Slashdot Mirror

An anonymous reader pointed us to this little tidbit. The BBC paid Tivo (company slogan: "TV Your Way") to force owners' boxes to record some new program they wanted to push, which looks incredibly exciting. UK Tivo owners seem a little upset.

An Anonymous Coward writes "The big media story of the day seems to be that the RIAA, artists, and others in the industry are complaining that there are monopolies (such as Clear Channel) forming in the radio broadcast industry. The group is stating that the practice of "independent promotion" is really a new form of payola and that it is hitting the artists' bottom line directly." Another submitter writes in with another story on the subject and the industry's Joint Statement on Current Issues in Radio.

oilfieldtrash writes "According to this news article on Yahoo!, Sherwin-Williams will upgrade their point-of-sales systems to Linux ... 'Sherwin-Williams Co., the No. 1 U.S. paint maker, plans to convert its computers and cash registers in more than 2,500 stores to the upstart operating system in the next year and has hired International Business Machines Corp.'s services division to do the job.'"

NathanZ writes "Evolution Robotics is selling what looks like a docking station on wheels as a way to transform a laptop into a robot. I'm not exactly sure how this can be useful since the "robot" has no arms. According to their website, "you can train your robot to do things like recognize objects and places, send email, take pictures and video, respond to voice commands, and more!". Yipee. At least it would give me something to do with that old Toshiba laptop sitting in the closet."

securitas writes "Reuters and AP tell us that Epic Games and the US Army have announced the America's Army series of games, jointly developed by the Department of Defense and Epic. The first two-part game in the five-year project includes an RPG called Soldier and a first-person shooter called Operations. The game will be free of charge and available for download in July or August, with 1.2 million CDs simultaneously released, attached to gaming magazines. Does this remind anyone else of the war-room scene from Toys or Ender's Game?" Future installments will include Sim Mess Duty, Sim Standing Guard in the Rain, Sim Blister, and Sim Invading Iraq to Keep Approval Ratings High.

securitas writes "Reuters and AP tell us that Epic Games and the US Army have announced the America's Army series of games, jointly developed by the Department of Defense and Epic. The first two-part game in the five-year project includes an RPG called Soldier and a first-person shooter called Operations. The game will be free of charge and available for download in July or August, with 1.2 million CDs simultaneously released, attached to gaming magazines. Does this remind anyone else of the war-room scene from Toys or Ender's Game?" Future installments will include Sim Mess Duty, Sim Standing Guard in the Rain, Sim Blister, and Sim Invading Iraq to Keep Approval Ratings High.

MikeKD writes "according to SFGate, KaZaA has announced that it will fold due to the cost of defending itself against the RIAA & MPAA. The timing is notable since on Monday, Altnet (owned by Brillant Digital) announced plans for "sponsored listings in peer-to-peer search" on its "separate [and] secure P2P resource-sharing network"."

David_Bloom writes "According to this Yahoo! News article, a team of German and American genenetic engineering experts have successfully created a malaria-resistant mosquito. Sounds good, but the scientists are still unsure about how to actually apply this to the world's large mosquito population."

David_Bloom writes "According to this Yahoo! News article, a team of German and American genenetic engineering experts have successfully created a malaria-resistant mosquito. Sounds good, but the scientists are still unsure about how to actually apply this to the world's large mosquito population."

behrman writes: "This Yahoo-hosted version of a C|Net article announces that Doubleclick is now allowed to settle the class-action privacy suit against it. Terms include purging databases of personal information, hiring a third-party company to ensure compliance, running a 33-million-banner-ad privacy education campaign, and requiring opt-in for future marketing data collection. This makes the preliminary approval from two months ago offical. Other (older) stories: Privacy groups oppose the settlement, and the settlement is proposed."

proj_2501 writes: "Yahoo! has a story about how the US House of Representatives has overwhelmingly approved two new bills: one for the creation of a federally overseen TLD called .kids.us (participation is voluntary), and the other for more ease of wiretapping to supposedly prevent dangerous meetings between kids and 'child predators'." Remember, an equivalent bill has not yet been introduced in the Senate.

