Slashdot Mirror

A Not-so Anonymous Coward asks: "This is day three of trying to find a .PRC file or something that would enable me to dial out from my visor using a cable connection to my Nokia 6160m phone. The Nokia 6160's don't have IR capabilites so getting the SERIALIRPN1.PRC and the SERIRCOMMLIB.PRC files won't help. these files would be needed if I were trying to use IR, but as you can see, don't need them. The Visor only has a Palm OS of 3.1 and can only update it with a patch of which would make like easier if there was such a thing. So, what can I do while on the road when I want to download a map or check email? I can connect through a conventional phone line, since I have the Circom globalaccess modem for the Visor, but it won't dial through the mobile connection cable since it keeps looking for the conventional phone line! Am I just out of luck here? Does anyone feel especially creative, to try and figure this one out?"

A nameless cretin writes: "Yahoo and Bigfoot are both noted for providing free services. They both seem to be planning to add fees for selected services. Yahoo's "Yahoo! by Phone" service, also known as "1-800-MY-YAHOO", provides various information services via voice phone, including the ability to retrieve e-mail. According to this page they are planning to charge a monthly subscription fee beginning May 7, 2001. Bigfoot provides a variety of e-mail services, such as relaying and filtering. They do not provide mail boxes. Although some of their pages still indicate their services are free, some member pages (requiring member login) indicate a $19.99 annual subscription fee will be required for many of their services. Although I am disappointed in these changes, I would like to thank them for the service they have provided us. I hope they are able strengthen themselves financially and continue to exist. I also hope they explore new means of providing free service." Any other free-beer services you've noticed being shut down or leaning suspiciously of late? It's been rather nice to have so many free email accounts in the meantime, eh?

A nameless cretin writes: "Yahoo and Bigfoot are both noted for providing free services. They both seem to be planning to add fees for selected services. Yahoo's "Yahoo! by Phone" service, also known as "1-800-MY-YAHOO", provides various information services via voice phone, including the ability to retrieve e-mail. According to this page they are planning to charge a monthly subscription fee beginning May 7, 2001. Bigfoot provides a variety of e-mail services, such as relaying and filtering. They do not provide mail boxes. Although some of their pages still indicate their services are free, some member pages (requiring member login) indicate a $19.99 annual subscription fee will be required for many of their services. Although I am disappointed in these changes, I would like to thank them for the service they have provided us. I hope they are able strengthen themselves financially and continue to exist. I also hope they explore new means of providing free service." Any other free-beer services you've noticed being shut down or leaning suspiciously of late? It's been rather nice to have so many free email accounts in the meantime, eh?

A nameless cretin writes: "Yahoo and Bigfoot are both noted for providing free services. They both seem to be planning to add fees for selected services. Yahoo's "Yahoo! by Phone" service, also known as "1-800-MY-YAHOO", provides various information services via voice phone, including the ability to retrieve e-mail. According to this page they are planning to charge a monthly subscription fee beginning May 7, 2001. Bigfoot provides a variety of e-mail services, such as relaying and filtering. They do not provide mail boxes. Although some of their pages still indicate their services are free, some member pages (requiring member login) indicate a $19.99 annual subscription fee will be required for many of their services. Although I am disappointed in these changes, I would like to thank them for the service they have provided us. I hope they are able strengthen themselves financially and continue to exist. I also hope they explore new means of providing free service." Any other free-beer services you've noticed being shut down or leaning suspiciously of late? It's been rather nice to have so many free email accounts in the meantime, eh?

Yahoo! says No! to Porn!; the iSmell fades away after lingering long; two books you might want to read (or think again about reading); and What Not To Do Should You Become A Corporate PR Flunky. All below, all in tonight's Slashback.

But quality movies like "Ishtar" are still available. After last week's (somewhat) surprising public announcement that Yahoo! would straightforwardly feature a section of pornographic movies in its online store, it seems that quite a few readers were disappointed enough to send in news that it was not to be.

phunk, for instance, writes: "Swamped with thousands of complaints from users, Yahoo! Inc. said Friday it will stop selling X-rated videos and other pornographic material on its Web pages. The flap comes at a difficult time for Yahoo, which had been one of the biggest Internet success stories but is now struggling to make money and just announced layoffs."

I'm surprised they didn't simply rebrand that part of their site and quietly subsidize the rest of the company with it.

