developer.' From the article: "Designed for Oracle Database developers, Oracle SQL Developer simplifies development cycles and reduces the need to buy third-party tools for developing and debugging SQL and PL/SQL code. [...] Oracle SQL Developer offers a robust set of features to assist database developers perform tasks such as object browsing and creation, running SQL statements and SQL scripts, editing and debugging PL/SQL code, and viewing and updating data. It provides an extensive set of pre-built reports and also allows developers to build custom reports related to their development projects."

An anonymous reader writes "Yahoo! News is reporting that in a recent speech to fellow stationers and newspaper makers, Rupert Murdoch has stated that the 'newspaper industry needs to embrace the technological revolution of the Internet, MP3 players, laptops and mobile phones or face extinction.'"

chill writes "Last September security software vendor Symantec issued a report claiming IE had fewer critical flaws than Firefox and thus was more secure. Well, it seem they have now rethought that position. 'How we did it before wasn't a fair comparison,' said Oliver Friedrichs, the senior manager of Symantec's security response group. 'It wasn't an apples to apples comparison.' The key was vendor acknowledged critical vulnerabilities. Thus, if Microsoft (or the Mozilla Foundation) didn't agree it was critical, then it didn't get counted."

ElsaBorzoi wrote to mention a Network World article suggesting some pandemic preparations for your IT department. From the article: "A survey last month of 300 Minnesota business officials found most thought a flu pandemic would significantly affect their business, but only 18% had preparedness plans in place. The poll sponsored by the University of Minnesota Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy found that close to two thirds said they were already prepared or somewhat prepared to move employees to remote locations or let them work at home, while 29% said they were not prepared. The H5N1 influenza virus, which originated in Asia, could hit the U.S. this fall, potentially causing an epidemic, the nation's chief avian flu coordinator warned."

DarkNemesis618 writes "The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, launched 12 August 2005, has nearly completed its 7 month journey to the Red Planet. At 9:24 pm GMT, the MRO is scheduled to fire its thrusters to slow it down enough to enter Mars orbit. NASA scientists are concerned about this final step for the orbiter as Mars has a history of 'swallowing' probes, orbiters, and landers sent to the Red Planet. What makes it more difficult is the delay time between NASA computers on earth and computers on board the orbiter. There is about a 12 minute delay between when data is sent from Earth to the time the orbiter's receivers pick it up, and vice versa. Because of this, onboard computers will handle the burn which adds to the risk."

Guinnessy writes "According to the New York Times, some music labels have deliberately stopped selling some new singles on online stories such as iTunes or Rhapsody while promoting songs on the radio, so that listeners will rush out to buy the CD album instead. The album appears in itunes at a later date. Not everyone seems to think this is a good idea. From the article: 'The labels are shooting themselves in the foot,' says Rhapsody's Tim Quirk. However, Ne-Yo's CD In My Own Words sold 301,000 copies using this method. Chris Brown's Run It, that was in the itunes store, sold 154,000 copies in its first week. Ne-Yo's So Sick was downloaded approximately 3.4 million times on the peer to peer networks during the week of his album release while the album Run It!"was downloaded approximately 5.3 million times in the same release period."

sg3000 writes "Fans of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, rejoice! Reuters is reporting that Apple will provide monthly subscriptions to two of Comedy Central's most popular shows. One question, as TV shows become available for sale on the Internet, will this make it harder to share clips online, such as through Google Video? In your answer, ignore facts. Just go with what feels true."

sonsonete writes "Reuters reports that Google is preparing to offer online storage, according to company documents that were mistakenly released on the Web. From the piece: 'The existence of the previously rumored GDrive online storage service surfaced after a blogger discovered apparent notes in a slide presentation by Google executives published on Google's site after its analysts presentation day last Thursday.'"

Graeme Williams writes "The tag line for Visual Basic Jumpstart is, 'Make Your Move Now from VB 6 to VB 2005', but the book also includes introductory and summary material rather than staying focused on VB 6 users. The book has a few good examples and some useful information about Visual Basic 2005, but the information, including links to the Internet, doesn't seem complete or up-to-date. This book isn't the help you need." Read the rest of Graeme's review. Visual Basic 2005 Jumpstart author Wei-Meng Lee pages xiv + 197 publisher O'Reilly Media rating 5 reviewer Graeme Williams ISBN 0-596-10071-X summary A useful but flawed snapshot of Visual Basic 2005 without a clear audience

My current (small) applications are in Access and Visual Basic for Applications rather than VB 6, but with that caveat I'm part of the audience for this book, since I'm actively considering moving them to Visual Basic 2005. I want to like this book more than I do. Part of my confusion is that all of the chapters are useful, but I don't think they're useful to the same people.