Cardhore writes: "According to this article, Sun's and Wipro's developers are now working on Metacity, instead of Sawfish. Metacity and Sawfish are two window managers for the GNOME desktop, and Sun has decided to use Metacity over Sawfish for GNOME 2. This decision has been based on issues such as accessibility, maintainability of the code [1], documentation, multi-head support and a general eagerness from the community to commit to Metacity in the future." Here's a brief description of Garret LeSage's experience with Metacity, which is described here as a "boring window manager for the adult in you." Anyone with Metacity screenshots, please post below :)

eaddict asks: "I have just purchased over 20 older laptops. These laptops are old Toshiba Satellite CS110, Acer 350P, and IBM Thinkpad 365Xs. Most have bad floppies, damaged cases, and no battery. When I power them up all the displays look decent. So now I wanna hack and play. I am trying to figure our how to reuse the laptop screens so I can use them to build things like: a combined larger display, an automobile display for a DVD player, photo frames, and other nifty ideas." This question is a replay from about 2 years ago. What hardware will you need to drive a single screen (once it's been severed from the laptop corpse), or a group of them, as mentioned above?

gdyas writes: " Reuters reports that famed paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould has died today at age 60 of cancer. Famous for his many essays on natural history, modifications to Darwin's theories, and as the winner of the American Book Award for "The Mismeasure of Man", a history of intelligence testing, Gould was and remains a profound influence on biology." CNN also has a piece on him.

micq writes "After the PowerBook was updated with a faster processor at the end of April, the iBook was sure to follow. Apple announced today that the popular iBook line has been updated, upping it to a 700MHz G3. It's good to see they're still keeping the 12.1" models, which are of the few remaining small screen, ultra-portables..." They've also improved the video card to an ATI Mobility Radeon. Prices range from $1500 to $1800 for the 700MHz model (12" and 14"), and there's a 12"/600MHz model for $1200.

corebreech writes "The mighty New York Times (I think they might want you to register) is reporting that hackers posing as Ford employees have managed to pilfer some 13,000 credit reports (Quality is Job 1.) Supposedly the info isn't restricted to merely credit card numbers, but rather includes such delectable delights as address, SSN, bank account info and creditworthiness. Glad I take the subway." The original story was from the Boston Globe.

nautical9 writes "Yahoo is reporting that scientists have discovered 11 new moons orbiting around Jupiter, bringing the total to 39. They were discovered using the Canada-France-Hawaii telescope and one of the largest digital imaging cameras in the world. Unfortunately, very little is known about them at this point other than that they're relatively small (compared to the previously known ones), and they all have irregular orbits."

nautical9 writes "Yahoo is reporting that scientists have discovered 11 new moons orbiting around Jupiter, bringing the total to 39. They were discovered using the Canada-France-Hawaii telescope and one of the largest digital imaging cameras in the world. Unfortunately, very little is known about them at this point other than that they're relatively small (compared to the previously known ones), and they all have irregular orbits."

Greplaw writes "The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled this evening that an anti-abortion website that featured "wanted" posters of various abortion doctors constituted a "true threat." The website, called The Nuremberg Files, is therefore not protected by the First Amendment and is illegal under a 1994 law prohibiting threats against abortion doctors. The full opinion of the court is available on Findlaw. This case marks one of the first times that a website has been ruled to constitute such a threat." Our previous story has the background on the case. The District Court found the website was an unlawful threat; a three-judge panel of the Appeals court found that it wasn't; and now the entire Appeals court has found, by a 6-5 vote, that it was indeed unlawful. The case could be appealed to the Supreme Court next. The accepted definition of a threat unprotected by the First Amendment is one which "on its face and in the circumstances in which it is made is so unequivocal, unconditional, immediate and specific as to the person threatened, as to convey a gravity of purpose and imminent prospect of execution", and there is considerable dissent among the judges over whether a website can or cannot meet that standard.

Slashback has updates tonight on the fate of Counterstrike in Germany, PanIP's lawsuit-happy past, and facial recognition software's spotty results so far. Go on, read more!

False negatives, false positives, anda false sense of assurance. coryboehne writes: "TechNews has a report on the face recognition system installed at the Palm Beach Internation Airport early results of face-recognition surveillance suggest the technology is proving once again to be unreliable.

