Slashdot Mirror

Strange Beer writes: "The Washington Post is running a story discussing many of the roadblocks and speedbumps that Telcoms and ISPs have encountered while trying to rollout broadband. Not surprisingly, most of the obstacles were built by them." The government approach is dysfunctional. Broadband prices are going up - 25% or more in the last six months. Simultaneously rollouts have stopped except in metropolitan areas, and the Bell monopolies are busy finishing off the last independent DSL providers. This is the "free market" in action (government-sponsored monopolies crushing independents), and therefore unquestionable in the US today, and it's also the reason why people aren't getting high-speed access. The only solution suggested in this article is to essentially browbeat citizens into overpaying for high-speed service that they don't want and probably isn't offered in their area, solely so that the MPAA can sell us movies on demand, if they ever decide to do so. What exactly is the thought process here?

akookieone writes: "MIT Tech Review has an article on Rolltronics (first appearing in /. a year ago). Seems they can now print circuits 10 micrometers across, and are thinking they could 'very shortly' move from R&D to production."

ChrisKnight writes: "According to this article FreeBSD is returning to Walnut Creek. Cool. They never screwed up my subscription, unlike Wind River." The article briefly traces the complicated ownership history of the FreeBSD name, too.

Slashback tonight on the slipping of Be through the fingers of Palm, further squashing of ZeoSync, the age of gophers, the invention of everyone's favorite electric-powered pronoun, and more -- just read on.

But can you backtrack through a google cache? pointym5 writes "Checked out the ZeoSync web site lately? Remember all those PhDs on the scientific staff? Well, like I'm sure others did, I sent e-mail to a few of them expressing interest in more technical details. All that I contacted responded with absolute disclaimers of any relationship whatsoever with ZeoSync. This morning I note that most names are gone from the 'org chart' and the scientific team list. There are only five left, including Dr. Piotr Blass, 'developer of one of the world's first web sites.' Wow!"

How smooth is smooth? juct writes: "I appreciate it, that Slashdot gave the SmoothWall Team an opportunity to answer to the concerns in my review of their firewall. But it is full of errors and might leave a wrong feeling of security. So I invite everybody to my Tour on SmoothWall where you can judge for yourself."

Whispered words of wisdom, 'Let it be.' Sander van Dragt writes: "Many BeOS news lately. Not all so good for the BeOS community though. BeUnited, the organization which tried to license BeOS from Palm, has received today a final answer from Palm: '...we have made a firm decision NOT to license any part of this technology other than that which we incorporate into the Palm OS.' It is already known that the new 32-bit PalmOS will feature some elements of the Be technology, but that OS is built for PDAs, not for the desktop."

You can read that letter and the rest of the article on OS news.

And take this as you will -- An Anonymous Coward writes: "osnews.com is reporting that there is a new version of BeOS on the way... A German company called 'yellowTab' is said to be ready to ship a new version of BeOS (Just when everyone thought it was dead, and the final shovel full of dirt laid on top), get the full article here ... Hrm, I sure liked BeOS, I hope this one works out."

Dig, my brethren -- the Gopher Palace is almost complete! SuperguyA1 writes "Lwn is reporting that the gopher team has done it again with a 3.0 release marking Gopher's 10th anniversary. Happy birthday gopher. Thanks for helping me find all the muds I wasted so much time in college on:)"

"Bad connection, say again, you invented WHAT?" mi writes: "Yahoo! reports a potential problem, the Segway Scooter may have in Japan -- a Japanese robotics professor seems to have a patent on something very very similar since 1996. On the other hand, the USPTO knew about, when granting the patent to Segway's Dean Kamen, but still found Mr. Kamen's invention worthy of a patent in 1999. My favorite is the Kazuo Yamafuji's words: 'I would hand over my patent for one dollar if Mr. Kamen admitted that we were first.' Indeed, he just sat on the invention for 15 years."