I have no idea who the audience is for Chapter 2, "Programming with Visual Basic". Some of the information is useful and relevant, with specifics on differences between VB6 and VB2005, but some of it just seems plain silly: "Just as in VB 6, in VB 2005, you make decisions using the If-Then-Else construct". The wording is sometimes odd, too. The fact that parentheses in function calls are now mandatory in VB 2005 is explained backwards: "VB 6 Tip: In VB 6, you can call the PrintMessage subroutine without using parentheses to enclose the parameter list." The chapter could have been collapsed into a very clear and not very large table giving the differences between VB 6 and VB 2005.

In VB 2005, Microsoft has introduced a new bag of functions under the My. namespace. It's not a very big bag – it feels like the product manager wrote down the first four or five functions he thought of. For example, My.Computer.Network contains just five elements: IsAvailable, DownloadFile, UploadFile, Ping, and the NetworkAvailabilityChanged event. Jumpstart describes it as " ... one of the most useful and unique additions to VB 2005 ... The aim of the My namespace is to provide direct access to commonly used libraries in the .NET framework that were previously difficult to access." I'm sorry, that just sounds too much like a press release.

If you're really interested in the status of a network interface, for example, you need to look in the 30+ classes in the System.Net.NetworkInformation namespace. But this is not included in the list of "some other useful namespaces in the .NET framework" (p61). Also, Example 4-3 (p117) uses the System.Net.HttpWebRequest and System.Net.HttpWebResponse classes to download an image, not any of the classes mentioned in Chapter 3.

On the face of it, Chapter 3, "Putting Object-Oriented Programming to Work", provides a very clear and thorough introduction to the object-oriented programming constructs in VB 2005. Unfortunately, it's not complete. Microsoft has a summary of "Object-Oriented Programming for Visual Basic 6.0 Users" which points out that the Binary Compatibility option from VB6 is no longer supported in VB 2005, but this is not mentioned in Jumpstart.

If you're moving from VB6 to VB2005, you're also moving to NET 2.0, but the book has only the most cursory introduction to NET 2.0. Part of the problem is that the book needs to be either more or less reliant on online information. If it was less reliant on online information, it would be more useful as a stand-alone resource. If it was more thoroughly linked to the estimable resources at Microsoft.com, it would be more complete and up-to-date.

Jumpstart mentions two MSDN Help Topics: "Programming Element Support Changes Summary" and "Help for Visual Basic 6.0 Users". The former is very useful, perhaps more useful than found in this book, although it's organized in MSDN's one fact per page style. The latter can only be found via Google, since it is now part of MSDN2, the "new MSDN" for Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005. MSDN2 is not mentioned in the book, nor is VBRun, the Visual Basic 6.0 Resource Center, which has a boatload of information on moving to VB 2005.

The database application in Chapter 4, "Developing a Windows Application" is useful and clearly presented. It's a nice example of the new SplitContainer control. But it's no better than examples in other introductions to Visual Basic, and it's a little hard to see how it's suited to the stated purpose of this book – of introducing developers with an existing Visual Basic 6 code base to Visual Basic 2005.

The term "jumpstart" cuts both ways. The goal of the book is to give VB6 programmers a rapid introduction to Visual Basic 2005. But the book itself was published rapidly – before Visual Basic 2005 was released – and some of that speed shows. On page 126, Jumpstart instructs you how to configure Windows XP to run IIS, but on page 139 points out that this isn't possible in XP Home.

Chapter 5, "Building Web Applications", explains that Visual Studio includes its own web server, so you don't need to run IIS, but the fact that Visual Basic 2005 Express doesn't include this feature is mentioned only in the preface (page xi). To provide IIS, you need either Windows XP Professional, or Visual Studio Standard or above, or Visual Web Developer 2005 Express. Wouldn't it make sense to explain the various combinations of operating systems and Visual Studio editions in one place, at the beginning of the chapter where they're relevant?

I'm not an ASP programmer, but I feel as though the 35 pages devoted to ASP probably aren't enough to give the topic a decent introduction, which perhaps deserves a separate book. For example, authentication is covered in just three short paragraphs. The 35 pages could have been devoted to something more central to the topic, such as more details on .NET 2.0. Obviously, there are other books on .NET 2.0, but while you can use Visual Basic 2005 without ASP, you can't use it without .NET 2.0.

If we take the book's tagline seriously, Chapter 6, "Moving from VB 6 to to VB 2005", should be the core of book, but it seems like more of an afterthought. Much of the content is from Artinsoft. Rather than reading about about it third-hand in this book, or second-hand on MSDN, I recommend you go to the the Artinsoft web site, where they have plenty of information for download.

It's hard to put a numerical rating on a book like this, which doesn't seem focused or particularly thorough, but still contains a lot of useful information. The book could have been better if it had been linked more systematically to Microsoft's online resources. It might have seemed better if the audience had been clearer. A rating of 5 ("Neither terrible nor terribly good") seems about right. By all means buy the book if you think it will be worth the money to have the information and examples in book form. Just don't expect too much."