The ACLU said the first four weeks of testing at the Palm Beach airport showed the technology was "less accurate than a coin toss." The system matched the faces of the volunteers just 455 out of 958 times, or about 47 percent of the time.

Seems to me that this is a controlled environment for the most part, and still they have problems this big? I wonder if this technology will ever be accurate enough to work properly. I suppose the biggest problem is the size of the database that would be necessary to hold the high quality pictures necessary for accurate identification.

However I must admit that I am rather glad that this is'nt working yet as I'm not too sure I even like the idea of being able to digitally locate and track anyone within range of a camera."

This is what's meant by "repeat offender." Audent writes: "Following on from this story on Slashdot about PanIP's nasty habits, InfoWorld is running a story about it all.

To quote from the story about PanIP's boss:

'These lawsuits aren't the first time that PanIP principal Lawrence Lockwood has initiated legal proceedings against companies he felt were infringing his patents. Lockwood filed a lawsuit against American Airlines in 1994, claiming that American's SABREvision airline reservation system infringed on other patents he holds. Lockwood lost the suit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California and then lost again on appeal in 1997.'

He's since had a bunch of patents disallowed. He's obviously learned from his earlier 'mistake' and is only going for the smaller companies.

Kick his ass I say. Disclaimer: I work for IDG Comms in New Zealand)."

Temporary sanity. CyberQ writes: "Some news from Germany on the censorship front: Despite demands from prominent politicians the responsible Federal Authority decided today not to ban the sale of Counterstrike to minors [Link in German, use the fish]. This came after weeks of public discussion following a school shooting by a student who apparently trained by playing CS."

Slashback has updates tonight on the fate of Counterstrike in Germany, PanIP's lawsuit-happy past, and facial recognition software's spotty results so far. Go on, read more!

False negatives, false positives, anda false sense of assurance. coryboehne writes: "TechNews has a report on the face recognition system installed at the Palm Beach Internation Airport early results of face-recognition surveillance suggest the technology is proving once again to be unreliable.

The ACLU said the first four weeks of testing at the Palm Beach airport showed the technology was "less accurate than a coin toss." The system matched the faces of the volunteers just 455 out of 958 times, or about 47 percent of the time.

Seems to me that this is a controlled environment for the most part, and still they have problems this big? I wonder if this technology will ever be accurate enough to work properly. I suppose the biggest problem is the size of the database that would be necessary to hold the high quality pictures necessary for accurate identification.

However I must admit that I am rather glad that this is'nt working yet as I'm not too sure I even like the idea of being able to digitally locate and track anyone within range of a camera."

This is what's meant by "repeat offender." Audent writes: "Following on from this story on Slashdot about PanIP's nasty habits, InfoWorld is running a story about it all.

To quote from the story about PanIP's boss:

'These lawsuits aren't the first time that PanIP principal Lawrence Lockwood has initiated legal proceedings against companies he felt were infringing his patents. Lockwood filed a lawsuit against American Airlines in 1994, claiming that American's SABREvision airline reservation system infringed on other patents he holds. Lockwood lost the suit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California and then lost again on appeal in 1997.'

He's since had a bunch of patents disallowed. He's obviously learned from his earlier 'mistake' and is only going for the smaller companies.

Kick his ass I say. Disclaimer: I work for IDG Comms in New Zealand)."

Temporary sanity. CyberQ writes: "Some news from Germany on the censorship front: Despite demands from prominent politicians the responsible Federal Authority decided today not to ban the sale of Counterstrike to minors [Link in German, use the fish]. This came after weeks of public discussion following a school shooting by a student who apparently trained by playing CS."

ebonkyre writes "According to this article, federal Judge Florence-Marie Cooper has stayed the order which would require SONICBlue to begin recording users viewing habits and reporting them to the MPAA, et al. It has been stayed until June 3rd, at which time the court is to review SB's motion to throw out the order entirely." EPIC has filed a brief supporting Sonicblue's position. EPIC's argument (starting on page 5 of the PDF) neatly summarizes why this order should never have been given.

