Slashdot Mirror

FortKnox writes: "Yeah, I didn't believe it either, but British scientists believe they have found fossilized vomit from a marine dinosaur. Its from a Jurassic period dinosaur. Apparently, fossilized vomit has been found before, but this is the oldest. So, next time you vomit, imagine who might find it in the far distant future...."

Silas writes: "This AP Article notes that the government is going to be releasing the comments submitted by the public on the Microsoft anti-trust case. Highlight: 'Overall, the department said it received about 7,500 comments from people in favor of the settlement reached by the federal government and nine states, while 15,000 opposed it. Another 7,000 comments were dismissed as opinion, like "I hate Microsoft."' Apparently they have to publish and respond to each one." CNN is carrying the AP wire story as well.

Radiogal writes: "A great view of the area from NASA! See olympics.gsfc.nasa.gov." This is about all of the Olympics you're going to see on the web. :)

Lawrence_Bird writes "Reuters is reporting that IBM is set to announce next week a prototype PC called a 'metapad' 5"x3"x0.75". 128Mb Ram, 10GB, and an 800 Mhz cpu. Understand this is a module that can be plugged into other devices, such as a LCD screen or docking station. "

Wee writes "I just came across this interesting Yahoo interview with Bob Young in which he says that Linux won't rule the desktop but will instead focus on replacing legacy Unix systems and enhancing Linux's embedded presence. He makes some pretty good points. The oddest quote: "So our opportunity is not to replace Microsoft on the PC. If you've got a perfectly good working PC, why you would go through the angst of replacing it?". Not sure where to start answering that one. My wife (a dedicated Win32 user) liked his car analogy. I need to get her to read 'In the Beginning was the Command Line'..."

Boone^ writes: "While millions of people were seeing a tremendous football game, TiVo was busy collecting statistics about the Super Bowl viewing habits of its subscribers. Based on a random sampling of 10,000 of the 280,000 subscribers, they found out that Pepsi/Britney was the subject of the most replayed Ad(s), and not surprisingly the play that got the most attention was Vinatieri's game-winning FG."

Pinball Wizard asks: "I would like to put together a home music studio. When it comes to keyboards, effects, and other electronic goodies, the choices seem pretty straightforward. But when it comes to guitar and recording other analog instruments and voices, the world of home recording seems bewildering. What are the best ways of recording analog sounds onto hard disk? I'm a lot more interested in a clever technical solution that costs less than $1,000 than I am taking out a loan and buying ProTools for $10,000 or more. What are the different pieces of equipment (microphones, preamps, etc) that are needed to do this well?"

klaun writes: "Yahoo has a Reuters article about product placement in games. Seems that paid placements are no longer that popular because they don't work. The audience is to sensitive to advertisement being 'crammed down their throat.' Wonder what slashdot thinks of product placement." I actually like ads in games, whether they're spoofs or real, so long as they fit the context of the game.

Emous Pratt writes: "There is a neat article up on iMacLinux.net which talks you through separating the monitor and computer parts of the iMac. It is very detailed, with lots of cool screenshots including this one of the completed machine, and this one showing the machine is still working. This is useful if you want to run Linux and not run the monitor, or if your monitor is broken." Update: 02/03 19:37 GMT by T : Note for the curious: this is about the old iMac (CRT equipped), not the new lampish G4 variety.

KP writes: "I came across this interview with Google's CEO. A very interesting read." It's interesting in part becase that CEO (Eric Schmidt) claims that for Google's purposes, "it costs less money and it is more efficient to use DRAM as storage as opposed to hard disks." "I still cannot figure out how he says storing data on DRAM is cheaper than storing it on hard-disks. Maybe, if you buy in bulk?"

dmendesf asks: "The Octane2 workstation from SGI has a neat trick called PowerDuo that enables a single station to be driven by 2 keyboards, 2 mice and 2 monitors. Is it possible to do the same with Linux and USB mice, keyboards plus Dual Head videoboards?" How difficult would it be to develop an X11 solution to do this? Now take this a step further: could this be done with the secondary machine a network connection away?