You can purchase Visual Basic 2005 Jumpstart from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page

Aleman writes "In this interview with Variety magazine, Sony CEO Howard Stringer confirms that the Playstation 3 will be released during the holiday 2006 season." Not very surprising given the available information.

twistedcaboose writes "The Philly Inquirer is running a nice little article about why parents game with their children. Seems that adult gamers are still on the rise." From the article: "In a national survey released in January, 35 percent of 501 parents living with children age 2 to 17 said they played computer or video games, according to the Entertainment Software Association. Of those, 80 percent also played with their children. On average, these fathers and mothers - yes, almost half were women - spent 9.1 hours a month gaming with the children."

McDrewbie writes "Yahoo! News has an article about Japanese researchers extracting a small amount of gasoline from 3.5oz of cow dung. The process uses application of high heat and pressure. Hopefully, when more information is released, we can find out how much energy it takes to produce this gasoline and how energy efficient the process is."

prostoalex writes "AVC and Antig Technology will demo a production-ready fuel cell for laptops next week on CeBIT trade show. According to PC Magazine, 'the CD-ROM size fuel cell will fit within the media bay of a notebook PC, replacing the drive with additional battery power.' The fuel cell battery will last 8 hours."

dolphinlover writes "The purchase of MySpace.com by Robert Murdoch's News Corporation last year for $580 million has caught the attention of another media conglomerate, Viacom Inc., whose CEO, Tom Freston, has now announced his intentions to purchase or partner with a social networking site this year in order to enhance the company's image with youth. Whether it will also be successful monetarily has yet to be seen, as MySpace.com only had $47 million in revenue in 2005 based on advertising. This news follows Viacom's acquisition of Neopets.com in 2005. For those companies already heavily involved in television and movies, expanding their presence to the Internet provides a new opportunity to gain a foothold over the competition."

Ant wrote to mention a ZDNet news report on the realities of spam traffic. The U.S. is still the number one producer/distributor of spam in the world. However, with their quick adoption of technology over the last few years, Indian users are now top targets for spam. From the article: "India's rapid adoption of new technology has left its PC users struggling to cope with very high levels of spam, according to a report released Wednesday. Ninety-one percent of email traffic sent to Indian PC users is spam, according to email security company MessageLabs, which warned that the rate of technological advancement has outstripped growth in security awareness. 'There is booming technology in India, but it has been suggested there is little thought for security, which creates a market to exploit that,' said Paul Wood, security analyst at MessageLabs."

Slashback tonight brings some corrections, clarifications, and updates to previous Slashdot stories, including Enigma security concerns, German ISP targets net companies "free lunch", Total Information Awareness program lives on, Higgins takes on Microsoft, Google answers analyst concerns, Patriot Act provision not just for terrorists, and Java 4K game contest submissions available -- Read on for details.

Enigma security concerns. Chris writes "The Enigma cracking client mentioned [this past week] is a huge security risk -- it creates an 'enigma-client' user on Windows systems with the password 'nominal'. I daresay that most /. users who installed the client would want to know about this so they can take corrective action." Thanks to Chris and other who pointed out the security flaw the enigma client has updated their changelog to warn users about this potential flaw and point out a quick work-around. "Users should change 'nominal' to a random password in eclient-XP-Home-install.bat or eclient-XP-Pro-install.bat."

German ISP targets net companies "free lunch". TheAxeMaster writes "Deutsche Telekom AG is the latest ISP to decide to suck money from both customers and content providers according to Computer World. From the article, 'The CEO of Deutsche Telekom AG became the latest head of a major telco to call for Web companies, such as Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc., to help pay for the billions of dollars required to build and maintain high-speed Internet infrastructure.' CEO Kai-Uwe Ricke said 'Web companies that use this infrastructure for their business should also make a contribution.' The article suggests that, if implemented, both you AND web sites would have to pay for the privilege of delivering you content through a tiered, 'quality of service' internet."

Total Information Awareness Program lives on. notmtwain writes "Democracy Now follows up on reports that the NSA has continued the TIA (Total Information Awareness) program, which was building an enormous database merging information on internet usage, phone calls, purchase, banking records and reading material. Democracy Now's Amy Goodman interviews Shane Harris, the National Journal Reporter who broke the story. The Total Information Awareness program was supposedly killed by Congress in 2003."

Higgins takes on Microsoft. An anonymous reader writes "InternetNews reports that IBM, Novell, and Parity Communications announced today increased support for the Higgins project at Eclipse. The project, based on early work done at Harvard's Berkman Institute and by SocialPhysics.org is focused on providing open source 'user-centric' identity management. The initiative has been widely reported as a challenge to Microsoft's new Infocard online identity-management system."

Google answers analyst concerns. imlepid writes "Earlier this week Analysts were asking Google to provide more insight into future earnings reports. Well, it appears that the analysts calls have been answered as the Google CFO has warned that growth has slowed. However, today's decline is still being blamed on the tight lips at Google."

