Slashdot Mirror

meta5table writes "Scientists have just discovered a previously extinct tree in Mauritius. This is not quite as significant as the Wollemi Pine, but it is still pretty cool. Now I just wish someone would find a thylacine."

Silverhammer writes "Roxio has countersued Gracenote over fair use of the CDDB. Check out the press release. Basically, the suit includes all the gripes voiced here on Slashdot: you can't patent free data (album titles and track listings), you can't patent against prior art, you can't patent data submitted in good faith by users, yadda, yadda, yadda..."

tekBuddha writes: "It looks like Red Hat is trying to make its way into the database market. This article on Yahoo! says Red Hat is about to announce its own product ingeniously named 'Red Hat Database' next Monday. "

Tuzanor writes: "Physicists have found the most convincing evidence yet that neutrinos, subatomic particles that were thought to have no mass whatsoever, actually do have a very tiny mass after all. The story is at Yahoo!" We mentioned the experiment yesterday, but this is big news. The New York Times has a thorough article on the whole experiment and its meaning.

Tuzanor writes: "Physicists have found the most convincing evidence yet that neutrinos, subatomic particles that were thought to have no mass whatsoever, actually do have a very tiny mass after all. The story is at Yahoo!" We mentioned the experiment yesterday, but this is big news. The New York Times has a thorough article on the whole experiment and its meaning.

Bithy writes: "Thought you might find this to be interesting, especially on the heels of Jurassic Park 3. These beasts look like something out of an artist's imagination, especially the sloth-like herbivore." Apparently, this is the first time that that these "sloth-clawed" dinosaurs have been found in North America.

Don Calamari writes "Confirmed from Fox, season one of the Simpsons are going to be released in a DVD boxed set on September 25. This has been a big week for Homer with this and his legendary catch phrase DOH! finally being added to the Oxford English dictionary." The 13 episode season will be only like $40. I don't think the show hit it's stride until 2nd or 3rd seasons, but still, shows like this deserve to be released on DVD. I'm irritated with the decision not to show the actors recording voices. Screw the illusion of the characters, this is what DVD releases of TV shows are for! The fans crave this stuff!

LerRalphMan writes: "A fist-sized meteorite, one of only 18 rocks on Earth known to have come from Mars, has been found by Swiss scientists in the Oman desert - a prize discovery that could help determine if the planet ever sustained life."

Mr_CFG writes "Rep. Dick Armey is looking to tighten FBI funding in order to starve Carnivore, and is asking AG Ashcroft to review the Constitutional questions surrounding the program" Rep Armey raises a good point, citing the recent Supreme Court decision regarding high tech survellaince, strongly limiting the government's ability to monitor things inside the home.

wowbagger writes: "According to Yahoo, Boeing is going to have Internet access on airliners in 2002. The stated cost will be about $20/hour, and it will be strictly BYOC - it sounds like they'll be loaning you a wireless card. I wonder how this will stack up with the FAA regs against using "anything that sends or receives a signal", how many clueless users will not be able to configure their systems to use the card, and how many 1337 h@><0r doods will be 0w3n1ng other passenger's machines. Think I'll review my iptables setup before I fly..."

joestump98 writes: "According to this story at Yahoo the industry has started an initiative to introduce "The Mobile Services Initiative (M-Series)" which aims to be an open software and hardware standard. The article goes so far to call WAP a "fiasco." The new M-Series is set to offer faster GPRS networks to offer consistent, high-quality mobile Internet."

The Angry Clam writes: "Supposedly, Intel has really micronized transistors." Seems that "Intel engineers have designed and manufactured a handful of transistors that are only 20 nanometers, or 0.02 microns, in size." There's some of the usual discussion of how long Moore's Law can hold, but also a bit of discussion about what will replace silicon dioxide in a few years. Reader omnirealm points to a similar story at the New York Times as well.