When you practice to deceive, plain text is a good format. Spatula writes "Hidden in the bowels of their media update on the security vulnerability in their DSL modems, Alcatel makes some very revealing statements.

Alcatel recently came under fire over a security vulnerability in one of their DSL modem products that could potentially allow a hacker to gain full control over a user's Internet experience. Many were shocked by Alcatel's subsequent remarks, especially that the company had no plan to release a patch for the flaw, suggesting only that users run firewall software.

In a "media update" MS Word document, one can view the changes that were made before the document was released to the public, which includes some interesting remarks, such as "What are you doing to provide a legitimate fix?" and "Why don't we provide this level of security for all our customers?" morons.org has all the details."

Printed because printed matter matters. Mark Harrison writes: "The Central Europe Review has an interesting review of Stanislaw Lem's newest book, Okamgnienie (A Blink of an Eye). Lem has been writing interesting and provocative works for the past 50 years. Many slashdotters should be familiar with his works such as the Cyberiad, which narrates the adventures of constructor robots Trurl and Klapaucius, and which inspired Sim City. According to the back cover of this newest book, it addresses questions such as "Is final knowledge of the processes which led to the genesis of life on earth possible? Will science bring us immortality? Are we alone in the Cosmos? What are the odds of meeting an extraterrestrial civilization? Is Nature an evolutionary monopolist? What do cloning and genetic engineering portend? Will humans produce artificial intelligence? What will be the consequences of the lightning-fast unfolding of communication technologies?""

And fishbonez points out this NY Times " book review of "Republic.com" by Cass R. Sunstein. In his book, the Sunstein argues that the Internet makes it possible to customize media experiences, which has the effect of limiting knowledge and narrowing readers' minds. Does this customized news effect apply to /.? Or does the ability to read numerous viewpoints overcome it? As a side bar, it would be interesting to know which filters are the most popular."

That stinks. An Anonymous Coward writes: "Remember when it was the iSmell that /. was asking for one-liners for?

Well it looks like they are going to have to go back to using good old-fashioned soap and water.

No more money and they where oh so close to shipping."

Yahoo! says No! to Porn!; the iSmell fades away after lingering long; two books you might want to read (or think again about reading); and What Not To Do Should You Become A Corporate PR Flunky. All below, all in tonight's Slashback.

But quality movies like "Ishtar" are still available. After last week's (somewhat) surprising public announcement that Yahoo! would straightforwardly feature a section of pornographic movies in its online store, it seems that quite a few readers were disappointed enough to send in news that it was not to be.

phunk, for instance, writes: "Swamped with thousands of complaints from users, Yahoo! Inc. said Friday it will stop selling X-rated videos and other pornographic material on its Web pages. The flap comes at a difficult time for Yahoo, which had been one of the biggest Internet success stories but is now struggling to make money and just announced layoffs."

I'm surprised they didn't simply rebrand that part of their site and quietly subsidize the rest of the company with it.

When you practice to deceive, plain text is a good format. Spatula writes "Hidden in the bowels of their media update on the security vulnerability in their DSL modems, Alcatel makes some very revealing statements.

Alcatel recently came under fire over a security vulnerability in one of their DSL modem products that could potentially allow a hacker to gain full control over a user's Internet experience. Many were shocked by Alcatel's subsequent remarks, especially that the company had no plan to release a patch for the flaw, suggesting only that users run firewall software.

In a "media update" MS Word document, one can view the changes that were made before the document was released to the public, which includes some interesting remarks, such as "What are you doing to provide a legitimate fix?" and "Why don't we provide this level of security for all our customers?" morons.org has all the details."

Printed because printed matter matters. Mark Harrison writes: "The Central Europe Review has an interesting review of Stanislaw Lem's newest book, Okamgnienie (A Blink of an Eye). Lem has been writing interesting and provocative works for the past 50 years. Many slashdotters should be familiar with his works such as the Cyberiad, which narrates the adventures of constructor robots Trurl and Klapaucius, and which inspired Sim City. According to the back cover of this newest book, it addresses questions such as "Is final knowledge of the processes which led to the genesis of life on earth possible? Will science bring us immortality? Are we alone in the Cosmos? What are the odds of meeting an extraterrestrial civilization? Is Nature an evolutionary monopolist? What do cloning and genetic engineering portend? Will humans produce artificial intelligence? What will be the consequences of the lightning-fast unfolding of communication technologies?""