Patriot Act provision not just for terrorists. An anonymous reader writes "Pass a law to go after certain criminals, and it will be used for everything possible. A basic lesson, but one that we learn again from an article in the New York Sun, describing a couple of U.S. District Court decisions unsealed earlier in February. The two judges both agree that Congress intended the 'nationwide search' provision for going after email or other Internet data to apply to the investigation of all federal crimes and not just to cases involving terrorism."

Java 4K game contest submissions available. CuriousKangaroo writes "Java Unlimited, as previously reported on Slashdot, is running a contest to develop a game in Java using only four kilobytes of bytecode and resources. Entries are now closed, and judging is about to begin, but you can check out and play all 55 of this year's entries for yourself!"

Slashback tonight brings some corrections, clarifications, and updates to previous Slashdot stories, including Enigma security concerns, German ISP targets net companies "free lunch", Total Information Awareness program lives on, Higgins takes on Microsoft, Google answers analyst concerns, Patriot Act provision not just for terrorists, and Java 4K game contest submissions available -- Read on for details.

Enigma security concerns. Chris writes "The Enigma cracking client mentioned [this past week] is a huge security risk -- it creates an 'enigma-client' user on Windows systems with the password 'nominal'. I daresay that most /. users who installed the client would want to know about this so they can take corrective action." Thanks to Chris and other who pointed out the security flaw the enigma client has updated their changelog to warn users about this potential flaw and point out a quick work-around. "Users should change 'nominal' to a random password in eclient-XP-Home-install.bat or eclient-XP-Pro-install.bat."

German ISP targets net companies "free lunch". TheAxeMaster writes "Deutsche Telekom AG is the latest ISP to decide to suck money from both customers and content providers according to Computer World. From the article, 'The CEO of Deutsche Telekom AG became the latest head of a major telco to call for Web companies, such as Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc., to help pay for the billions of dollars required to build and maintain high-speed Internet infrastructure.' CEO Kai-Uwe Ricke said 'Web companies that use this infrastructure for their business should also make a contribution.' The article suggests that, if implemented, both you AND web sites would have to pay for the privilege of delivering you content through a tiered, 'quality of service' internet."

Total Information Awareness Program lives on. notmtwain writes "Democracy Now follows up on reports that the NSA has continued the TIA (Total Information Awareness) program, which was building an enormous database merging information on internet usage, phone calls, purchase, banking records and reading material. Democracy Now's Amy Goodman interviews Shane Harris, the National Journal Reporter who broke the story. The Total Information Awareness program was supposedly killed by Congress in 2003."

Higgins takes on Microsoft. An anonymous reader writes "InternetNews reports that IBM, Novell, and Parity Communications announced today increased support for the Higgins project at Eclipse. The project, based on early work done at Harvard's Berkman Institute and by SocialPhysics.org is focused on providing open source 'user-centric' identity management. The initiative has been widely reported as a challenge to Microsoft's new Infocard online identity-management system."

Google answers analyst concerns. imlepid writes "Earlier this week Analysts were asking Google to provide more insight into future earnings reports. Well, it appears that the analysts calls have been answered as the Google CFO has warned that growth has slowed. However, today's decline is still being blamed on the tight lips at Google."

Patriot Act provision not just for terrorists. An anonymous reader writes "Pass a law to go after certain criminals, and it will be used for everything possible. A basic lesson, but one that we learn again from an article in the New York Sun, describing a couple of U.S. District Court decisions unsealed earlier in February. The two judges both agree that Congress intended the 'nationwide search' provision for going after email or other Internet data to apply to the investigation of all federal crimes and not just to cases involving terrorism."

Java 4K game contest submissions available. CuriousKangaroo writes "Java Unlimited, as previously reported on Slashdot, is running a contest to develop a game in Java using only four kilobytes of bytecode and resources. Entries are now closed, and judging is about to begin, but you can check out and play all 55 of this year's entries for yourself!"

Devistater writes "Yesterday, SCO announced a new MLM called "Me Inc." using the EdgeClick platform in an attempt to boost sales. One of the apps on the Edgeclick site does mass text messages to cell phones. From the article: 'Becoming a Me Inc. Sales Agent requires no technical skills or training and no investment other than a smart phone and a subscription to Me Inc. digital services. With these two simple things, a sales agent can earn up to hundreds or thousands of dollars per sale in commissions and subscription annuities generated by each account they sign up.' Watch out for an increase in spam, SCO style. In the same press release [PDF], SCO also trademarks 'Me.' Groklaw also has a few details on their site."

yermoungder writes "Reuters is reporting that 'Sony Pictures on Tuesday said it aims to deliver its new Blu-ray DVD format to U.S. stores on May 23 to coincide with the entry of compatible disc players, a new step in an industry war for control of home movie viewing.'"

gbobeck writes "Yahoo News is reporting that the New York Times has filed suit against the U.S. Defense Department. The suit is seeking the release of all relevant documents and a list of people targeted by the NSA domestic spying program. As stated in the article: 'The Times had requested the documents in December under the Freedom of Information Act but sued upon being unsatisfied with the Pentagon's response that the request was being processed as quickly as possible, according to the six-page suit filed at federal court in New York.'"

gbobeck writes "Yahoo News is running a story looking at smaller brands in the marketplace. The article discusses the increase of numbers of people who are choosing to purchase lesser known brands of electronics. The bottom line is the major electronics makers still dominate the market, but collective presence of lesser-known brands has helped keep prices down while boosting product choices."