The Evil Dwarf from Hell writes: "This weeks Science has an article on ZnO nanowire base UV lasers, abstract ( paid subscritption required for article). The 70 to 100 nm diameter wires lase at 386nm, line width .3 nm. The growth takes place on a thin Au film on a sapphire surface, and the wires reach lengths of 2 to 10 m. What makes this lasing unusual is it occurs without the use of mirrors. Apparently ZnO forms a natural lasing cavity. (The lasing is optically pumped from a Nd:YAG laser)." The link above is registration-required, but there's another article which describes the whole process.

ehud42 writes: "According to this article, 2-way satellite service is available in Canada. Canada is pushing to have high speed internet access available to all Canadians by the year 2004. However, it appears it's available already! CEO Leslie Klien of C-Com is hoping the government will spend less on telco's stringing wires across the tundra and instead give it customers so they can buy his services."

gutier writes: "It seems that Netscape has recognized that it has lost the browser battle, and has decided to restructure itself into an "Internet Media Hub". Information here." The article does not say that Netscape will stop making browsers in favor of various media-integration tools and business offerings, but it does hint that strongly. I don't think this is the first time that an analyst has said "It's not going to be Netscape, but rather Netscape.com," either.

chrisd writes: "Just noticed this article over on Yahoo news. It described a research project that Intel and Stanford university developed that concentrated on next-gen displays. The result? A 22 inch display that displays 9.2 million pixels (they use the odious 'megapixel' descriptor in the article), needs 16 processors and 2 GB of ram to run it and costs $200,000US. So it's a little spendy. This is a big step up from my first 12" amber screen though, that's for sure." Ah, the march of progress ... I'm happy with anything that will help drive down the cost of 17" and 18.1" LCD displays, no matter how indirectly.

quadra writes: "Iridium is now offering satellite data services. For the first time, dial-up and direct internet applications are available anywhere on the planet. Using a data kit attached to an Iridium phone you can either dial up a modem, or use direct internet connectivity. Speeds are rather modest (9600bps) but there's plenty of applications where that'd suffice." OK. I would happily pay $300 / month even for 9.6kbps, if it was unmetered -- I could ride my BikeE the world around with a headmounted display, a twiddler, and a solar-charged laptop in the cargo bin. But prices are hard to find on the Iridium website, which means I can't afford it.

joestump98 writes: "Yahoo! is running a story about Sony and Sega teaming up to allow their consoles to play nicely with each other over the internet. It also mentions plans with Nintendo and Microsoft." Which should mean more cross-platform games, so perhaps consoles can be bought and sold more on their merits than their stable of games. Update: 06/05 08:11 PM by T : And RimmerExperience writes: "A recent story on Gamespot reports an agreement between Sun Microsystems and Sony to release Java support for Sony's PlayStation 2."

M-Doggy writes: "With the festivities at Computex over in Taipei bringing in more out-of-towners than the Chinese New Year, a plethora of new product announcements and sneak peeks have hit the show floor. I noticed that AnandTech already has two articles up covering the action. The first one covers what was seen on the floor, including the AMD 760, NVIDIA's Crush chipset, and more. The second one has some interesting information regarding the non-RAMBUS solutions for the Pentium 4 and even includes some preliminary benchmarks. Both speak of the incredible politics behind the show; politics that rival even the recent events in the Senate." (Read below for another snippet on those non-Rambus P4s.)

And Tuzanor writes: "Yahoo is reporting that Intel is releasing the i845, the first P4 chipset that doesn't use 'fast but expensive' Rambus memory. Funny, the story says that they will be using the "current standard DRAM chips" but says nothing of DDR RAM."

tuxpenguin writes: "While playing around with GNutella the other day, I came across this PDF document (HTML Here). It gives figures on the Top 200 businesses in terms of net/gross profits and employees. It also compares this information to the GDP of different countries, campaign contributions, government lobbying etc. I found it to be an interesting read. I also found it interesting, that being a rather contriversial document for big businesses, I came accross it first on a p2p network. Something most major corporations would be thrilled to see disbanded."

geigertube writes: "This isnt very new, but after doing a search for 'science' on Shoutcast, I found a streaming feed for a VLF receiver in Huntsville, AL.. Its pretty neat. For some reason its very engrossing listening to the pops and whistles. Via the web page one can order their own kit reciever, (although it wouldnt be that difficult to homebrew one) and listen to the streaming feed. Thanks!"