And fishbonez points out this NY Times " book review of "Republic.com" by Cass R. Sunstein. In his book, the Sunstein argues that the Internet makes it possible to customize media experiences, which has the effect of limiting knowledge and narrowing readers' minds. Does this customized news effect apply to /.? Or does the ability to read numerous viewpoints overcome it? As a side bar, it would be interesting to know which filters are the most popular."

That stinks. An Anonymous Coward writes: "Remember when it was the iSmell that /. was asking for one-liners for?

Well it looks like they are going to have to go back to using good old-fashioned soap and water.

No more money and they where oh so close to shipping."

Yahoo! says No! to Porn!; the iSmell fades away after lingering long; two books you might want to read (or think again about reading); and What Not To Do Should You Become A Corporate PR Flunky. All below, all in tonight's Slashback.

But quality movies like "Ishtar" are still available. After last week's (somewhat) surprising public announcement that Yahoo! would straightforwardly feature a section of pornographic movies in its online store, it seems that quite a few readers were disappointed enough to send in news that it was not to be.

phunk, for instance, writes: "Swamped with thousands of complaints from users, Yahoo! Inc. said Friday it will stop selling X-rated videos and other pornographic material on its Web pages. The flap comes at a difficult time for Yahoo, which had been one of the biggest Internet success stories but is now struggling to make money and just announced layoffs."

I'm surprised they didn't simply rebrand that part of their site and quietly subsidize the rest of the company with it.

When you practice to deceive, plain text is a good format. Spatula writes "Hidden in the bowels of their media update on the security vulnerability in their DSL modems, Alcatel makes some very revealing statements.

Alcatel recently came under fire over a security vulnerability in one of their DSL modem products that could potentially allow a hacker to gain full control over a user's Internet experience. Many were shocked by Alcatel's subsequent remarks, especially that the company had no plan to release a patch for the flaw, suggesting only that users run firewall software.

In a "media update" MS Word document, one can view the changes that were made before the document was released to the public, which includes some interesting remarks, such as "What are you doing to provide a legitimate fix?" and "Why don't we provide this level of security for all our customers?" morons.org has all the details."

Printed because printed matter matters. Mark Harrison writes: "The Central Europe Review has an interesting review of Stanislaw Lem's newest book, Okamgnienie (A Blink of an Eye). Lem has been writing interesting and provocative works for the past 50 years. Many slashdotters should be familiar with his works such as the Cyberiad, which narrates the adventures of constructor robots Trurl and Klapaucius, and which inspired Sim City. According to the back cover of this newest book, it addresses questions such as "Is final knowledge of the processes which led to the genesis of life on earth possible? Will science bring us immortality? Are we alone in the Cosmos? What are the odds of meeting an extraterrestrial civilization? Is Nature an evolutionary monopolist? What do cloning and genetic engineering portend? Will humans produce artificial intelligence? What will be the consequences of the lightning-fast unfolding of communication technologies?""

And fishbonez points out this NY Times " book review of "Republic.com" by Cass R. Sunstein. In his book, the Sunstein argues that the Internet makes it possible to customize media experiences, which has the effect of limiting knowledge and narrowing readers' minds. Does this customized news effect apply to /.? Or does the ability to read numerous viewpoints overcome it? As a side bar, it would be interesting to know which filters are the most popular."

That stinks. An Anonymous Coward writes: "Remember when it was the iSmell that /. was asking for one-liners for?

Well it looks like they are going to have to go back to using good old-fashioned soap and water.

No more money and they where oh so close to shipping."

Jesus Hernan asks: "I have a couple of months to fill this year and - being a Linux geek with 6 yrs experience and in general a real nice guy - I was wondering if there was any organization akin to Doctors Without Borders that offers aid to technologically impaired countries, i.e. building computer solutions with cheap hardware, the like." Well, I'm aware of one organization that might foot this bill: The Geek Corps. Slashdot did an article on them a while ago and they look to be doing some really good stuff. Do any of you know of other similar organizations out there?

Slashback tonight brings you an update on Intel honcho Gordon Moore (whose famous observation will probably be written about in histories of the 20th century); more news on the state of 802.11 security; a word or three on Linuxgruven; and the odd link on election technologies to leave dimpled chads in the past.

What's the frequency, Kenneth? Maybe the analogies will just never stop, but Jethro73 points to this piece with "802.11's security issues compared to Swiss Cheese ...?"