CRIA Watcher writes "The Canadian Copyright Board has just announced that it is bringing back the tax on blank CDs, called the private copying levy, in 2007. Michael Geist demonstrates how the tax has created a huge distortion in the retail price of blank media on his blog with as much as 70 percent of the purchase price now heading directly to the music industry."

Philip K Dickhead writes "The Associated Press is reporting that the Justice Department rejected Google's concerns over a Bush administration demand to examine millions of its users' Internet search requests on privacy grounds. The department claims this will help revive an online child protection law that the Supreme Court has blocked, by proving that Internet filters are not strong enough to prevent children from viewing pornography online. A federal court hearing is scheduled in San Jose, California, March 13th."

louismg writes "This week, Barron's is suggesting that with Steve Jobs on board as the number one shareholder of Disney, following Pixar's acquisition, that Disney is ripe for the plucking for an acquisition by Apple. But look at the numbers. Apple has a $60 billion market cap, and Disney's is over $50 billion. Apple's cash on hand is in the $10 billion range. Wouldn't a Disney acquisition eliminate the possibility of working with NBC's shows on iTunes, or working with Viacom/MTV? It would seem the conflicts and competition would outweigh a purchase of Disney - Pixar or not."

louismg writes "This week, Barron's is suggesting that with Steve Jobs on board as the number one shareholder of Disney, following Pixar's acquisition, that Disney is ripe for the plucking for an acquisition by Apple. But look at the numbers. Apple has a $60 billion market cap, and Disney's is over $50 billion. Apple's cash on hand is in the $10 billion range. Wouldn't a Disney acquisition eliminate the possibility of working with NBC's shows on iTunes, or working with Viacom/MTV? It would seem the conflicts and competition would outweigh a purchase of Disney - Pixar or not."

nmccart wrote to mention an article on the Yahoo! news service stating that South Korea has leveled a deadline at Microsoft. The deadline is the newest addition to that country's anti-trust ruling against the OS maker."South Korea's antitrust regulator has given Microsoft Corp. the deadline of Aug. 24 to comply with a landmark ruling ordering the world's largest software maker to unbundle some of its products from its Windows computer operating system and pay fines. On Friday afternoon, the Fair Trade Commission said it has sent documents on the punitive sanctions to Microsoft, which was ruled last December to have violated the nation's fair trade laws by tieing its instant messenger, audio, and video software to Windows. The commission also confirmed its order that Microsoft pay 32.4 billion won (US$33.5 million) in the December ruling on the U.S. software giant's unfair business practices."

Guinnessy writes "As oil, coal, and gas become increasingly expensive, energy utilities take another look at nuclear power. The nuclear reactor builders are jostling for business as more than 26 plants may be ordered or constructed over the next five years in Canada, China, several European Union countries, India, Iran, Pakistan, Russia, and South Africa. Companies in the US and UK may order an additional 15 new reactors. Physics Today magazine has a global roundup of the new plants on construction, and how the builders are getting around some of the potential road blocks in their path. I'm sure many slashdot readers would be surprised to know that some new plants will be coming online so soon."

Slashback tonight brings some corrections, clarifications, and updates to previous Slashdot stories, including Google's reasoning behind rejecting the DoJ motion, more fodder for the Chinese censorship fire, one of last weeks "first computers" brought to life, the New York Times backs network neutrality, hard drive death dance tracks, Serenity enters the black, and the USPTO issues a final rejection in RIM patent case -- Read on for details.

Google's reasoning behind rejecting the DoJ motion. xandroid writes "Google's blog has an explanation of their response to the DoJ motion." They have also provided a link to the entire 25 page response [PDF] sent to the DoJ.

Chinese censorship continues to be a hot topic. Mercury News is running an interesting article about the recent scolding top tech companies received from Washington with regards to assisting in censoring the internet in China. However, the Washington Post also has an interesting article regarding a senior editor at the China Youth Daily who posted a 'blistering letter on the newspaper's computer system attacking the Communist Party's propaganda czars and a plan by the editor in chief to dock reporters' pay if their stories upset party officials.' And finally, Wikipedia remains blocked in China despite the continued efforts of fans to correct the problem.