Sunthorn writes: "After much hype NASA was forced to destroy the X-43 prototype seconds into the flight after the launch rocket went out of control." The BBC has another story with some pre-flight pictures. Anybody have actual flight photos? Update: 06/02 8:28 PM by michael : Emperor writes "The official NASA take on the X-43 destruction." Update: 06/03 10:18 AM by michael : And someone else sent in this photo gallery, with some really nice close-ups.

addaon writes: "Every once and in while, it's nice to have a bold look at the future of computing. A recent article over at Discover Magazine shares James Martin's latest ruminations. While, on one level, this is just another discussion of ubiquitous computing, it's well-presented and insightful." Martin has some big ideas (though ones many people born after 1980 may think simply obvious). This piece also mentions the very interesting experiments in evolutionary computing carried out by Adrian Thompson of the University of Sussex.

zardor writes: "According to a spacehab news release, the LEGO company shipped a few bricks up to the station for the cosmonauts to play with. (US astronauts were probably not allowed to play since they can't "engage in commercial activities"). From the news release: "The LEGO Company flew an experiment designed to help students learn about weight and mass. Space Media's STARS Academy global education program developed this experiment, and the Challenger Center for Space Science Education contributed educational materials for it. In this first-ever toy-based experiment on the ISS, cosmonauts attached a LEGO Life on Mars Red Planet Protector toy set to a mass measurement device and determined the oscillation frequency of the toy in the device in order to gauge its mass in space. Cosmonauts videotaped the experiment for educational uses. The LEGO payload also included a promotional banner, which cosmonauts unfurled and photographed in space, and 300 toy ``alien'' figures. Most of the figures will be awarded to winners of the LEGO ``Life on Mars Survival Challenge National Building Contest'' for children aged 5-12. Its a shame they flew the bricks down, otherwise they could have used them to repair that broken CanadaArm 2."

Reefa writes: "The first 3G phone trial has started in Japan. Of the 147000 that applied, 3300 lucky users have been given 3G phones (they have to pay for data access) to test out so that bugs can be fixed before a general release. Example of bugs could be screens freezing up, to which a re-boot (switch off/on) of the phone is the only solution. Kinda reminds me of Windows. Anyway, I am sure that it would be fun to actually test drive one of these FOMA phones. What I would really like to see is real figures of data rates on these phone during peak usage hours." There's also a Reuters story.

Mikkel Blanné writes "Today Denmark put a superconducting power cable to use , beating Detroit to it! (Be careful though, it's in danish). We're talking 3 cables, each 30 metres in length and produced in cooperation between Nordic Superconductor Technologies, NKT Research and DTU. This makes it the first superconducting cable in actual use, ie. not in a laboratory. The purpose of this project is of course still research, but I am right now typing this on a computer running on power that came through those cables ;-) Further descriptions are here and in this rather old RISØ newsletter. Sorry about everything being in danish, but apparently this hasn't come to the world's attention yet..."

Borealis, would like to take off his tie, step up to the soapbox and put this question to the Slashdot Collective: "I work for a company (to remain unnamed) which is trying to implement a dress code throughout the company. While the code is not the worst I've seen, it does prohibit shorts, sandals, jeans and t-shirts. With the understanding that there are cases where a dress code does make sense, we are not one of those cases. Clients do not visit our site, nor are they more likely to if we have a dress code. We are located in a warm area of the USA and not having shorts and sandals makes the summers look a little less welcome. Further, all the present programmers were hired on with the specific mention that there is 'no dress code' (some as recently as a few weeks ago). Basically I would like to try to fight this move, but I need ammunition. Has anybody fought this battle and won? If so, how did you convince management to drop the issue. Are there any studies that show the negative impact on morale of forcing a dress code on techies? Does anybody have verifiable horror stories about companies losing out because they tried to force a dress code?" Of course, being hired under one impression, doesn't mean the rules can't change at any time and yank the rug out from under your feet. There is also quitting, but I'd like to think that companies can be sensible about such things. Hell, it's the 21st Century! I'd like to think that there can be companies that can implement an agreeable "dress code" that includes jeans, T's, shorts and sandals when appropriate. Note: This does not condone shirts with obscene language or imagery. Sure, there are limits, but why can't workers be comfortable when the work, as long as what they wear doesn't (reasonably) offend anyone else?

DoomDoom writes: "OK, been checking out some of the h/w encryption stuff. Liked Intel's dual purpose card. But just wondering if this PA SEC 100 card has any purpose. I mean , this baby costs around $2k+ and will probably sit in a server with 2 or more CPUs (Pentium III or above). So why even bother with hardware encryption? I mean in the era of Pentium IV etc. powered servers, does it even make sense to have hardware based encryption cards?" Maybe another way to think of this question is "Are encryption-breaking schemes advancing faster than the processing power you're able to spare from your server's primary job?" If so, even a few thousand dollars may be a worthwhile investment. Any thoughts from those who've chosen (or avoided) in-hardware encryption?