In celebration of the release of AotC, here are a bunch of random SW stories that have fluttered through our bin: Tim Drage has made a Lego Star Wars movie, POds sent us a fan film Fan Film (quicktime. Bah). Here is a comic to share and enjoy. iamchaos noted that the next Matrix Trailer will be showing with Clones. nellardo sent in a fine tribute to darth maul. Anyone want a Star Wars Axe? Zack sent us a great collection of SW Characters you won't see as much as you might want to. wiredog sent us some spoilers, the Skywalker family tree and how Anakin becomes Vader. peter_gzowski sent in an essay by Ebert where he gives it 2 of 4 stars, and discusses the digital filming. Finally ant sent us a bizarre tale of some guys who got the brilliant idea to build a life-size Millenium Falcon. So there it is folks. I have tickets for a 12:01 showing in Ann Arbor and I'll be getting in line in just a few short hours.

Bill Kendrick writes: "Infogrames (the folks who now own Atari) have just struck a deal with another company to produce a 10-in-1 video game system based on the Atari 2600. It'll be joystick-shaped, plug into a TV set, cost only $20, and include games like Combat, Asteroids, Missile Command, and my favorite, Adventure! It won't replace my Atari 2600 Jr and 60 cartridges, but it's a step in the right direction!"

Slashback tonight with more on deep linking, wireless access during Spider-Man, abusing terrycloth, Linux on the mainframe and more. Read on below to find the details. Update: 05/15 15:00 GMT by T : (Note the two updates below re: Towel Day, Observed.)

They're also good for drying off after bathing. Snitty writes "Douglas Adams passed away a little over a year ago now, and as tradition will soon dictate the first Thursday after May 11th every year is International Towel Day. This happens to be this Thursday, so make sure you all show up to the 12:01 am showing of Attack of the Clones with your favorite lightsaber and a towel. Always know where your towel is."

Update: 05/15 00:11 GMT by T : Hmmm -- this seems to clash with a link another reader submitted, which suggests "the last Friday of every May," which this year would be the 31st.

Update: 05/15 15:00 GMT by T : D Clyde Williamson writes: "Towel Day (since I'm the guy who started it) is on May 25th every year." So ... it's not a portable feast?

Three guesses where they each get that money from. mblase writes "CNet, among others, informed its readers that Macromedia successfully countersued Adobe for patent infringement to the tune of $4.9 million, almost double the $2.8 million Adobe recently won from Macromedia. The article notes Macromedia has another patent suit against Adobe going to court in June 2003."

Listening material when Prairie Home Companion is over. Ender, Duke_of_URL writes "The second portion of Rep. Boucher's interview is up (MP3). This has been discussed previously on Slashdot."

They're also opposed to front doors. dringess writes "Wired has yet another article about deep linking. This one has some fun lawyer rebuttals. I guess I am deep linking right now!"

I especially like this quote: "... but this would set a terrible precedent implying that links have to have a certain amount of ads."

Keeps popcorn out of your keyboard, at least. smashed writes: "After being slashdotted and geekaustin'd and touted for being the first theater with wireless access .... I went to see Spider-Man tonight at the Alamo Drafthouse North in Austin. Apparently you can't have 'electronic devices on' during the feature. I was warned if I didn't shut down my laptop I had to leave by some girl that worked for the theater. The world's first Cyber-Theater my ass. Nice try, but apparently wireless users are absolutely not welcomed there when a movie is playing. I'm very disappointed. I couldn't even have my PocketPC with wireless NIC on while the movie was on. Was I taking off down the runway on an airplane? What's the point?"

Wouldn't you like a mainframe in the closet? Writing in regards to this posting on Linux on mainframes, rudy writes: "Your reference was to the first one in the series, the second one has been up for about a week and the third, and last, one in the series will go on late this week or early next."

fazzumar asks: "I've been checking out serial ATA (SATA) and it seems like it's got a lot of potential. The first generation spec was finalized August 2001 and members of the SATA group anticipate a 12-18 month acceptance period. They've planned for a cut-over phase and adapters that allow connecting SATA devices to ATA adapters and vice versa. The cables alone are a worthwhile advantage (4 pins, up to 1 meter in length), and the 150MB/sec bandwidth is a (minor) improvement over current ATA drives & adapters. Infoworld has a story on SATA that provides a few tidbits of information. What I really want to know is, will manufacturers of the new host adapters be able to integrate many of the advantages that SCSI provides or will the cost of adding these features push the retail cost too high for the anticipated market?" I just picked up a new WD Hard drive just yesterday for the planned MP3 jukebox I hope to be building near the end of the summer. I really wanted to go SCSI, but couldn't. While the poster claims a near ~7x in price difference, I saw about a ~5x difference in my local store. Is SCSI in danger of falling behind IDE drives (especially serial IDE drives) in popularity?