1960's Digicomp toy computer back in production. Larry Groebe writes "With all the talk last week about "first computers" on Slashdot and around the net, I was surprised to see only one mention of the Digicomp. A group of us keep the memories alive on Yahoo's 'Friends of Digicomp' group, and one enterprising member has managed to reconstruct the computer and is now selling them again for the first time in three decades. Its' a nostalgia trip for some of us; an eye opener for people who never experienced it; and still carries more than a bit of educational value. After all, even in these days of MAKE magazine, how many other true build-it-from-scratch computer kits are there?"

New York Times backs network neutrality. joshdick writes "In a recent editorial, The New York Times voices strong support for legislation requiring network neutrality. From the article: 'Some I.S.P.'s are phone and cable companies that make large campaign contributions, and are used to getting their way in Washington. But Americans feel strongly about an open and free Internet. Net neutrality is an issue where the public interest can and should trump the special interests.'"

Hard drive death dance tracks. daithedragon writes "A while back Gizmodo awarded the prizes in a competition to make a dance tracks out of the recorded noises of hard drives dying."

Serenity enters the black. stuart1310 writes "According to sliceofscifi.com the DVD sales of Joss Whedon's Serenity have recently climbed out of the red and started making profit for Universal. Beware, these numbers are estimates and even if accurate we've still a sight to go before seeing Serenity on TV or in the theaters again. Here is to hoping we do."

USPTO issue final rejection in RIM patent case. tsalaroth writes "ABC News is reporting that the USPTO has officially rejected at least one of the patents in the Blackberry infringement case. From the article: 'The U.S. patent office on Wednesday issued its first of several anticipated final rejections of patents held by NTP Inc. related to Research in Motion's BlackBerry device, two days before a judge will hear arguments on an injunction on the wireless e-mail service.'"

Slashback tonight brings some corrections, clarifications, and updates to previous Slashdot stories, including Google's reasoning behind rejecting the DoJ motion, more fodder for the Chinese censorship fire, one of last weeks "first computers" brought to life, the New York Times backs network neutrality, hard drive death dance tracks, Serenity enters the black, and the USPTO issues a final rejection in RIM patent case -- Read on for details.

Google's reasoning behind rejecting the DoJ motion. xandroid writes "Google's blog has an explanation of their response to the DoJ motion." They have also provided a link to the entire 25 page response [PDF] sent to the DoJ.

Chinese censorship continues to be a hot topic. Mercury News is running an interesting article about the recent scolding top tech companies received from Washington with regards to assisting in censoring the internet in China. However, the Washington Post also has an interesting article regarding a senior editor at the China Youth Daily who posted a 'blistering letter on the newspaper's computer system attacking the Communist Party's propaganda czars and a plan by the editor in chief to dock reporters' pay if their stories upset party officials.' And finally, Wikipedia remains blocked in China despite the continued efforts of fans to correct the problem.

1960's Digicomp toy computer back in production. Larry Groebe writes "With all the talk last week about "first computers" on Slashdot and around the net, I was surprised to see only one mention of the Digicomp. A group of us keep the memories alive on Yahoo's 'Friends of Digicomp' group, and one enterprising member has managed to reconstruct the computer and is now selling them again for the first time in three decades. Its' a nostalgia trip for some of us; an eye opener for people who never experienced it; and still carries more than a bit of educational value. After all, even in these days of MAKE magazine, how many other true build-it-from-scratch computer kits are there?"

New York Times backs network neutrality. joshdick writes "In a recent editorial, The New York Times voices strong support for legislation requiring network neutrality. From the article: 'Some I.S.P.'s are phone and cable companies that make large campaign contributions, and are used to getting their way in Washington. But Americans feel strongly about an open and free Internet. Net neutrality is an issue where the public interest can and should trump the special interests.'"

Hard drive death dance tracks. daithedragon writes "A while back Gizmodo awarded the prizes in a competition to make a dance tracks out of the recorded noises of hard drives dying."

Serenity enters the black. stuart1310 writes "According to sliceofscifi.com the DVD sales of Joss Whedon's Serenity have recently climbed out of the red and started making profit for Universal. Beware, these numbers are estimates and even if accurate we've still a sight to go before seeing Serenity on TV or in the theaters again. Here is to hoping we do."

USPTO issue final rejection in RIM patent case. tsalaroth writes "ABC News is reporting that the USPTO has officially rejected at least one of the patents in the Blackberry infringement case. From the article: 'The U.S. patent office on Wednesday issued its first of several anticipated final rejections of patents held by NTP Inc. related to Research in Motion's BlackBerry device, two days before a judge will hear arguments on an injunction on the wireless e-mail service.'"

slashnutt writes to tell us Yahoo News is reporting that Microsoft accidentally released information about Windows Vista earlier than originally planned. From the article: "Microsoft disclosed information about a plan to release eight different editions of the new operating system on a company help page that was under development. The company has not made any official statements about the different versions of Windows Vista it plans to offer. The company has since taken down the Web site and declined to confirm the information and said it will offer more details about the Vista launch, targeted for the second half of 2006, in the coming weeks. Microsoft spokesman said in a statement 'This page has since been removed as it was posted prematurely and was for testing purposes only.'"

szembek writes "According to The Register it seems that Yahoo! is banning the use of the string "Allah" in all screen names. The issue apparently became apparent when Linda Callahan attempted to use her surname in her screen name. The following link has an interesting list of terms that Yahoo does allow, and ones they don't."