meehawl writes: "Bummer. Turns out the USPS's new Electron Beams anthrax zappers can erase and sometimes permanently damage CompactFlash cards. I wonder what other sensitive electronics will get wiped, not to mention seeds, film, some plastics, and so on. I guess it's more reason to use Fedex and UPS, at least unless and until they deploy these beam weapons as well. All this disruption for a campaign that killed five people? Some people think using the beams will lead to more deaths and injuries among operators. Meanwhile, electron beam makers, SureBeam, just got an analyst upgrade." Err, and be careful what you irradiate.

meehawl writes: "Bummer. Turns out the USPS's new Electron Beams anthrax zappers can erase and sometimes permanently damage CompactFlash cards. I wonder what other sensitive electronics will get wiped, not to mention seeds, film, some plastics, and so on. I guess it's more reason to use Fedex and UPS, at least unless and until they deploy these beam weapons as well. All this disruption for a campaign that killed five people? Some people think using the beams will lead to more deaths and injuries among operators. Meanwhile, electron beam makers, SureBeam, just got an analyst upgrade." Err, and be careful what you irradiate.

Lumpish Scholar writes: "Reuters story here. The judge "could not endorse the settlement ... Microsoft will have to start from scratch in negotiating a new settlement or fight the scores of suits in court."" Reuters also has an article from yesterday that looks at the positions of the various parties prior to this news. You will recall that Microsoft was proposing to settle the civil suits brought against it by donating free Microsoft software and old computers to schools. And do remember - because this always seems to confuse people - that the case brought by the Department of Justice and state governments is distinct from these suits filed by individuals.

Lumpish Scholar writes: "Reuters story here. The judge "could not endorse the settlement ... Microsoft will have to start from scratch in negotiating a new settlement or fight the scores of suits in court."" Reuters also has an article from yesterday that looks at the positions of the various parties prior to this news. You will recall that Microsoft was proposing to settle the civil suits brought against it by donating free Microsoft software and old computers to schools. And do remember - because this always seems to confuse people - that the case brought by the Department of Justice and state governments is distinct from these suits filed by individuals.

Lumpish Scholar writes: "Reuters story here. The judge "could not endorse the settlement ... Microsoft will have to start from scratch in negotiating a new settlement or fight the scores of suits in court."" Reuters also has an article from yesterday that looks at the positions of the various parties prior to this news. You will recall that Microsoft was proposing to settle the civil suits brought against it by donating free Microsoft software and old computers to schools. And do remember - because this always seems to confuse people - that the case brought by the Department of Justice and state governments is distinct from these suits filed by individuals.

John Galt writes: "It seems the Feds have finally decided that Nevada will host the government's nuclear waste repository." The Yucca Mountain project has been in the works for a while. Here is a cutaway diagram.

An anonymous reader writes "Yahoo is now putting ad banners as news stories. This is highly misleading and is an awesome way to sell out." I don't really think Yahoo has been sold in in a few years, but this is a new level of yucky. No doubt it is a sign of things to come: the news is the ad. The ad is the news. It's one step worse then the bizarre advertising/news merge that was amazingly evident when Disney/ABC was doing with Monsters Inc while Time/Warner/AOL/CNN was hyping Harry Potter. Oh, in case they change it, basically they have a list of news stories, and one of them links simply to a page advertising (not surprisingly) X-10. The link isn't marked as an ad -- its simply one of the headlines in the news list. It's one thing to have more ads... it's another to simply disguise the ad as actual news. Update The ad was yanked. For those who missed it, there were a dozen news articles, but one was an advertisement. It was indistinguishable from the actual news.

Richard Finney writes: "Yahoo/NewsFactor is reporting that Microsoft is moving to bar the media and the public from pre-trial witness interviews. Microsoft attorneys filed a motion with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to overturn a previous order that allowed the media to hear and read depositions -- sworn oral testimony from potential witnesses. Witness interviews are normally secret and allowed to be viewed only by the parties involved. But a 1913 law ruled that the public has a right to see and hear depositions in antitrust cases brought by the federal government. I'm wondering, also, who's scheduled to testify? Why should this stuff be secret?"

DerekLyons writes: "Yahoo is carrying a story about a Japanese scientist who plans to use giant orbiting lasers to extract H2 from seawater. The interesting part of the scheme is that design uses solar pumped lasers, which avoid the loss of efficiency (and increased launch weight) from powering the laser with electricity from solar cells. Is the way to finally break the main dilemma of the hydrogen economy? (That it takes more energy to make the hydrogen than you gain in using it.)"