"I love SCSI, and I can bring myself to accept the additional cost of the controller, but with IDE hard drive prices dropping, I frequently wonder if SCSI drive prices are artificially inflated. Just a few years ago, SCSI drives were ~10-20% more than IDE and now they're ~7X more than an IDE drive. (Seagate 10k RPM SCSI - ~18 gig for ~175. Western Digital 7200 RPM IDE - ~120 gig for ~175) If the option comes out to get SCSI performance from an IDE drive I'm going to take it."

Rossalina W Sanchez writes: "Yahoo is reporting that an internal Microsoft memo from August of 2000 urged employees to 'work underground' to hurt companies, like Intel, who support Linux. When will they learn that these memos always come back to haunt them ..."

2nd Post! writes "MacCentral is reporting the announcement of 1U Apple rackmount hardware. The Xserve, despite its cheesy name, seems quite powerful: dual G4/1GHz with 4MB DDR L3 cache, up to 2GB DDR (yes!) SDRAM, 4 ATA drive bays (up to 480GB), 2 Gb Ethernet ports, 2 64/66 PCI slots (one of which may be taken up by one Gb Ethernet card), and, of course, FireWire. Pricing starts at $2,999 for a single 60GB disk and 256MB RAM." Yahoo! has posted the press release; Doc Searls is writing about Jobs' speech. Update: 05/14 18:14 GMT by M : Apple's page about the Xserve is now live.

mrquackers writes: "Looks like the price war in the console gaming world is starting a bit early. With Microsoft expected to announce a drop in the price of the Xbox to $199 next Monday at E3, Sony's rumored to be cutting PlayStation 2 prices as early as tomorrow. Meanwhile, Nintendo says it won't be making ANY price cuts before or during the show -- though it's not ruling one out for later in the year." Update: 05/14 18:01 GMT by T : An anonymous reader points out this CNN story indicating that the PS2 cut is official.

mrquackers writes: "Looks like the price war in the console gaming world is starting a bit early. With Microsoft expected to announce a drop in the price of the Xbox to $199 next Monday at E3, Sony's rumored to be cutting PlayStation 2 prices as early as tomorrow. Meanwhile, Nintendo says it won't be making ANY price cuts before or during the show -- though it's not ruling one out for later in the year." Update: 05/14 18:01 GMT by T : An anonymous reader points out this CNN story indicating that the PS2 cut is official.

sulli writes "Remember how everyone got all up in arms about Yahoo's plans to spam and coldcall all of its members? Well, even if slashdot readers were pissed and angrily deleted their accounts, the vast majority of users did nothing. (New York Times, blah blah) So much for the big popular revolt, I guess. Market away, Yahoo!" Sigh.

Publiux writes: "LawMeme is reporting today that the Supreme Court upheld portions of the Child Online Protection Act because using community standards to determine what could be harmful to minors was not overly broad and thus not unconstitutional. Before you stop spreading your 'sexually explicit material' online, a lower court still has to determine if the law is unconstitutional for other reasons." Snibor Eoj submits this link to coverage at Yahoo! as well. Other readers link to AP coverage running at NandoTimes and the decision itself (PDF).

belphegor writes "Researchers at the University of Cambridge have found a way to use a camera flash and microscope to extract data from smart cards. " Notable because its apparently relatively simple to do and really throws a monkey wrench into a variety of businesses that use smart cards to store important data.

mrbrown1602 writes: "The roof of the 260-foot-tall Baikonur Cosmodrome collapsed today in Almaty, Kazakhstan. The hangar, used to store the Buran space shuttle (Russia's abandoned shuttle program), was built in the 1960s and used for the Soviet moon program. Could this delay the Buran auction? More can be found at Yahoo!."