Linux World continues, and reports from the floor continue to roll in; below are some more tidbits on what was on the floor or announced at today's show. Notably absent this year (besides a whole raft of companies, like formerly large exhibitors like Penguin Computing, Oracle, VA Software and subsidiaries like OSDN) were the sort of toys that crystallized dot-com risk-taking. On the other hand, companies like IBM, HP and Compaq seem as gung-ho as ever, with all sorts of info on how large customers will save (favorite trade-show words) Real Money with free software, and the dot-org booths where a lot of the show's spirit lives are happily sharing their projects' visions and toys.

wo1verin3 writes: "Trivia for geeks... and nerds. Or rather geeks vs nerds. Read about the contest of the people with oddly and randomly shaped heads here." This site also links to MoC chrisd's page of questions and answers.

abel wisman submitted news that GNU Bayonne and PreViking have merged into a single project, which will keep the name GNU Bayonne. Not familiar with either? Bayonne is a telephony application server, and PreViking is a telephony-switching daemon, both of which are open source. David Sugar of the Bayonne project also demonstrated an automated web-based callback system used to provide callbacks to form-based online queries. The newly combined Bayonne / PreViking teams will also be working on www.phonestreamer.com, built on top of GStreamer. The Bayonne booth at LinuxWorld offered booth visitors today free calls to anywhere in the world using these technologies.

red_gnom writes: "Linux is in the running to power the world's biggest computer, we learned this week at LinuxWorld Expo. A bid is being prepared to provide the computing power behind the US government sponsored Project Purple, which will pool a vast server farm to the three leading U.S. research labs, which is scheduled to come on stream by the end of 2004."

terrywin writes: "Apparently, the company that licensed Corel's Linux has indicated that the beta is now available. http://www.xandros.com/news.html, their home page has a link to the beta form. The last report I saw on this was back in September."

Finally, cnmill points to this story on CNET about today's announcement of version 1.1 of the Linux Standard Base. Congratulations!

FortKnox writes: "One of the larger hurdles that reusable rockets have seen is the destruction the heat causes when in use. Scientists have developed a new thermal plating that hopes to eliminate that problem. The plating is called 'Adaptable, Robust, Metallic, Operable, Reusable TPS', or ARMOR for short. With talk of returning to the moon or landing on Mars, reusable rockets would give NASA a little breath of relief in the funding department..."

cecil36 writes: "Yahoo! has reported that scientists have discovered neural technology that allowed a monkey to control a mouse cursor using the brain. ... Further reading states that this technology can be used with the paralyzed or those with Lou Gehrig's Disease to allow them to use their computers."

AmiOtaku asks: "I am a student lab coordinator for Southwest Texas State University and I was wondering if anyone could help me. I'm looking for a way to limiting printing in several of my labs. Print Quota Manager and Print Manager Plus do not suit our needs. Both fail to obtain a list of users from our NT domain. Our server is not the primary domain controller for the campus, just the domain controller for our domain which has a trust relationship with the main domain for campus, but is not trusted, which is why both seem to fail in getting a list of user names. Anyway, if I could find a way to simply limit each print job to under X amount of pages, that would be a great help. Keeping a log of users and enforcing quotas would be nice but is really optional. Any ideas?" Before anyone starts delving into OS advocacy, I think it poignant to note that we did this same question for Linux, just last week.

Mr.Intel writes: "CNN released a story reviewing LinuxWorld and Linux's progress since last year. They mention new hardware and market niches coming to light in 2001. Mike Balma, a Linux strategist at HP, said 'The move to an increased array of outsourcing, migration and porting services that have been traditionally available to Unix customers is part of the continued rollout of the operating system within HP's product line. Previously, HP had informally offered such integral service and support only to its best Linux customers. But as the operating system gains momentum, more customers are seeking more services.' I hope this means as installed customer base increases, companies like RedHat will start making real money." Archie Steel writes "Interesting news for the Linux Desktop: Open For Business have an article on the partnership by HP and MandrakeSoft announced at the current Linux World Expo." Update: 01/30 16:56 GMT by H : Just a quick note: Rob is gonna be in the Golden Penguin Bowl, while I'm going to be doing a presentation with the Boston Consulting Group about the demographics of open source developers - if you are interested, it's tomorrow (Thursday) from 4:00 - 5:15.