Toasty16 writes "SPCR has an overview of using an AMD Turion 64 mobile processor in a desktop system. There's a good bit of info about motherboard compatibility and power consumption as compared to a Pentium M processor. There's also links to articles from the Techreport and LaptopLogic on the same topic. If you've been thinking about building a low power HTPC or file server, mobile processor on desktop is an interesting option."

An anonymous reader writes "Yahoo News is reporting that Astronomer Margaret Turnbull of the Carnegie Institution has released a 'top 10' list of potential inhabitable star systems. NASA is planning on using this top 10 list as the targets for their Terrestrial Planet Finder a 'system of two orbiting observatories scheduled for launch by 2020.'"

An anonymous reader writes "Yahoo News is reporting that Greek archaeologists have discovered a 2,600 meter defensive wall whose design was 'inspired by Alexander the Great.' In addition to the wall itself 4th-century BC bronze coins were also found inside the structure. From the article: 'The discovery was made in the archaeological site of Dion, an ancient fortified city and key religious sanctuary of the Macedonian civilization, which ruled much of Greece until Roman times.'"

RAK writes "The only company to have sent tourists into space, Space Adventures, has announced plans to develop a commercial spaceport in the UAE, from where it will operate suborbital flights. The project will cost $265 million. The Russian-built suborbital vehicle called Explorer will have the capacity to transport up to five people to an altitude of nearly 100km in space, but the project's schedule is yet to be announced."

pennconservative writes "Michael Desmond, writing for PCWorld.com, gives us ten reasons to buy the next version of Microsoft Windows. Some of his reasons sound compelling, and it definitely sounds like Microsoft has found yet another way to ensure market dominance for a few more years. Desmond also gives a few reasons not to buy Vista, but the most compelling of those is the hardware required to run it. Since Vista will likely ship on every new computer anyone buys, I don't see that being a major roadblock."

Slashback tonight brings some corrections, clarifications, and updates to previous Slashdot stories, including The Boston Globe's Ombudsman speaks on Peter Quinn story, Microsoft continues to push their password-less approach to web browsing, Gary McKinnon extradition reopened, and more news on the organic car fuel front -- Read on for details.

Globe's Ombudsman silent no longer. Andy Updegrove writes "For two months, the ombudsman of the Boston Globe has been silent on the reporting that helped bring about Massachusetts CIO Peter Quinn's resignation. Last night, in response to an entry pointing out that silence at the Standards Blog, ombudsman Richard Chacon at last responded, admitting to "lingering questions over why the [Quinn travel investigation] story was allowed to run without comment from Eric Kriss," but standing by "the initial reasons for looking into the story." Chacon also promises to report back with further observations after contacting Peter Quinn."

Microsoft continues push for 'InfoCards'. FrankieBoy writes "Bill Gate kicked off the RSA computer conference in San Jose, CA by unveiling a few more details about their new 'InfoCard' system in the upcoming IE7. With InfoCards people could save personal information on virtual cards on their computers which websites would recognize removing the need for many different internet passwords."

Gary McKinnon extradition hearing reopened. earthlingpink writes "BBC News is reporting that the extradition hearing has reopened for Briton Gary McKinnon who is accused by the US of hacking into military computers. The damages he has caused is estimated at £370,000 (about $640,000 today) and he is said to face more than 45 years in prison. The original story and audio interview were both covered by Slashdot in June of last year."

Bugs to help kick oil addiction. Mr. Ghost writes "Bugs such as certain species of termites and fungi such as Trichoderma reesei may be the key to effectively and cheaply generate ethanol from cellulose. Small companies like Iogen and large international energy companies like Royal Dutch Shell are putting more and more money into this research. This type of technology may even be a way for the American automobile industry to gain back market share from its competitors."

An anonymous reader writes "Yahoo News is reporting that toxic toads imported from Hawaii to help control the beetle population that was ravaging Australia's sugar cane crops have instead become pests themselves. From the article: 'The toads can grow as large as dinner plates and weigh up to 4.5 pounds. Their heads and backsides are studded with rows of warts that secrete a milky white toxin called bufotoxin. Because Australia has no native toads, many native predators such as snakes, lizards and mammals are very sensitive to the toxin. So when the toads spread, they immediately kill off many of the region's top predators.'"