sanpitch writes: "Caldera is barely scraping along, (in contrast to little brother Lineo, which may not survive). Their latest move is to close the Chelmsford and Erlangen offices, as well as lay off 73." At least not Noel Coward writes: "The bad financial report out of Caldera yesterday is actually good news, says Ransom Love in an interview on Linux and Main. Now, he says, they're ready to go forward with their grand strategy, which unfortunately has nothing at all to do with desktop Linux as we know it."

texchanchan writes "From a report on Yahoo: 'The Earth's outer atmosphere works as a heat shield to deflect and absorb some of the damaging energy [of solar wind], but in the process creates a billion-degree cloud of electrified gas that sets up loops of multimillion amp electric current.' That's pretty wild to be going on over our heads. Researched at NASA's IMAGE project. Here's the press release, with links to movies of the electrical excitement."

Dork King writes "The New York Time's Review of AOTC (free reg, yada yada) notes that Attack of the Clones doesn't look good for fans. Thankfully, I'm not a fan." Also, dw5000 writes "The BBC has a favorable review of Attack of the Clones on its news website, as well as an executive summary of what the UK papers are saying about AotC. The populist tabloids love it, while the broadsheets are giving cautious approval. Hmm. Maybe I won't wait for DVD ..." I also noticed Variety has a review up as well. Also, for those who have lost all hope for Star Wars, I submit to you the date of the Spider-Man sequel: May 7th, 2004. You should know that spoilers exist in one or more of these stories. Beware!

Dork King writes "The New York Time's Review of AOTC (free reg, yada yada) notes that Attack of the Clones doesn't look good for fans. Thankfully, I'm not a fan." Also, dw5000 writes "The BBC has a favorable review of Attack of the Clones on its news website, as well as an executive summary of what the UK papers are saying about AotC. The populist tabloids love it, while the broadsheets are giving cautious approval. Hmm. Maybe I won't wait for DVD ..." I also noticed Variety has a review up as well. Also, for those who have lost all hope for Star Wars, I submit to you the date of the Spider-Man sequel: May 7th, 2004. You should know that spoilers exist in one or more of these stories. Beware!

Slashback with updates on RMS's biography, PVRs vs. the endangered edifice of Western Civilization, Oracle's funny deal with California, cold fusion and more. Read on for the details! Can't we please have a picture of the winner? obsidianpreacher writes: "Apparently, SETI@Home has just recently released who the winner of the 500 millionth result "contest" is, and posted the news on the SETI@Home site. Too bad it wasn't me (or one of the people who turn in 300 bajillion results per day)."

Even lukewarm fusion would be satisfy me. driggers writes: "I wrote a review of the book "Excess Heat" for /. last year. I thought you might (or might not :) be interested to learn that the U.S. Navy in February 2002 issued Technical Report No. 1862 titled "Thermal and Nuclear Aspects of the Pd/D2O System," Vol. 1 of which summarizes A Decade of Research at Navy Laboratories."

Dr. Frank Gordon, Head, Navigation and Applied Sciences Department, concludes his foreword with the remark, "It is time for the government funding organizations to invest in this research."

If you modify the source you must keep it accurate, like a Mad Lib. An Anonymous Coward writes "I just noticed the biography of Richard M. Stallman, "Free as in Freedom" by Sam Williams is online at oreilly, released under the GNU Free Documentation License."

What vapors rule the modern day Oracle? MarkedMan writes: "The following CNET article outlines Oracle's reply to the State of California's announcement it was canceling a nearly $100 million dollar contract. It should not come as a surprise, as few companies would give up that kind of money without a fight, not to mention the domino effect if they just rolled over. It would be a tacit admission that they ripped off naive customers."

Guinnessy writes: "We've all accidentally typed in a wrong email address sooner or later. But can it all go horribly wrong? On http://www.spamresource.com there is the story of Nadine, an account of what happened after an Internet user accidentally gave a wrong email address when she visited a web page and signed up for a sweepstakes. Live in fear...."

frankie_guasch writes: "The award is "Innovation in Infrastructure" (i3) award for best Enterprise Software! And we beat out Sun Microsystems Java 2 Platform Standard Edition Version 1.4 and Bea Systems WebLogic Server 7.0 for the award, so I'm stunned that we won. These guys have marketing departments and a *budget.*" It's a strange contrast to the kind of attention that Samba is getting from Microsoft. (See these earlier posts for more on the CIFS situation.)