StandardDeviant asks: "What would be good resources for a programmer looking to start a hobby in hardware hacking? By that I mean circuits, microcontrollers, computer controlled hacks, and such...sort of like a hobby-level EE education. It's just this itch I've had recently to dig down to the other extreme of the 'tower of abstraction' they bleat about so much in CS, also I find it ironic that I know more about the math (Maxwell's laws, and so on) behind electric widgets than I do about using them to build things. I'd be interested in pointers to good websites, books, magazines, parts sources, you name it! As an example: I've been looking recently at the microcontroller/circuit stuff from Iguana Labs, and of course browsing through Radio Shack. Thanks!"

gpinzone writes, "MGM and Danjaq, the British company that controls the Bond film license, have obtained a cease-and-desist order against New Line Cinema that prohibits New Line from calling the latest installment of Mike Myers' shagadelic spy series Austin Powers in Goldmember . The full article is available from E!-Online."

joestar writes: "As seen at Mandrake's website, Mandrake Linux 8.2 Beta seems to be available for download at different places. The new features include the ability to install a Mandrake as small as 65Mb on the HD, and encrypted file-system support. I guess it's the good time to report all bugs we don't want to see in the final version. Very promising release, worth a look at!"

moophus managed to spot an interesting vehicle on the roads: "Spotted: one electric vehicle on the highways of Atlanta, Georgia. Sighted around 6:30pm EDT, going south on I-85, traveling ~60mph (had a cool hum). It was a single seater, three wheeled wonder. Can anyone identify make, model? Any details on this bugger, like: range, efficiency, top speed, acceleration, cost, and cell type? I could only get several pictures which didn't turn out too well, since I had to gamma correct two of them. Another interesting thing that I've heard about electric cars: they have purposely put in noise makers in the wheels (like those plastic tri-cycles back in the day) because they just ran too quiet to be safe. Is this true?" The pictures didn't turn out too badly, as you can definitely make out much of the shape of this thing. It's more like a motorcycle than a car, but it still looks interesting enough. Hopefully more vehicles like this will be making their way on to the markets (and the roads) sometime soon.

moophus managed to spot an interesting vehicle on the roads: "Spotted: one electric vehicle on the highways of Atlanta, Georgia. Sighted around 6:30pm EDT, going south on I-85, traveling ~60mph (had a cool hum). It was a single seater, three wheeled wonder. Can anyone identify make, model? Any details on this bugger, like: range, efficiency, top speed, acceleration, cost, and cell type? I could only get several pictures which didn't turn out too well, since I had to gamma correct two of them. Another interesting thing that I've heard about electric cars: they have purposely put in noise makers in the wheels (like those plastic tri-cycles back in the day) because they just ran too quiet to be safe. Is this true?" The pictures didn't turn out too badly, as you can definitely make out much of the shape of this thing. It's more like a motorcycle than a car, but it still looks interesting enough. Hopefully more vehicles like this will be making their way on to the markets (and the roads) sometime soon.

Irish writes "The wireless world had some surprises last year. WLANs, with easy but unsecure bandwidth, may disrupt the adoption of regulated/limited 3G networks. DoCoMo's iMode surprised many gaining 27 million users while Europe was disappointing. This developerWorks article takes a look at the big wireless security stories of 2001 and tries to offer some predictions on the future."