Dr. A. van Code writes: "NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory has captured a stunning view of the center of our Milky Way galaxy, with hundreds of white dwarf stars, neutron stars and black holes bathed in an incandescent fog of 10-million-degree gas around a supermassive black hole. Daniel Wang of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and co-workers took the 30 separate images covering a 400- by 900-light-year swath of the center of the galaxy, a region 26,000 light years away from Earth, using the orbiting X-ray satellite's Advanced CCD Imaging Spectrometer (ACIS). His paper appears in the Jan. 10, 2002, issue of the journal Nature. There is also a Chandra page at Harvard, and an AP wire story."

Mechel Conrad writes: "Heise Online(German) writes about a Virus called SWF/LFM-926. It consists of a Macromedia Flash movie and seems to be the first of its kind. It uses Flash's scripting language in order to open a debug terminal creating and executing a file called V.COM, which infests other .SWF Files. Although the virus is not very dangerous and not widespread yet, it suggests clear security holes in Flash." The translation of the Heise article is quite readable, too. Update: 01/08 22:47 GMT by T : bdavenport adds: "this report on Yahoo lists a new Shockwave virus as low grade due to the need of manual downloading. infoworld is reporting that McAfee has upgraded to high risk after several Fortune 500 firms have reported it in the wild, arriving as an email attachment."

An anonymous reader writes with this update: "As reported via the usual sources, Roxio announced today that the lawsuit (read all about it on slashdot) with gracenote has been settled. To fresh up your memory: Gracenote ('cddb') sued Roxio because they switched from cddb to freedb for identification of audio CDs. Discussion on slashdot was active, especially questioning if gracenote really owned the titles. David Hyman, Gracenote CEO, added, 'We look forward to a long and mutually successful relationship between our companies through this new license for intellectual property and current and advanced music recognition services.' End of quote. Do I need say more than 'corporate lawyers'?"

JimRay writes: "The Washington Post's Tech site is running an interesting piece on geolocation technology and its increased use on the net. The article explains the technology as being able to locate an Internet user in the world, at least to their mother country, and then grant access based on their location. They note how television broadcasters are interested in this kind of technology to prohibit the loss of distribution rights to things like the Olympics."

The first Slashback of 2002 brings you updates on Ogg streaming (listen in while it lasts, and send feedback if you like it!), Qwest and your privacy, holes and patches for products from the MS-AOL-Time Warner Industrial Complex, and even more steganographic images failing to appear.

Getcher hot streams while they last ... jmoffitt writes: "In his post to the Vorbis list, Ciaran announced that the Ogg Vorbis BBC streams of Radio 1 and Radio 4 that we've enjoyed since early November would go offline as the test is ending. Everyone is encouraged to send their encouragement for these streams to continue to webweaver@bbc.co.uk. Also, as a special treat, the Radio 4 Ogg stream has been extended a week - just enough for all to catch the first episode of Lord of the Rings on Saturday at 1430 GMT."

Please mind the people interrupting your privacy. Matt Clauson writes: "Discussion list for the Qwest privacy issue and possible protest action has been set up -- send an email qwest-action-subscribe@dotorg.org to subscribe to it."

Plug, plug, plug ... timekillerj writes "Well it looks like AOL jumped right in and fixed that pesky hole. We can all go back to speculating how insecure it is now. An article on Yahoo has more info, including a short debate on w00w00 disclosing before getting a response from AOL."

Backstepping by any other name ... dagoalieman writes "It appears the FBI has decided that MS's patch is sufficient. According to CNN, they announced this earlier today in a rather quiet fashion. While MS may see it as good news, I think the fact that the hole is coming back to public attention just blackens the eye a little more for them. It will be interesting to see future ramifications of the government getting involved in these issues, too..." It can't look good when your company's software is called into question by some of your largest customers.

Nope, still don't see any. Niels Provos writes: "I just updated http://www.citi.umich.edu/u/provos/stego/usenet.php to reflect the final results from our search of hidden messages in USENET images. We did not find a single hidden message.