The downside of all the attention being focused on the problems with 802.11 is that by the time there are some networks on my block to piggyback on, the holes will all be gone;)

Hopefully one of the last words here ... Rivendahl directs you attention to "this link to the StlToday.com web site giving a brief summary of a pending lawsuit against Linuxgruven.com, Inc. A bit of rumor says the owners cannot be found and perhaps fled. While I'd rather not report rumor, I would like to make sure the people Linuxgruven.com, Inc. has burned hear about them going down in flames and let them know also of the pending lawsuits. I don't know how much ex-employees may get out of it but at least spread the word, please. I know the teachers at Linuxgruven.com, Inc. teach their students to read /."

So it's time to put my Linuxgruven bumperstickers on eBay? Maybe they will mate with the LinuxOne distribution ...

Next year he'll be only half as old, though. cnkeller writes: "Gordon Moore has hit the maximum age of employment at Intel. As of May, he'll only be an honorary employee. Story here"

Please pick your poison; after that it's your fault. Erik Nilsson points to four informative articles about that which we Americans might prefer to hear nothing more about for a few years: voting, elections software, and Internet voting.

In 'No Easy Answers,' Lorrie Faith Cranor surveys elections technology, evaluates the prospects for Internet voting, and makes recommendations for action.

'Why Has Voting Technology Failed Us?' examines the performance of existing systems, and considers the prospects for improvement.

In 'Sweden to Experiment with E-voting,' Anders Olsson reports on Sweden's current electoral experiments.

In 'System Integrity Revisited,' Rebecca Mercuri and Peter Neumann examine the reasons why current voting systems have failed. They call on computer professionals to contribute their expertise to an informed discussion."

The upshot is still that there are no easy answers to ensuring that elections are accurate and fair.

PxT writes: "According to this Reuters story, the U.S. government is going to hand over control of .edu to an association of 1800 college IT departments. Anything is better than Verisign ..." I wonder how long VeriSign cried over this move, considering that it probably wasn't very lucrative to administer .edu names. (It would be very nice to see .edu domains that aren't only 4-year colleges, too, so I hope that happens.)

C. Mattix writes "It looks like we won't know if the solar sail will work for a while. There was an accident prior to launch that will delay it for quite some time. Full story from Yahoo."

ballpoint writes: "Yahoo has this story suggesting the Xbox as a cheap platform for a web server, by packaging Apache as a game. The article was written by Adam Barr, an ex-Microsoft employee who previously suggested running Linux on the Xbox. I suppose there are still more 'games' for the Xbox in the pipeline." With all the talk about making Dreamcasts into rendering farms, perhaps that would be a good application as well.

ballpoint writes: "Yahoo has this story suggesting the Xbox as a cheap platform for a web server, by packaging Apache as a game. The article was written by Adam Barr, an ex-Microsoft employee who previously suggested running Linux on the Xbox. I suppose there are still more 'games' for the Xbox in the pipeline." With all the talk about making Dreamcasts into rendering farms, perhaps that would be a good application as well.

A Crowd of Cowards submitted the news found in this LA Times article that Yahoo! will now sell pornographic videos though an online store. The new section ("Adult & Erotica") is not exactly flashing on the Yahoo! front page, but it's only a few clicks away. (And wants your valid credit card number as proof of age, btw.) Does this mean that all of Yahoo! will be blocked by the various censorware companies? Reader fezzgig points to coverage on CNN as well.

Ggggeo writes "IBM and Carrier Corp. announced Monday that they plan to offer Web-enabled air-conditioners in Europe this summer. Users will be able to control their units through MyAppliance.com and perform such functions as turning units off/on and setting the temperature. The unit will also be able to send errors messages and other diagagnostic info to phones and email addresses. Story at Yahoo! News. This sounds ok but two this stick out in my mind - Corporate Headquarters setting the tempature in my cubicle, and/or script kiddies 0wn1ng my office air conditioner (or should I now say freezer?)"

Ggggeo writes "IBM and Carrier Corp. announced Monday that they plan to offer Web-enabled air-conditioners in Europe this summer. Users will be able to control their units through MyAppliance.com and perform such functions as turning units off/on and setting the temperature. The unit will also be able to send errors messages and other diagagnostic info to phones and email addresses. Story at Yahoo! News. This sounds ok but two this stick out in my mind - Corporate Headquarters setting the tempature in my cubicle, and/or script kiddies 0wn1ng my office air conditioner (or should I now say freezer?)"