AnElder writes: "Yahoo's Daily News Technology section is carrying a story reporting that AvantGo has received a patent for its synchronization technology. And here's an excerpt: "In legal jargon, AvantGo said the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office had issued it patent No. 6,341,316 covering the system, method and computer program product for synchronizing content between a server and a client." Why didn't I think of this?" In all fairness, the patent doesn't seem to be as bad as many that have been issued. It cites many other patents as references (which helps ensure that AvantGo is doing something *different*), and is rather specific about the process - I would expect that there are many ways to "synchronize" data that wouldn't run into this patent.

A reader writes "The new Z-series mainframe for Linux, which costs $400,000 and is aimed at processing transactions at large businesses, is IBM's first mainframe computer sold without IBM's traditional z/OS mainframe operating system. More info at the IBM zSeries page" This is something that IBM and others of Big Iron vendors of *NIX have said - as Linux grows in maturity, they want to replace their *NIX with Linux. However, there's still work to be done in that area.

darketernal writes "Escaflowne is appearing in theaters nationwide on the 25th, depending on your location. Rated PG-13. Here is a Yahoo! Review." If you've seen Escaflowne in japanese, you probably know that its a pretty cool show, and while its not one of my all time favorites, if the big screen release gets anywhere near me, I'll be there. Perhaps even bigger news is that the mega anime film hit Metropolis is being release at the same time.

L-Wave writes: "Just when you thought goats with spider genes was weird... Here is a story on Yahoo about scientists breeding pigs with spinach genes! Who thought getting a pork and spinach calzone could be so easy!"

An anonymous reader writes "At a cost of just $50,000 - including plane tickets to the Alaska launch site - it was constructed using off-the-shelf parts not designed to withstand the rigors of space. Its life span was only expected to be a few months. Six students put together the satellite last year after a three-year research and design project made possible with a grant from Boeing Co. The Department of Defense (news - web sites) Space Test Program approved the project and put it on a launch list"" Beats doing the egg drop.

i am fartacus writes: "Good news for thirsty beer lovers in a strange town, this will help you find the nearest pub... hmmm beer .... and help you stay on time. " The gist of this is that it's a watch with a GPS transmitter that can show you the distance and direction to the 4 nearest pubs. Ingenious!

Dozens of submitters, some of them quite credulous, have written in pointing to this Reuters story about an anonymous inventor who claims to have solved the universe's energy woes. It's amazing that Reuters ran this story. It's even more amazing that news media across the country are running it too. Check your local newspaper, see if they were taken in. Update: 01/24 16:38 GMT by M : Contest is over; see below.

The General Electric corporate empire was scammed - they modified the story with a skeptical headline but otherwise left it alone. The AOL/TimeWarner corporate empire didn't have any problem with the story. The Environmental News Network, which probably should know better, didn't.

Now I know that wire stories are often run with minimal verification - each paper or website assumes that Reuters, or UPI, or AP has checked the story for veracity before it went out. And I know that reporters and editors can't be experts on every field of endeavor that they report on.

But this is Basic Science. The Three Laws (everyone loves the Second Law[1]) are not a new thing, and they're not going away any time soon. This should have been taught in junior high. There's a simple, well-known test that Reuters could have applied to this story: "Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proof". This claim is the most extraordinary of all - free energy, perpetual motion, whatever you want to call it, and it demands proof beyond question. Reuters is running this story based on an anonymous inventor. Is that extraordinary proof?

But wait, I said perpetual motion. The phrase "perpetual motion" is one which sets off alarm bells in people's heads, so the anonymous inventor was quick to head off that thought process:

"But he is keen to head off the notion that he has tapped into the age-old myth of perpetual motion. ``Perpetual motion is impossible. This is a self-sustaining unit which at the same time provides surplus electrical energy,'' he said."

This quote is simply embarassing. It parses to "Perpetual motion is impossible. This is a perpetual motion unit." The inventor must be snickering in his Guinness right now to have snuck that one past.

The story gets better when you read it several times. Three 100 Watt light bulbs created a drain of 4500 Watts, according to the nameless inventor. That would be an impressive feat all by itself, except that it's total nonsense.