I also released a new version of stegdetect.

The disconcert cluster that we used for the dictionary attack contained more than two-hundred workstations, mostly from CAEN (that is the computer aided engineering network at UMich). The peak performance is comparable to 72 1200 MHz Pentium III machines :-) ...

Below my mail to the cryptography mailing list.

------- Forwarded Message
From: Niels Provos <provos@citi.umich.edu>
To: cryptography@wasabisystems.com
Subject: Stegdetect 0.4 released and results from USENET search available
Date: Fri, 21 Dec 2001 12:16:14 -0500
Sender: provos@citi.umich.edu

I just released Stegdetect 0.4. It contains the following changes:

- Improved detection accuracy for JSteg and JPhide.
- JPEG Header Analysis reduces false positives.
- JPEG Header Analysis provides rudimentary detection of F5.
- Stegbreak uses the file magic utility to improve dictionary
attack against OutGuess 0.13b.

You can download the UNIX source code or windows binary from

http://www.outguess.org/download.php

- -----

The results from analyzing one million images from the Internet Archive's USENET archive are available at http://www.citi.umich.edu/u/provos/stego/usenet.php.

[...]

After scanning two million images from eBay without finding any hidden messages, we extended the scope of our analysis.

This page provides details about the analysis of one million images from the Internet Archive's USENET archive.

Processing the one million images with stegdetect results in about 20,000 suspicious images. We launched a dictionary attack on the JSteg and JPHide positive images. The dictionary has a size of 1,800,000 words and phrases. The disconcert cluster used to distribute the dictionary attack has a peak performance of roughly 87 GFLOPS. However, we have not found a single hidden message. [...]

Comments and feedback are welcome. We have an FAQ at http://www.citi.umich.edu/u/provos/stego/faq.html"

Thanks for the update, Niels!

ThChalm asks: "I am the first one to admit that my programming experience is somewhat limited. The majority of it has been obtained writing FORTRAN code to solve problems in mechanical engineering. I have written some smaller (you might say toy) codes using C. I have read a lot of books on C++ (and OOP), but always get frustrated with the following question: Why can't anyone show me an engineering application that is solved with an object oriented program?"

"I appreciate the concepts of OOP and see its applicability in managing records, GUIs, and possibly standard function libraries. I cannot, however, convince myself that there is a clean way to use these concepts to solve the type of procedural problems that I have encountered in the past (finite difference solutions to differential equations, finite-volume computational fluid dynamics, iterative solutions to non-linear equations, Monte-Carlo simulation of radiative heat transfer, etc.)

Am I just being close minded to the ideas of OOP or do my problems just require 'procedural' solutions, which are better solved using procedural techniques? I'll even be happy with the answer 'Your problems are two small and specialized to realize any significant advantages of OOP.'

I'd be interested in hearing comments from anyone else who has this problem, anyone who has worked through it, or anyone who can send me an example of an engineering application of C++ and OOP."

MrZeebo writes "According to a story on Yahoo! News, Bush has finally decided to lift the Cold War-era restrictions on how fast an exported computer can be. Now, computers as fast as 195,000 MTOPS (up from 85,000 MTOPS) can be exported to countries such as Russia, China, and Pakistan."

MrZeebo writes "According to a story on Yahoo! News, Bush has finally decided to lift the Cold War-era restrictions on how fast an exported computer can be. Now, computers as fast as 195,000 MTOPS (up from 85,000 MTOPS) can be exported to countries such as Russia, China, and Pakistan."

Feelgood writes: "Yahoo is carrying a Reuters report that thermal imaging may be used in airports to detect liars. Shouldn't be a problem that 1 out of 4 liars will get away and 1 in 10 innocents will be incorrectly nailed." There's a UPI story about the lie detector possibilities and a blurb in Nature. From the UPI article, the inventor has a good appreciation of the ethical considerations. Will anyone else care?