TotallyUseless writes: "Yahoo News is running a story about how in-game advertising is becoming more and more popular, and could become the norm soon. It is an interesting article and explains the reasons why game publishers and advertisers both see great potential in this." Bleh.

whirred asks: "I often hear about certain laptops being particularly bad or ideal for particular operating systems. I want to purchase a laptop with around 30 gigs of hard drive space, and when I do, I want to be able to use FreeBSD, Linux, Win32, and Solaris on Intel. I would also like to possibly install BeOS or OpenBSD. Not being an expert on any of these operating systems, is there a laptop out there that has hardware that is supported by all of these operating systems?"

YetAnotherOne writes: "Intersting article on yahoo about the possibility that our Sun has a companion star, Nemesis. This would explain some bizarre theory that mass extinction on Earth has a periodicity of 26 million years. Nemesis' perihelion pass would cause Oort cloud comets to rain in!"

Blazemonger writes "There's a story from IGN on Yahoo! talking about Blizzard recruiting for the upcoming expansion beta test. " I just filled out my form - have you? And I'd just like to reiterate my willingness to beta-test. Blizzard. I'm willing. So's CowboyNeal.

FortKnox writes "Scientists studying how a new composite material reacts with microwaves have found that the waves refract in a way the defies a law of physics. The physical formula states that the wave will refract a specific way, but passing through this new material, the wave bends in the exact opposite direction. Scientists believe this is the first demonstration of a negative index of refraction." I haven't been able to find a more scientific report about this - if you find a link, please post the link below.

bahtama writes: "Yahoo and others are running a story about the Sex.com cyber-squatter who has to pay big bucks to the original owner." MSNBC says the owner plans to make it a *cough* sticky portal.

cecil36 writes "Yahoo! is reporting that Napster is going through a congressional hearing. At the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing were Hank Berry, Napster interim chief, representatives from the recording industry, artists Alanis Morissette and Don Henley, and the MPAA's Jack Valenti. There appears to be support for online compulsory licensing (pay for rights to listen) in both the House and Senate, but Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) is saying that this type of licensing could be in violation of international treaties."

shanec writes "As a former NorthPoint subscriber, eagerly awaiting the conversion to Rhythms, this article about the potential of Rhythms, and Covad going down also scares the #$^* out of me!" I think the article is a little inflamatory, but it does underscore a disturbing situation.

Pinky3 points to this story on Yahoo! which says: "In the much-awaited decision, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) limited the term of VeriSign rights to the .org name to the end of 2002, and the .net name to the start of 2006. VeriSign, the operator of the world's largest domain name registries, would keep rights to the lucrative .com name through November 10, 2007, and have the right to renew this agreement for a new four-year term if it meets certain criteria." VeriSign has the .com domain locked up pretty well already, at least until 2007, and now (for Internet time at least) indefinitely. In 2011, I bet VeriSign will point out the awful mess (think of the risk!) of trying to redistribute control of .com to anyone else.

geekotourist writes: " The NYTimes reports that the Tech Law Journal's emailed newsletter started misspelling words to get around filters at "law firms, universities or government agencies." Good to know that this well-informed audience (given the newsletter's content) knows the best reaction to mindless censorship: "...accepted the misspellings as a necessary evil." In future news on how to live with badly designed filters, identity theft victims will be asked to adopt new names ('cause it's a little too hard for credit card reporting agencies to provide authentication and privacy. Just ask Oprah.) And people who can't handle being pulled over for looking different will now be given blond wigs and white makeup to prevent it." (And censorware.net scooped The Times, too.)

psyklohps writes: "Excite News has this story about Be Inc. and how it is quickly going down the toilet. It's a shame when a company creates a really good product and then lets it die by lack of advertising and not making any commercial applications to run on their own OS. Who knows? Maybe it will be released as open source? (wink, wink, nudge, nudge, know what I mean?)"