The piece would have made a good humor article. A properly skeptical and properly educated Reuters reporter could have examined these claims, poked holes in them, and published a story that simultaneously reported on the claims and educated the public about why they are a load of hogwash. Too bad that's not what happened.

Maybe you'd like to take a crack at evaluating their claims? You think you can examine their device a little more critically than Reuters? Give them a call.

And I have a second task as well. Slashdot is occasionally criticized for getting a story wrong, even though we diligently correct ourselves when necessary. My theory is that the difference between Slashdot and other media is that they never correct themselves, no matter how inaccurate, so readers are left with a false picture of accuracy. To test this claim, I'll send a Thinkgeek t-shirt to the first person who finds a retraction of this 'free energy' story published by Reuters or any of the newspapers/media outlets that ran the original story. *Any* of them. I don't expect to pay out.

Update: 01/24 16:38 GMT by M : CNN has updated their story with a new headline and several new paragraphs at the end, which qualifies. A couple of people also noted that ZDNet appears to have taken their copy of the wire story down. Lucas Garsha was the first to email, so he gets a t-shirt. I wasn't clear whether the claim should be email or in the comments, so I'll also send a t-shirt to the first commenter noting this, which appears to be skia.

[1] This is a fine world that we live in, where I can find a website devoted to the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

Several readers noted that Woz has a startup called Wheels of Zeus. He's come out of "Semi Retirement" to work on a new wireless handheld sort of thing. Not a lot of details, but it certainly could shape up to be interesting. Specifically mentions GPS. Supposedly Woz.com will have data eventually, but currently is just really slow and redirecting to Woz's personal page.

Birds of Fire writes: "This article on Yahoo reports on work in Australia to develop tiny aircraft for Mars exploration. "Aircraft weighing as little as a chocolate bar could one day be darting over the surface of Mars with the agility of dragonflies and the eyes of bees."

Birds of Fire writes: "This article on Yahoo reports on work in Australia to develop tiny aircraft for Mars exploration. "Aircraft weighing as little as a chocolate bar could one day be darting over the surface of Mars with the agility of dragonflies and the eyes of bees."

Birds of Fire writes: "This article on Yahoo reports on work in Australia to develop tiny aircraft for Mars exploration. "Aircraft weighing as little as a chocolate bar could one day be darting over the surface of Mars with the agility of dragonflies and the eyes of bees."

A submitter sends in this story about temp work in Silicon Valley, from the point of view of the temp. Compare almost the same story written from the point of view of Amazon.com's management.

cecil36 writes "Pinball wizards are now turning to the Internet for their needed support. With WMS Industries (Williams/Bally) no longer in existence, owners of Williams/Bally pinball games are turning to online communities (such as the news group rec.games.pinball) to find sources for parts to maintain their games. It could use a little more detail, as the article failed to mention Stern Pinball. Lots of useful links contained within if you are looking for those few parts to fix your games." I need to order new Rubber for my Jack Bot sometime too.

Eharley writes: "'Palm on Monday announced it has completed the split of its operating system division from the rest of the company. The software unit will now report separately on the financial performance of its licensing business, and could eventually be spun off or sold by Palm.' Yahoo is carrying the story here. Considering that their market share in PDA devices has been slipping, is this a move that will signal the end of the Palm hardware line or organizers?"

Music listener and Slashdot author chrisd has prepared a review of the new Nex II CF based mp3 player from Hong Kong based Frontier Labs. He declares it the best MP3 player he's owned, so read the whole review if you'd like to learn more. I have always preferred the Compact Flash memory format. I'm not alone, either. It's always baffled me that the MP3 player market has been dominated by SmartMedia-based players. It's clearly a throwback to the first Rio that Diamond released a few years back (which I still have in a box somewhere in the basement); It's always been a big problem in my mind. I find the SmartMedia format to be too small in capacity and flimsy in packaging to be appropriate for serious music listening or digital photography.