The Noof writes " Yahoo News is running a story about patients who have been given partial sight thanks to implants of silicon-based bionic retinas. " The article notes that the implant is having a "rescue effect" on the other components of the retina, restoring cells around the implant and making them useful again." Amazing stuff.

The Noof writes " Yahoo News is running a story about patients who have been given partial sight thanks to implants of silicon-based bionic retinas. " The article notes that the implant is having a "rescue effect" on the other components of the retina, restoring cells around the implant and making them useful again." Amazing stuff.

photozz asks: "Our company has got itself into a bind. We need to standardize on a TN3270 emulator for the Wintel boxes in our environment (primarily Win2K) The Linux/Unix guys are OK already )of course), unfortunately, the budget has run out. Our preferred solution would be something host based, but a client side solution would work. Sun has some Java stuff, but I figured if anyone would have a range of solutions, it would be this community. Anyone have ideas? If it matters, we are looking at 1000-2000 clients."

Arctic Fox writes: "In a bid to help European online sales, the EU is planning to tax online transactions. The article on Yahoo, says that the taxes will apply only to products downloaded from the internet, such as software,videos and music. They may elect to tax physical items (books, hardware,etc) at a later date. American companies will be forced to charge European customers the appropriate VAT in their home country. No details on how this will be enforced."

renard writes: "Some interesting developments during the last two days of the Microsoft antitrust trial, as reported by AP: MS Executive Linda Averett has admitted that Internet Explorer trumps user preferences for audio playback, and explains away a failure of IE6 searches to find RealAudio sites as a "mistake by the search team." My personal favorite: an MS-internal email exchange where one employee suggests that everyone "Remember the 'embrace and extend' campaigns we've used in the past," and an MS executive admonishes that "We need to keep all of this off the airwaves." See also related stories at Yahoo, CNN, and the NYT."

renard writes: "Some interesting developments during the last two days of the Microsoft antitrust trial, as reported by AP: MS Executive Linda Averett has admitted that Internet Explorer trumps user preferences for audio playback, and explains away a failure of IE6 searches to find RealAudio sites as a "mistake by the search team." My personal favorite: an MS-internal email exchange where one employee suggests that everyone "Remember the 'embrace and extend' campaigns we've used in the past," and an MS executive admonishes that "We need to keep all of this off the airwaves." See also related stories at Yahoo, CNN, and the NYT."

Big_Joe asks: "Lately Microsoft has put a satellite office in the Grand Rapids, MI area. Because of this I, an end user working for a large contractual company, have been getting harassment mail from Microsoft and the BSA. The information they are using to contact me is information from Chicago's Comdex 3 years ago. Since then I have switch my career direction from Windows to Linux. I would like to get my name removed from any association with Microsoft products. The only systems I use with any Microsoft software installed are owned and maintained by my employer. An earlier story here said not to reply because it is more of a headache. So how do I get them to quit bugging me? Is there any legal action I can take for harassment? How do I tell them that I am no longer a customer and that they have no further right to pester me?" Hmmm... smells like more spam. How should one handle any corporation that does crap like this, especially one that makes backhanded threats toward your workplace?

Slashback with a weekend worth of updates on Wal-Mart's OS-free PC, the End of the Simpsons, Harlan Ellison v. AOL, wireless goodies and more. Read on below for the goods.

There must be some mistake; this is what I wanted. Masem writes: "The review of the OS-less PCs sold through Wal-Mart brought out a lot of comments on the inclusion of a WinModem, effectively requiring Windows to make the computer work correctly. However, NewsForge reports that shortly after that posting, Microtel, the makers of these computers, wrote back to the reviewer and indicated that new versions of the systems will ship with Linux-friendly modems from now on. Nice to see a company that knows its target audience and how to make them happy."

Thanks, Microtel!