FortKnox writes "Because of the success of "Monsters Inc" and "Shrek", many major hollywood studios are scrambling getting on the CGI bandwagon. Looks like we're about to get smothered by CGI movies left and right. For those that like to tinker with CG, it might be a good time to go jobhunting..." Several upcoming movies mentioned. Some ven look like they might have potential ;)

Ian Finlay writes: "Scientists at the Ames Laboratory say they have created the world's first magnetic refrigerator, which someday may save consumers money on energy bills and be better for the environment. The AP story is on Yahoo at the usual place."

quarnap asks: "I'm a system administrator running mostly NT boxes. I got into a discussion with a unix admin over whether a knowledge of assembler was of any use in either of our jobs. He insists it is since it provides a fundamental level of understanding of how computers work. I disagree; I say it isn't needed for ANY system administration work since that level of understanding is way below the level at which system administration operates. What do you think?" We've discussed this issue in a general sense in a previous Ask Slashdot, yet when it comes to System Administration it's a toss up. I can see situations where Assembler experience might be a boon to a sysadmin, but not a requirement for the job. What about you?

Stone Rhino writes: "No longer do you need to remember passwords. Now, thanks to graduate students at Berkeley you merely need to pick out the right pieces of abstract art. There is a story on it at the New York Times. However, there is a problem with it that I see: 5 images from a set of 25 means 53,130 potential combinations. This would be much easier to crack by brute force than a standard alphanumeric password with its billions of possibilities and millions of likely choices." Maybe you have to get the sequence of images correct? If so there are some six million combinations, still weaker than a optimum password but probably stronger than the passwords most people choose (usually their significant other's name). There's another article on passwords in that same NYT edition.

Pnet Guy writes: "Portable .NET is a component of the dotGNU meta project to provide a CLI (ECMA standard) platform for free software. The project true to its name runs on a variety of platform including Linux,Hurd and Cygwin GNU systems. To avoid any legal problems Pnet has decided to go the hard way and bootstrap our compiler off gcc. Unlike Mono which uses microsoft's runtime to run their compiler. Our premier developer Rhys Weatherly has contributed 254,423 lines written since Jan 1, 2001. Which amounts to about 5000 lines per week which is phenomenal for any programmer. He is dotGNU's one-man army. So join him in celebrating his quarter billion lines of his code." Update: 12/27 02:41 GMT by T : Note that as many readers have pointed out, that's just like the headline says -- a quarter million lines, rather than billion. Some related links to check out include the dotGNU home page, the Southern Storm Software (Rhys Weatherley's shop, with Portable .NET information), Mono's page and Pnet's CVS repository.

SumDeusExMachina writes: "NORAD is at it once again folks! You can track Santa as he travels across the globe via a nifty Real Media stream." Apparently, this guy has been making some changes up North, too, including stealth technology, so I hope the radar tracks.

merlyn writes "The Oregon Supreme Court declined to hear my case, leaving standing the unfavorable decision of the Oregon Appeals Court as the final authority on this eight-year-long case, well known to many sysadmin and Perl hacker alike. Details at my fors-announce posting." If you're not sure what that means, you probably want to read at least this site which offers a straightforwardly partisan look at the complicated case of Intel vs. Schwartz as well as Schwartz's own page; it's a strange world where programmers and sysadmins can be convicted for seemingly innocent activities.

securitas writes: "Reuters is carrying this story about Applied Digital's VeriChip -- a subcutaneous microchip (like the ones they use to tag pets, livestock and wildlife) used as ID for humans. They are radio-activated and would initially be used to store and transmit medical data via the Internet. They will be also used as tracking beacons and personal ID according to a company exec. The launch will be in Europe and South America. The company has made an FDA application and the FCC has already licensed airwaves for a similar device." We've mentioned this company's "Digital Angel" before, but there's an understandable sudden interest in such tracking technologies.

securitas writes: "Reuters is carrying this story about Applied Digital's VeriChip -- a subcutaneous microchip (like the ones they use to tag pets, livestock and wildlife) used as ID for humans. They are radio-activated and would initially be used to store and transmit medical data via the Internet. They will be also used as tracking beacons and personal ID according to a company exec. The launch will be in Europe and South America. The company has made an FDA application and the FCC has already licensed airwaves for a similar device." We've mentioned this company's "Digital Angel" before, but there's an understandable sudden interest in such tracking technologies.