In digital photography, I've pretty much stuck with the CF-based Nikon Coolpix series of digital cameras, so I had scads of CF memory cards lying about. I also have an IBM Microdrive which I use when taking TIFFs using the Nikon. So I wanted an MP3 player able to handle not just Compact Flash, but also the Microdrive. The Microdrive is tricky because it both consumes much more power than solid-state CF cards, but also is slower to respond and larger, demanding the taller CF-II slot.

Until the i2go ego, there wasn't a mp3 player that could handle the Microdrive. I had owned and immediately given away the original, incredibly flawed, RCA Lyra because it simply stank so much I couldn't stand to own the thing. If RCA wants to send one of the new ones, I'd be pleased to check it out, but the shoddy original made me vow never to give RCA more MP3 player money.

The i2go ego (still sold some places, although I think the company that made it is defunct, look look here to see one) wasn't all bad. It played, and it acted as a pretty basic voice recorder, and it allowed for two CF cards to be inserted, at least if you bought a funny daughter board. But its build quality was such that it would spontaneously lose power if jostled. Also, it had the most annoying bug ever: the player would remember the card's contents from before, even if you changed said card's contents. It would try to play them too. It also -- at random --wouldn't notice songs that were on the card. It was very annoying, besides which it was enormous for an MP3 player.

I had been checking out the Nex II for a few months and with a long trip coming up, I decided I needed a MP3 player for the trip. I wanted to have a player that was smartly designed and able to run the microdrive. The Nex II seemed to fit the bill, so I ordered one (with a 256mb card included) for $239 (plus $15 shipping).

It arrived promptly 3 days after order from Frontier Labs' shop in Hong Kong; I've been using it for about a week now, and I have to say it's the best player I've ever owned. The display, an LCD (the letters are not blurry on the actual display) with a blue electro-luminescent backlight, is very readable, and the interface is super easy to use, with a rocker button on the right for track control above the volume buttons and the stop and the "fn" button on the left, under the headphone jack.

Conveniently, the Nex II also acts as a plain vanilla USB drive, so I can upload and download songs (or other files) under Linux with no problem. You can chose from two types of display while the song is playing (status or spectrographic display), which is fun. I stick with the status screen, which shows all pertinent information, including track length, quality in kbps, song title and time elapsed. The player has been able to handle any data rate I've thrown at it, and the specs says it can play WMA files, but I can't verify that. Also, I was able to pass the card to the camera and back with no problem, as neither the nikon nor the player are too controlling of the disk format.

Physically about the size of thick deck of playing cards, the Nex II allows you to change the color of the area around the LCD by sliding in thin colored pieces of glossy paper. You can buy more of these skins for $10, including the unfortunately named "mutant sperm" skin. It also comes with a snappy little neoprene case which has transparent portions covering the LCD and buttons so you can see what's up.

Despite all its good points, the Nex isn't perfect, it lacks some basic features, namely any sort of external power connector. You must always run it with 2 AA batteries. Mind you, it lasts 12 hours when using solid state CF and 5 when using a microdrive, so this is less inconvenient than it sounds. Also, the included headphones are not to my taste at all. The battery cover should be redesigned completely so the latches aren't as flimsy -- every time I change the batteries, I picture scotch tape in my future. Many would probably also like to see it be able to play Ogg Vorbis files, but that wasn't a deal breaker for me.

Another quirk of the Nex II is that to play Microdrives well, you need to load the 1.4(m) firmware available from the FrontierLabs website. It's odd that they didn't make this the default firmware, as the 1.4m firmware seems to work equally well with solid state cards and microdrives, while the firmware it ships with works poorly with microdrives.

So if you're looking for a decent mp3 player, you should check it out. The Nex II is an excellent value, and it sounds terrific.