ParticleGirl asks: "Dennis Tito's flight to the ISS is scheduled for the same time that the Canadian Space Agency (CSA)'s robotic arm is supposed to be installed. Speaking for the CSA, Marc Garneau did an interview with Space.com. Now that Canada has come out against Tito going into space, it'll be interesting to see what kind of a compromise will be reached. Until now, this has been a sort-of standoff between Russia and the United States, but now other countries are entering the fray. Should this dude have access to the space station just because he's got the cash? He did work for NASA, and he seems to be intelligent and capable. On the other hand, he's not a trained astronaut and could plausibly be a liability if there is some sort of emergency. Will this be our first extra-orbital international incident?" While the article at Space.Com downplays any possibility of such an occurence, I can see reasons for both sides, here: Russia should be able to run their own space program, without any interference from the US, however Tito's presence on the ISS affects more than Russian interests. If the issue is a matter of training, however, I'm sure that Tito will need to pass some form of certification for space travel. Another thing to remember: the Russians have been at this space-travel thing longer than the US has. As always, feel free to share your thoughts on this issue.

varp writes: "Scientists at Baylor College of Medicine have figured out a way to reduce body fat even though you keep pumping yourself with all the grease you can lay your hands on while sitting on the couch and doing nothing. Next wish: Please, please identify the gene which can cause my arteries to choke."

Slashback tonight with bits on those things that go up coming down; those things meant to go up but which save the trip and just stay down; a nitpicking dissenter (kidding!) on the spelling and goodness of automated supervisory privileges for Canadian televisions; and a nostalgic look back at the ring-mice of yesteryear.

One day it will happen, just not yet. The launch of India's first GSLV anticipated on Slashdot a few days ago appears to have flopped. As Jon Erikson writes: "The launch of the GSLV-D1 has failed. The takeoff was successful, but shortly after its launch flames could be seen coming from the side of the rocket and the launch was aborted. As of yet there is no explaination. The story is here at BBC News." And fiscally-minded defence budget points to Rediff's story on same.

Correction, correction! The name of the country is not "Kanada," either. Jeremy Burman of Toronto's Myubi Search Technologies wrote in response to the recent post about Canadian broadcasters' V-Chip readiness, saying: "You posted a Canadian V-Chip piece to Slashdot earlier today but, unfortunately, the source both misspelled and got the CBC's name wrong. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is one of our country's greatest treasures; the institution of the V-Chip will allow parents more freedom in allowing their children to watch shows, giving the kids control of their TV time and helping them learn independence that much sooner."

The real Canadian Broadcasting Corporation are the ones to blame or praise for all this child liberation, not the devious Candadian Broadcast Company.

Why we used these back in the boiler room, a hundred years ago, and they were old-hat then, too! Isaac Grover of the SJSU College of Engineering writes of the head-tracking pointer system which made a recent appearance on these pages:

"This is *not* new technology. In my Win3.1 days I used a similar device by Spectrum (now Kantek/Spectrum at www.kantek-spectrum.com) called the RingMouse. It has since gone unsupported by Spectrum, but they are still out there and in use (google:RingMouse).

And surprisingly it is still superior to the capabilities of the Naturalpoint device in that it was three-dimensional in applications that supported it."

Wei muss Alles Be Immer About Mir?! Unlike Iridium, which has been pretending to have human owners ever since it gained sentience a few months back, Mir has bit the bullet, bought the farm, shuffled off this mortal coil (or rather back onto it), and is no more. Except possibly for some big titanium balls. (Every space collector's dream?)

Cryptacool writes: "http://www.mirreentry.com posted videos (finally) but it doesn't seem to be the footage from the planes rather captured from a video camera on the ground." Knave trickery, but just as well, since none are available in a Linux-friendly format right now :(

And slathering writes: "CNN.com reports that there are decent odds of bits of charred Mir washing up on the shores of pacific islands. The guy they interviewed thinks that the pieces would be worthless but I imagine they'd fetch a reasonable amount of money on eBay."

Now how much would you pay?

FortKnox writes "Reuters has an article on a contest for the most aspiring text message. It has to be under 160 characters, because it follows the trendy text-messaging for modern mobile phones. Most people will try to make long quotes with abbreviations and numbers and such to bring it down to the appropriate length."

dbrower writes: "A recent decision reported by law.com shows your email isn't protected hardly at all by the Electronic Communication Privacy Act (ECPA). In this case, an employer was free to root around archives of old mail to nail an employee. The court ruled that the protections of the ECPA may apply to the mail spool and the transmission, but not backup copies of your 'Sent' mail. Well, maybe not all that astonishing -- relying on law to protect you from the BOFH at work was never going to work, was it? The message seems to be: send potentially incriminating mail from accounts not under your boss's control." Other courts have come to much the same conclusion. Once your email stops moving, it isn't a violation of Federal law to read it (although other laws could be violated in the process of gaining access to it).

quakeaddict writes "Apparently those of us who have been lucky enough to live in the far northern/southern latitudes, the light shows have been tremendous. Perhaps someone could point us to a page with some interesting pictures? I have always wanted to see these things in person, but a web page will have to suffice."