PolarCow writes: "Everyone's favorite Linux powered PDA retailer is back. Empower Technologies/LinuxDA are releasing a new variant of Linux-powered PDA. The new one is called the PowerPlay V. Its hardware is comparable to that of the Palm Vx. Thin, rechargable and with an enhanced display. I'm salivating already."

(eternal_software) writes: "The Associated Press is reporting that the FBI and Defense Department are talking to Microsoft about the serious flaws found in the XP operating system. As we all know, the most recent flaw allowed any XP machine to be hijacked simply by connecting it to the internet. The government is getting involved because of growing U.S. concerns about risks to the 'net as a whole." In fact, the FBI would like you to go a bit beyond the MS patch. davecl points out the updated page put out by the National Infrastructure Protection Center about this vulnerability as well.

texchanchan writes: "Yahoo reports on a newly discovered species of deep-sea squid, quoting scientists as saying the creatures are very different from normal giant squids. 'New species are a dime a dozen. This is fundamentally different' in behavior and appearance -- with 10 identical long skinny arms and a jellyfish-like hunting strategy. 'We don't know of any cephalopod that has arms like that.' --Michael Vecchione of the U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service. 'I had never seen anything like this creature,' oceanographer William Sager of Texas A&M says."

actappan writes: "Whether or not Lindows is real, this article on CNET News.com indicates that Microsoft intends to sue them into oblivion. Looks like supression remains the best way to promote innovation." cyberlawyer adds: "Some of you may remember that MS originally had great difficulty obtaining a trademark for the generic term 'Windows' but was eventually able to pay off those who had filed letters of protest to the granting of the mark including Sun, Oracle, and Borland. As a trademark lawyer I (unhappily) have to admit that Lindows probably has a weak case. Of course it's never too late to bring a cancellation action based on genericide ;-)" CodeWheeney contributes a link to coverage at Yahoo, too.

Irish writes: "Eclipse, IBMs open sourced development tool donation (which is now supported by an organization of a number of companies), just got a little stronger as the released their first plugin. The C and C++ IDE will focus on Linux development and deployment. On a similar note, developerWorks is offering a trial download for WebSphere Studio Application Developer for Linux which is a pluggable tool-development and integration platform that is very similar to Eclipse. I was wonding is Eclipse trying to block SUN?"

dpilgrim writes: "Looks like some powerful players want to see Linux going toe to toe with Unix 'big iron.' Would you like to be able to run two Linuxes simultaneously on the same box? Or seemless swap processor and memory in and out of your machine? The Atlas project aims to bring you all that and more. There's a press release from TurboLinux reported here, and a more in-depth article running on SourceForge's Linux on Large Systems Foundry."

quualudes was one of the many people to submit the AT&T Broadband/Comcast merger. CNNfn has more of the story as well. 72$ billion is the cost. Wow. I wonder how this affects @Home. One alert reader also submitted the news that Comcast will evidently by launching a video gaming channel - more information will be coming in February 2002.

quualudes was one of the many people to submit the AT&T Broadband/Comcast merger. CNNfn has more of the story as well. 72$ billion is the cost. Wow. I wonder how this affects @Home. One alert reader also submitted the news that Comcast will evidently by launching a video gaming channel - more information will be coming in February 2002.

phr1 writes "IBM has announced and Yahoo has noted that the first working implementation of Shor's factoring algorithm. Using NMR techniques they built a seven-qubit quantum computer and factored the number 15 into the factors 3 and 5. This is by far the most complicated quantum computation ever done. It's quite an amazing feat--many people thought quantum computing was just a theoretical curiosity and Shor's algorithm could never be implemented in practice."

grafikhugh writes "An article on Yahoo! News states that Joss Whedon, the creator of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Angel", is close to closing a deal with Fox. He will create thirteen episodes of a "Anti-Trek" Sci-Fi Drama to be a big player in Fox's fall 2002 line up. Its seems Whedon wants to avoid aliens as the big bad, and concentrate on making "scary-ass" humans Living in a "Dark Place"." It's also worth noting the IMDB entries for a possible buffy spin-off Ripper and an animated Buffy.