SiliconEntity writes: "According to this article from Matt Gaylor's Freematt's Alerts mailing list, the Canadian Government has trademarked the Canadian Flag and has the power to force Canadian citizens to remove the image from their web sites. The claim is made by one Jan Ovens, ovens.jan@tbs-sct.gc.ca, of the Federal Identity Program, Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat. The site in question, a Canadian smokers' rights group, was forced to remove their image of the flag after Mr. Ovens contacted them. Ovens claims that the flag is a registered trademark of the Government of Canada and writes: 'The flag symbol is a global identifier of the Government of Canada. It is used to identify federal institutions and is protected under the Trademarks Act (Section 9 (1)(n)(iii) of the Act). The flag symbol was approved and entered as an official mark of the Government of Canada on the Trademarks Register held by the Canadian Trademarks Office, which is part of the Canadian Intellectual Property Office at Industry Canada, on 30 September 1987.' Are any other countries claiming the power to stop their citizens from showing the flag?"

SiliconEntity writes: "According to this article from Matt Gaylor's Freematt's Alerts mailing list, the Canadian Government has trademarked the Canadian Flag and has the power to force Canadian citizens to remove the image from their web sites. The claim is made by one Jan Ovens, ovens.jan@tbs-sct.gc.ca, of the Federal Identity Program, Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat. The site in question, a Canadian smokers' rights group, was forced to remove their image of the flag after Mr. Ovens contacted them. Ovens claims that the flag is a registered trademark of the Government of Canada and writes: 'The flag symbol is a global identifier of the Government of Canada. It is used to identify federal institutions and is protected under the Trademarks Act (Section 9 (1)(n)(iii) of the Act). The flag symbol was approved and entered as an official mark of the Government of Canada on the Trademarks Register held by the Canadian Trademarks Office, which is part of the Canadian Intellectual Property Office at Industry Canada, on 30 September 1987.' Are any other countries claiming the power to stop their citizens from showing the flag?"

baby_head_rush writes: "The company that created pr0n cartoon Star Ballz won in court. George Lucas and company lost their first bid to stop its sale. A judge with some common sense. There is 'little likelihood of confusion' between Star Wars and Star Ballz." Not for young eyes.

substatica writes: "Law.com is running this article on the content industry working to convince congress that not introducing hardware copyright protection ( as well as copy protection built into OS, Software, Web Browsers and Routers ) would eventually lead to the "industry's destruction", as put by Michael Eisner. We've been able to copy VHS for over a decade and they're still making movies. Does anyone really think that the movie industry will be eradicated due to copyright infringment?" Consideration of the SSSCA has been put off a few months, but it will be back. The Register covers one part of the split between content and hardware with this story about Philips getting more uppity about their Compact Disc logo, a follow-up to this story. The Reuters article that the Register refers to is here.

Slashback tonight brings you word on a games contest, an update to the famous spider-goat hybrid which grossed you out months ago, bad news for Galileo's last days, passable news for anyone following the David McOwen story and more. Read on for the updates :)

Make sure you slip this into the fine print of your consulting contracts. Adn writes "Newsbytes is reporting in a story that David McOwen, who was facing some pretty serious charges will be let go with a fine as against a much harsher fate. If utilizing so called "unused cycles" for the greater good is a crime (I know he was not charged for that per se... but bear with me here) then makes you consider uninstalling all those SETI@Home Screensavers doesnt it? Also a larger question...If the law (in these kinds of cases) operates on the 'intent' of the accused, what is the justification for even considering it a crime?"

Playing games builds your mind and your hand-eye coordination. Bill Kendrick writes: "The results are in for the SDL Game Contest held by No Starch Press, Linux Journal and Loki Games.

First place was awarded to LBreakout by Michael Speck. Second place went to Tower Toppler by Andreas Roever. My own game, Vectoroids just barely made third place over another asteroids-style game, Rock Dodgers by Paul Holt.

Congratulations! The full list of games is listed on No Starch's results page."

Guaranteed not to be your average Slashdot book review! Alex Chiu writes "Hello. This is alex chiu. I have written an online book at http://superiching.com Teaching people how to communicate with God using I-Ching. This online book is free for everyone to read. It's at least 5 times bigger than alexchiu.com. If interested, please release this news."

You may remember Alex from the interview we did with him a little while ago -- truly a unique individual.