Starting the show off with some cool do-it-yourselfer sorta projects: Diederik Meijer submitted the The Silicon Graphics Refrigerator Project (or: How To Turn a $175.000 High-End SGI Challenge DM Server into a Fridge). Next up, mdaughtrey built a Mechanical Hit Counter jrbx1 sent us a link to an in-dash Atari 2600. Even coolor is that the dash its in is attached to a 1978 volkswagon ;) rednax sent us a review of a kit for adding neon to your PC. If you're not skilled enough to hack how it works, at least you can pretend you're cool and hack how it looks! I Nothing is more dangerous then glewtion's link to a story about a sculpture in england that that worries people since the heat it generates cook fry a bird mid-air. Oh, and I lied: even more dangerous then art is amasci's link to making pet ball-lightning. In your microwave, duh. If you've got some spare time, MxTxL submitted something that we've been seeing more of, email games. This one is battlemail, which apparently is glorified addictive paper rock scissors. f you were an Anime character, here's some helpful hints to keep in mind. Hieronymus Coward sent us a bit about The Drew Carrey Show featuring a 2 minute segment based on the sims. I wonder if they will use the vibromatic bed, actually the next expansion comes out soon (today?) so I probably am gonna have to resurrect my neighborhood sometime soon. Thirsty? Dipfan sent in a story about Coke wanting to put soda fountain style coke in every house right next to the water dispenser. Got Carbonated Milk? Finally for a little random product plugging, Rustin H. Wright found a place selling penguin crossing signs. Finally, anotherone noted that you can use Google in full swedish bork bork chef glory.

Thu Anon Coward wrote: "Yahoo has a story about the SEC investigating the spamming of financial institution customers by corporations." Interesting. The law in question allows financial institutions to share (sell) a bunch of personal data about their customers to other companies such as insurance firms and stock brokers. Pro-privacy groups opposed it at the time. If the companies are actually using that information to send spam email...

wayne writes: "CNN is running a story on web search engines and their inablity to keep up with the growth of the web. Web directories such as Yahoo! and the Open Directory Project can take months to add a site and the queue of unreviewed sites is growing. Most search engines are even further behind and are filled with off-topic and dead pages. The trend is toward pay for listing. Will the free, searchable web fade away?" The article gets beyond the "Wowie, so much content, engines can't keep up" typical blather and addesses some of the reason search engines have a hard time keeping up.

Carey sent in this story that shows Bluetooth still has a few kinks to work out. Bluetooth's universal standard instead seems to be about 10 different standards, and if these companies think they are going get people to buy devices that only work with other devices from the same manufacturer, I think they're in for a rude awakening.

Mark Padro writes "www.The Moscow Times has posted this article. In one instance ...Cosmonaut Sergei Krikalyov managed to chat to a truck driver on a road in South Africa as he flew hundreds of kilometers overhead in 1992... It's a good article with other funny Mir stories." Oh those wacky cosmonauts. Ya know, hiding booze around the space station is an early warning sign of alcoholism.

Ranma sent in this story about a 100Mbps (!) consumer internet service being offered in Japan. Cost: US $40.00/month. Hmmm. I pay more than that for 384K DSL. See also Germany, which is apparently actually offering the much-promised but little-seen internet access over power lines.

jfinke writes "Linux Today is running an article about Redhat's financial situation. The company reported an adjusted net loss of $600,000, or break even per share, for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2001, compared to an adjusted net loss of $5.6 million, or $0.04 per share, for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2000. On a reported basis, the net loss was $24.2 million, or $0.14 per share, compared with a net loss of $24.6 million, or $0.17 per share in fiscal 2000." Congrats to all the folks there.

taatacgactc writes: "DARPA (DoD) is now supporting the development of a SPICE equivalent for biological circuits (aka BioSPICE). Best of all, it's to be "open source". Given the hyperexponential improvement in biological technology and the bioengineering efforts getting off the ground, fun stuff should be happening. Of course, there is the "dark side"." More information here. The submitter may be overstating the bit about "open source": the proposal says "All software developed as a part of the program will be open, in the sense that program performers and other DARPA authorized users will have the right to view, use, modify, and distribute code within the program authorized community. All derived works including revision, enhancement, modification, translation, abridgement and expansion of code will also remain open in this sense. ... The DARPA Director reserves the right to approve and exercise licensing arrangements depending on the context and the relevance to national security."