quantumgravity1 writes: "Check out this review of the FIC Aquapad. It has a 500MHz Transmeta Crusoe CPU, runs Midori Linux, is wireless capable, and is totally portable. According to pics included it is comparable to the Iopener in size. There's no hard drive, but it comes with up to 256MB of memory with 32 embedded for the os, but you can expand it with compact flash or the IBM Microdrive. GPS support is in the works, but it already supports MP3 and MPG. Now I just need a wireless setup at home, or perhaps I can do some mobile sniffing. :)"

gmr2048 writes: "CNN is reporting that RSA has helped develop "Fast Packet Keying" to strengthen WEP security. More info can be found at the RSA page. Damn, and I'm still working on my Pringles can antenna."

xX_sticky_Xx writes "The BBC is reporting that the last billion dollar NASA probe, Cassini, (enroute to Saturn) is suffering from an unknown source of contamination on its narrow field camera. NASA has attempted to alleviate the contamination, which is causing a haze to appear around images, by "defrosting" it, with so far limited success. Another attempt will be made in January. If this problem can't be resolved this will be extremely disappointing. Cassini is set to expand our knowledge of Saturn more than Galileo did for Jupiter."

Schmerd writes: "The New York Times has a story saying that charges will be dropped against Dmitry Sklyarov in exchange for his testimony against his employer ElcomSoft." Si adds: "It looks like Dmitri might be home for Christmas. This is not the end of the trial, but it appears Dmitri has been freed, pending certain stipulations." jij adds this breaking news article on the Associated Press wire as well. (The AP story is also at Wired). Update: 12/13 22:23 GMT by T : sam@caveman.org links to a slightly more in-depth AP report at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

FortKnox writes: "According to Y!, there will be a new NASA center, known as The Carl Sagan Center, that will study the cosmos, specializing in searching for life. Comprised of 3 (maybe 4) high tech labs, it will also include an exhibit area with an auditorium. Dedicating the center was one of the last things done by Goldin. The article has a great (brief) history of Carl Sagan, and everything involved in the center to be built."

Eric asks: "I am a software developer getting acclimated to the bioinformatics space by reading through introductory texts like 'Genome : The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters' by Matt Ridley, 'Genomes' by T.A. Brown, and bio journals. I find these sources to be exceptionally interesting but frequently the information is too detailed or too light for my purposes. I think the ideal information would come from a monthly magazine or online forum (like Slashdot) that is geared towards bright non-biologist computery folk (think Dr. Dobbs with an emphasis on computational biology -- light but definitely not fluff). I am particularly interested in new discoveries, research techniques, and experiments in this space. I am also budget constrained, and only have $100 a year set aside to access this kind of material. Does something like this exist, if so which ones do you recommend?" I think this question serves as a fine follow-up to our last question on Bioinformatics, may I suggest yet another starting point for those interested in this subject?

Two different articles about building lasers (well, lasers and a maser perhaps) on the moon. Reuters has a story about a potential lunar power plant, creating electricity with solar panels and beaming it to Earth with microwaves. Space.com has a piece about building a sort of super-sized Star Wars program on the Moon, giant lasers set up to blast incoming space debris and not, of course, anyone here on Earth.

SVDave writes "Yesterday, Slashdot reported that SONICblue was going to start negotiating patent licensing with TiVo. It appears that SONICblue has switched strategies: today they've decided to sue TiVo for patent infringement. Given TiVo's patents on PVR technology, I would expect a quick countersuit, though SONICblue claims that ReplayTV does not infringe on any of TiVo's patents."

Juanfe writes: "Chrysler group announced a concept vehicle called the Natrium, powered by a sodium borohydride (NaBH4) engine developed by Millenium Cell. NaBH4 can be made from sodium borate -- basic borax, used in laundry detergent. MilleniumCell is a US Company that, not surprisingly, has made strategic agreements with major borax purveyors in the US (which just happens to be thought of as the largest borax reserve in the world). Could this be the start of the end of big oil and the start of the start of big Borax?" superflippy points out that Chrysler's press release is related to the Electric Vehicle Association of the Americas (EVAA) Electric Transportation Industry Conference 2001.