AdventureExtreme writes: "The recording industry filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Aimster on Thursday. The suit was filed in federal court in Manhattan on behalf of major record labels including Universal Music, Sony Music , EMI Group and Bertelsmann's BMG. " An RIAA lawyer is quoted as saying that they plan to seek a Napster-like injunction to bar Aimster users from trading in copyrighted materials. (FAT32 file systems are widely used for copyright violation too; are they next?)

gabbarsingh sent this in via punchcard: "What's happening at Sun on the MAJC front? They haven't released anything new on that. The first samples were promised in first half of 2000." MAJC (pronounced "magic"), stands for Microprocessor Architecture for Java Computing, and according to EDTN is the only hardware java implementation that combines both multithreading and multiprocessing. It seems that "Java on a Chip" solutions are more commonplace now, than they were when Rockwell released the first, back in 1997. Might the promise of code that you can "Write Once, Run Anywhere" soon become reality, now that there is an actual platform on which it can run (rather than piggybacking on other platforms via JVMs)?

CitizenC writes: "This Associated Press story by way of Yahoo states that starting next month, Circuit City will no longer sell 'Mature' rated games to children under 17 years of age at its stores without a parent being around. They will also begin to check ID's for young people who purchase 'M' rated games." Please check your responsibility at the door and put this helmet on, too.

mnip sent in a Reuters story about TiVo getting patents on its digital television recording technology (also see their press release). Here's one of them - recording one program while watching another.

Alowishus writes: "IBM is going to make one of its high-end zServer mainframes available for free to the public for development and testing of Linux applications. It has 10 CPUs and 2.1TB of storage, and will offer TurboLinux or SuSE distributions set up as virtual servers. It's expected to support about 1,000 simultaneous users." However, hold your horses just a bit: Registration is not yet open, the accounts are good only for a limited time, and the site lists other conditions details, though none sound onerous. Among other things, "once a user is registered and approved to access a LCDS system, a user is required to have direct Internet connection, via a Telnet and SSH client." Though there have been other free sandbox accounts, having an account on an S/390 would be sweet, eh?

alanjstr writes "Reuters is reporting that an ex-CIA director and ex-KGB man have come together and developed a new way of 'hiding' internet communications. It does this by IP hopping: 'The Invicta system uses special cards to link protected computers to a central control unit. It lets clients decide how often they wish to vary IP addresses and specify which applications may be accessed on their network.'" I've always wondered if there could be a way through software to do this. Of course, a centralized server would need to route which would be a major bandwidth bottleneck.

captaincucumber writes: "Robert X. Cringley has an interesting article on his PBS Pulpit site about a new technology called SPIKE coming out of the gaming industry that will compete with Bluetooth here. As an interesting plus Cringley talks a little bit about proprietary vs. open standards."

Samer writes: "Reuters is reporting that the Supreme Court has agreed to hear an appeal by the DoJ on the Child Online Protection Act of 1998. The story quotes the acting Solicitor General as saying that adult verification services, which cost the user money, represent an acceptable "price to pay for protecting children from the harmful effects of graphic pornographic images"."

Herschel Krustofsky writes: "Vivendi Universal finally got tired of suing MP3.com and decided to buy them out. Look for MP3.com to become the platform for Duet, the new online music venture from Vivendi and Sony Music. Any coincidence this happens right after the industry puts the breaks on SDMI?"

Morgan asks: " Windows XP (Whistler) won't boot from disks with MBR partition tables, requiring a new GUID Partition Table (GPT). It will still read and write MBR disks. In a cursory search, I find no work to support GPT with LILO or other multi-booting Linux loaders. I'm a 'one OS, one disk' man, especially since disks are so cheap, but what about those who aren't handy with a screwdriver (and an IDE cable)? An easily installable Linux distro that shrinks the Windows partition, but allows multi-booting without requiring a re-install of Windows is a great Trojan horse: 'here, try this real OS, but if you don't like it, or you need a particular app, you can always boot Windows.' Will GPT make this harder?" What reasoning was behind the move to GPT? By making Whistler incompatible with the standard MBR, this could be seen by many as another move to stifle competition in the PC market. How do you feel about it?