Next: ethernet cable manufacturers. cpt kangarooski writes: "For those tuning in late, Harlan Ellison sued AOL (among others) for having the temerity to permit users to upload copies of his copyrighted works across their networks on the Usenet. As it turns out, AOL was in the right, and got a summary judgment against Ellison.

The opinion by Judge Cooper is located here in PDF format Given his reputation, Ellison will likely appeal."

Welcome to Ix, please take off your shoes. cayle clark writes "A few months back I asked slashdot about shopping in the Akihabara, Tokyo's famous "electric town," and got lots of good advice. Well, now I been and went there, took some pictures, and posted an illustrated account here. Netting it out, it's a keen place to wander, and prices are in some (but only some) cases lower than in the USA."

Hacking at the ties that bind Following up on the new venture in wireless from the LinuxCare crew, Dave Sifry writes "802.11b Networking News wrote up a summary of the new Sputnik Gateway release today, codenamed Stagecoach. The Community Gateway code runs from CD and turns a computer with an ethernet card and Prism 802.11b card into a secure authenticating firewalled 802.11b Access Point. New features of this release include support for desktop cards, like the Linksys WMP11 PCI card, which means that you can turn your old 486 in a closet into a cheap secure wireless router."

I'd rather they save Futurama, but gift horse, teeth, etc. Remik writes "Yahoo News is carrying this story letting Simpsons creator Matt Groening set the record straight that the Simpsons isn't winding down and that it isn't on the ropes. He claims he was misquoted and misunderstood in a Financial Times of London article that came out earlier this week and that he does indeed has stories for years and years. What if Marge became a robot? Hmm..."

Has anyone detected the envelope with the winner's name yet? SoundGuy666 writes "Looks like SETI made it past that 500 million milestone - wonder who won the $500 prize..."

Slashback with a weekend worth of updates on Wal-Mart's OS-free PC, the End of the Simpsons, Harlan Ellison v. AOL, wireless goodies and more. Read on below for the goods.

There must be some mistake; this is what I wanted. Masem writes: "The review of the OS-less PCs sold through Wal-Mart brought out a lot of comments on the inclusion of a WinModem, effectively requiring Windows to make the computer work correctly. However, NewsForge reports that shortly after that posting, Microtel, the makers of these computers, wrote back to the reviewer and indicated that new versions of the systems will ship with Linux-friendly modems from now on. Nice to see a company that knows its target audience and how to make them happy."

Thanks, Microtel!

Next: ethernet cable manufacturers. cpt kangarooski writes: "For those tuning in late, Harlan Ellison sued AOL (among others) for having the temerity to permit users to upload copies of his copyrighted works across their networks on the Usenet. As it turns out, AOL was in the right, and got a summary judgment against Ellison.

The opinion by Judge Cooper is located here in PDF format Given his reputation, Ellison will likely appeal."

Welcome to Ix, please take off your shoes. cayle clark writes "A few months back I asked slashdot about shopping in the Akihabara, Tokyo's famous "electric town," and got lots of good advice. Well, now I been and went there, took some pictures, and posted an illustrated account here. Netting it out, it's a keen place to wander, and prices are in some (but only some) cases lower than in the USA."

Hacking at the ties that bind Following up on the new venture in wireless from the LinuxCare crew, Dave Sifry writes "802.11b Networking News wrote up a summary of the new Sputnik Gateway release today, codenamed Stagecoach. The Community Gateway code runs from CD and turns a computer with an ethernet card and Prism 802.11b card into a secure authenticating firewalled 802.11b Access Point. New features of this release include support for desktop cards, like the Linksys WMP11 PCI card, which means that you can turn your old 486 in a closet into a cheap secure wireless router."

I'd rather they save Futurama, but gift horse, teeth, etc. Remik writes "Yahoo News is carrying this story letting Simpsons creator Matt Groening set the record straight that the Simpsons isn't winding down and that it isn't on the ropes. He claims he was misquoted and misunderstood in a Financial Times of London article that came out earlier this week and that he does indeed has stories for years and years. What if Marge became a robot? Hmm..."

Has anyone detected the envelope with the winner's name yet? SoundGuy666 writes "Looks like SETI made it past that 500 million milestone - wonder who won the $500 prize..."