Flying blind and a long way from home. Vertigo01 writes: "According to this article on CNN.com, galileo has encountered some technical problems on its flyby of Io and "for unknown reasons, went into safe mode" ... (sounds like my last Win98 install) ... flight engineers hope to restore normal operation for the duration of Galileo's life, but it looks like we won't get any more pictures of Io out of her."

Victoria's Secret probably won't put this on the box. FortKnox writes "Spider Silk is long known to be one of the strongest biological structure made (5 times stronger than steel by weight). Biologists have already genetically engineered goats to produce spider silk in their milk. Now, they have successfully extracted the protein and "spun" the silk. The next, and final step, is to mass produce the silk to be available commercially. Move over kevlar, here comes something better! I want to have the first biologically built house! I wonder how insulated spider silk is...."

DeadBugs writes: "Linux Weekly News is reporting on a new linux controversy. The inclusion of a Kernel Autoconfiguration program that would make it easy for almost anybody to build a custom Kernel on their computer. Eric Raymond supports this idea saying that this will bring Linux to a wider market. Those that oppose this idea mainly think that only those educated few should custom build their own Kernels. I for one hope this gets included if only to make standard installations and upgrades faster."

StrangeBeer writes: "When the dot-Com movement went bust, it sent thousands of former employees running for cover (or the unemployment line, whichever was closer). One place they didn't go was the way of the Government Contractor who, incidentally, is doing just fine right now with or without a recession. Various reasons are given for this and one I'd like to point out is that the government managers would rather hire an underqualified person with a security clearance and later train them in their tradecraft. The vast majority of these kinds of employees are coming from other kinds of federal work (military, civil service, etc.) and not defunct dot-Com companies."

fonixmunkee writes "CNN is running this story that says the cult TV classic, "The X-Files," shall be no longer after this season. I have been a huge fan of this show since it started in '93, so I'm quite saddened by it's projected departure." The story originally showed up in Daily Variety, saying that Chris Carter wants to move on to other projects.

Guinnessy writes: "Many of you will remember the excitement around biosphere 2, a project to enclose 8 people in a sealed environment to see if they could survive a year on just the resources produced inside the dome. It failed (although they did discover some interesting data from it). Now, in the UK, a bunch of scientists, engineers and environments have created the Eden Project, a similar scheme (e.g. closed environments mimicking various climate conditions around the world) to biosphere 2 except the general public can walk through the domes to learn about the importance of plant life. Wired News magazine has an excellent article explaining some of the technology used in its construction (it amazed me how far they have come compared to the biosphere 2 design) and how it is educating the public." Hey, according to Mission to Mars all you need is some flapping canvas to keep your habitat secure.

brightboy writes "According to this Yahoo! News article, Georgia Tech has developed and implemented a "cheating detector"; that is, a program which compares students' coding assignments to each other and detects exact matches. This was used for two undergraduate classes: "Introduction to Computing" (required for any student in the College of Computing) and "Object Oriented Programming" (required for Computer Science majors)." Cuz remember programmers: in the real world you are fired if you consult with a co-worker ;)

brightboy writes "According to this Yahoo! News article, Georgia Tech has developed and implemented a "cheating detector"; that is, a program which compares students' coding assignments to each other and detects exact matches. This was used for two undergraduate classes: "Introduction to Computing" (required for any student in the College of Computing) and "Object Oriented Programming" (required for Computer Science majors)." Cuz remember programmers: in the real world you are fired if you consult with a co-worker ;)

brightboy writes "According to this Yahoo! News article, Georgia Tech has developed and implemented a "cheating detector"; that is, a program which compares students' coding assignments to each other and detects exact matches. This was used for two undergraduate classes: "Introduction to Computing" (required for any student in the College of Computing) and "Object Oriented Programming" (required for Computer Science majors)." Cuz remember programmers: in the real world you are fired if you consult with a co-worker ;)

DanielRavenNest writes: "Sandia Labs has built a tiny bicycle chain type drive out of silicon. This allows one micromechanical motor to drive multiple devices scattered about a chip."