tb3 writes: "Here is the ultimate superbike, powered by the diesel turbine engine found in helicopters, the Y2K weighs 460 lbs, and does the 1/4 mile in 9.8 seconds at 160 mph. The US military have expressed interest in using the bike in hostage rescue situations. The downside? They only build 5 a year, and one will set you back $150,000."

vfvthunter sent us linkage to a story discussing Sony's new PC which combines the functions of a PVR (ala Tivo) with a PC to form an (expensive) integrated solution. 100 hours on your PC is cool (although personaly, excluding watching DVDs on airplanes, I hate watching video on a PC). What will really make or break this is of course the software. If it is easy to use, and also provides basic editing capabilities, we could really have a break through.

vfvthunter sent us linkage to a story discussing Sony's new PC which combines the functions of a PVR (ala Tivo) with a PC to form an (expensive) integrated solution. 100 hours on your PC is cool (although personaly, excluding watching DVDs on airplanes, I hate watching video on a PC). What will really make or break this is of course the software. If it is easy to use, and also provides basic editing capabilities, we could really have a break through.

imac.usr writes "OK, I was a little concerned when I submitted the story about the "Iron Chef" movie, but even I was unprepared for this one. This is either the best or worst idea I've heard this year; perhaps both? The main fan site also has the story. Allez Cuisine ahead full!" This has got to be kidding. If they can get Morimoto to be on it, I'll watch. Once anyway.

squee23 noted that Fox is axing the lone gunman. Almost everyone I know watched the seriers premiere and bolted, which was unfortunate: the premiere sucked but almost every episode there after was pretty damn good: the first episode simply wasn't funny, and airing it was suicide. The X-Files is returning, sans Mulder. Fortunately, The Family Guy will come back, as well as the premiere of the live action version of The Tick.

The Zapper writes: "The Mumbai (Formerly Bombay) Cops now want to control the Cyber World. In what they call a 'Step to curb hacking and proliferation of Pornographic Email ' they are going to introduce I-D cards issued on basis of passports and driving licenses without which no one will be able to have internet access in Cybercafes all over Mumbai. If this gets implemented, and it seems it will, the Mumbai netizens can kiss anonymity good bye for ever. The I.T bill recently passed by the present Government makes hacking and accessing pornographic sites a crime punishable by imprisonment for more than an year. Here is Link to the story on Yahoo India."

g8orade writes: "This NYT article presents the increasingly difficult path researchers in public arenas (universities) have distributing the results of their efforts, because of patents held on the genetic structures of food crops. Stallman makes a big case for distinguishing between copyright and patents, but anyone want to start the Free Food Foundation?"

joestump98 writes: "It appears that we are taking odd steps towards growing back lost tissue - a story at Yahoo! tells that 'doctors have used a patient's own body cells and a scaffold made of coral to grow back a missing portion of his thumb.' Sounds too cool!"

joestump98 writes: "It appears that we are taking odd steps towards growing back lost tissue - a story at Yahoo! tells that 'doctors have used a patient's own body cells and a scaffold made of coral to grow back a missing portion of his thumb.' Sounds too cool!"

ackthpt writes "According to this Yahoo/Reuters article Nintendo will rollout the GameCube (~$199) on Nov. 5, with Microsoft's Xbox ($299) following on Nov. 8th. Just in time for the season of giving. Sony's PS2 ($299) will still be in the hunt. Is there enough of a market for all three? With Microsoft planning to spend $500 million in advertising, over 18 months, expect them to make a serious attempt to be a survivor when the dust settles, unlike Sega, which has given up selling game machines to focus on titles."

mackga writes: "Yahoo has this story about a spherical bubble, as large as a solar system, being ejected from a forming star."

You may have heard about ICANN's announcement that .info and .biz will soon be available for registration. Naturally, the deal ICANN wants to cut with the .info and .biz people has been negotiated in secret, by "ICANN staff", without public input. (Who needs public input anyway - ICANN's proposed budget for next year eliminates all funding for the At-Large elections.) And of course, by the time you want to register anything in those domains, it'll be gone - trademark holders get a special express line to register domains in the new .TLD's before they are generally available. However, ICANN neglected to mention that they need approval from the Department of Commerce before messing with the root servers. The DoC is in the process of approving Verisign's deal to keep control of the .com registry forever; they're daring to ask Verisign to give up .net earlier, and Verisign is threatening to walk out on negotiations - as if we'd be hurt.