Aielman writes to tell us Yahoo News is reporting that Researchers are tracking a gigantic electrical storm on Saturn that has released lightning bolts more than one thousand times stronger than those found on Earth. The storms where first spotted earlier this year from the Cassini probe and since that time scientists have recorded 35 consecutive episodes each lasting about ten hours.

More reactions both at home and abroad to the censorship issue. picaro writes "According to the BBC, 'party elders' in China released an open letter decrying the current state of censorship in China, and suggesting that 'history demonstrates that only a totalitarian system needs news censorship, out of the delusion that it can keep the public locked in ignorance.'" LWATCDR writes "The US government is upset over restrictions of freedom of speech on the Internet. The United States, has 'very serious concerns' about the protection of privacy and data throughout the Internet globally, and in particular, some of the recent cases raised in China."

iiii writes "According to a Yahoo News story, half of the world's human population is infected with Toxoplasma, a parasite shown to alter the brain function of rats, inducing them into behavior that benefits the parasite but is suicidal for the rat. So what affect does it have on humans? Article comes complete with Heinlein 'Puppet Masters' reference. I call dibs on using Toxoplasma as a name for my rock band."

SierraPete writes "Yahoo! News reports that an improper database entry, most likely caused by an external user, has created an $8 Million USD revenue shortfall for a northwestern Indiana county because a house that was supposed to be valued at $121,000 showed a value in the database at $800,000,000. There's no specific suggestion that this erroneous entry was done maliciously, but it is leading to big problems in the local governments as they try to figure out how to drop that much money out of their respective budgets. As an aside, how would you like to be in the homeowner's shoes when he opens up his mail box and finds an $8M property tax bill? I'm sure there was a trip to the emergency room or the dry cleaners involved."

The Good Reverend writes "The Associated Press has a report today about online classified site CraigsList being accused in a federal lawsuit of violating fair housing laws by publishing discriminatory classified ads. Current law, which applies to newspapers, prohibits ads that discriminate on the basis of race, gender, family status, religion, all of which can be found on Craigslist."

SenseOfHumor writes "According to two University of Washington Professors, Firefox users have a safer browsing experience than users of IE. These researchers sent their crawlers to 45,000 websites and studied the impact on Firefox and IE." From the article: "Levy and Gribble, along with graduate students Alexander Moshchuk and Tanya Bragin, set up IE in two configurations -- one where it behaved as if the user had given permission for all downloads, the other as if the user refused all download permission -- to track the number of successful spyware installations. During Levy's and Gribble's most recent crawl of October 2005, 1.6 percent of the domains infected the first IE configuration, the one mimicking a nave user blithely clicking 'Yes;' about a third as many domains (0.6 percent) did drive-by downloads by planting spyware even when the user rejected the installations."

craters writes "Microsoft plans to release 7 patches next week for Windows and Office. From the article: 'In the monthly pre-patch notification it sends out five days prior to unveiling fixes, Microsoft said that at least two of the seven will be rated Critical, which by the company's definition means that the vulnerability can be remotely exploited.'"

tfritsch writes "According to a story at News.com it looks like Oracle's shopping spree is to continue. The JBoss acquisition could be big - what does it mean for the future of the JBoss Application Server?" From the article: "Oracle makes the majority of its revenue from its database and applications business. And it has its own line of Java middleware, which competes with JBoss' software, and a set of Java developer tools. However, Oracle has been warming up to open-source products, including Zend's PHP development tools, over the past year because its corporate customers are increasingly using open source software, according to company executives. "

Lumpy asks: "After this morning's IT conference call, Linux was once again attacked here in the company by the upper management as 'a threat' to our company security. With articles, like the recent one from Information Week, fueling the Upper management with outdated information and half truths, how does an IT professional defend his position and educate upper managers to take those articles with a tiny grain of salt and trust their experts? Should we as professionals expect to be attacked for our decisions, even though Linux has prooven itself (time and time again), for over 5 years in our company? How do you deal with all of the baseless claims, that your superiors may read in the mainstream media?"

An anonymous reader writes "According to Reggie Fils-Aime, Nintendo of America's executive vice president of sales and marketing, Metroid Prime will include the ability to voice chat with other players before and after games (not during). Granted, the PSP's version of SOCOM allows for in-game chat, but this certainly is the first step." They're also going to be setting up demo download stations in retail stores, as reported in a DS Fanboy post. More details also available at the Game|Life Blog.

Justin Michael writes "RIM announces they have a software solution in the event that the courts rules in favor of NTP. The fix is called their multi-mode edition. Customers are being told that they do not need to take action yet, but would need to install the multi-mode edition on both servers and handhelds." A Reuters article also covers the announcement. From that article: "The company said it will soon begin shipping handsets with the software update in a dormant mode. It will make the update available at www.blackberry.com/workaround at a later, but as yet unspecified, date. RIM said the changes would require software updates, but the new system will deliver the same functions and performance."