More on privacy as seen by legislators; a hopefully luckfilled update on graphics software you may be waiting for; and a denial from Germany on the "getting rid of Microsoft software" claims touted not long ago. All below in tonight's episode of Slashback.

Buried in the fine print is where you will find Jimmy Hoffa and mitigation. Sarcasmo writes "I'm hoping you'll post this story, since it's partly a correction/update of a previous story on Slashdot. While Senator Edwards' bill, S. 197, does come down on spyware in a very good way, it doesn't as the previous article suggested, "require commercial web sites to ask permission from the user before a cookie can be set or personal information collected." To quote the bill itself:

"(B) The term does not include a text file, or cookie, placed on a person's computer system by an Internet service provider, interactive computer service, or commercial Internet website to return information to the Internet service provider, interactive computer service, commercial Internet website, or third party if the person subsequently uses the Internet service provider or interactive computer service, or accesses the commercial Internet website."

Though I did come across this bill introduced to the house by Representative Green of Texas -- and it seems to come down just as hard on cookie use specifically."

Oh, baby, I love your photo-realism -- it's so ... real-seeming. After wryly noting that the last few times it's been featured in this forum it's been while he was on a plane, or in the middle of bug-fixing, or while being boiled alive by cannibals, etc, Paul Nolan says of his Photogenics graphics software:

"Well, it was a long hard slog, but it's finally out, the press release is here.

There's a pretty good chance there will be a local power outage today, on the off chance that would increase my chances ;)"

Nicht wahr, nicht wahr. sconeu writes "According to Wired, a German Defense Ministry official has denied the original report in Der Speigel about the Microsoft ban ... Oh well..."

Well, everybody and his brother wants to let us know that Mir is coming down, really, they mean it this time. Pick your favorite site to track its descent: Yahoo | NY Times | United States Space Command | Heavens Above | BBC. But Frederic Freidel provides an oddly personal note: what goes up must come down.

Jacek Fedorynski took a look at Guess When Mir Will Splash and drew up this nice histogram of the guesses. He also notes that the median guess for Mir's return to Mother Earth was 2001-03-19 10:11:01, so the collective wisdom of slashdot was off by a few days.

Nowhere in this slashdot story do we mention either the stupid Taco Hell advertising campaign or the space fungus or the Crashing Mir Space Station Detecto-Hat.

jeffersonebell writes "Today Turbolinux becomes the latest software company to pull its IPO. Story is here. They sight "current market conditions" as the major reason behind the move." I suspect that most people had figured this would be the case - now isn't the ideal time for an IPO.

adubey asks: "Over and over I've heard game programmers say that it is difficult to write games for PlayStation 2. A lot of these quotes came from gaming sites or the mainstream press, where there probably aren't as many programming-literate readers as there are on Slashdot. So perhaps Slashdot might be a better place to ask ``what is wrong with the PlayStation 2 API?'' Are there any PSX2 programmers here who might be able to give some insight? Can this even be discussed without breaking any NDAs?" This is the first time I've heard of such a thing. Where did this rumor get started?

speck writes "Here's a link to an article in New Scientist about mathemetician Gregory Chaitin, who seems to have thrown some of the basic foundations of math into question with his work on the 'omega number.' Among the more provocative statements in the article: '[Chaitin] has found that the core of mathematics is riddled with holes. [He] has shown that there are an infinite number of mathematical facts but, for the most part, they are unrelated to each other and impossible to tie together with unifying theorems. If mathematicians find any connections between these facts, they do so by luck.' Also of interest is the transcript of a lecture Chaitin gave at CMU, which explains some of the theory in quite accessible language."

sakul asks: "I'm working for an online education company, and I'm looking for an easy way to allow teachers to type in equations and math symbols and have them converted into images for display on webpages. These teachers are used to using graphing calculators and they can understand having to write out things like (a^2)/3 but not that LaTex \frac{a^2}{3}. I've looked at that Java Equation editior that WebEq makes, but entering all those equations by hand is really hard, and it only generates MathML, which makes it basically impossible to go back and edit the equations once they've been typed in. I know that other people out there have delt with this problem, but I can't find a soultion anywhere." Perhaps some form of preprocessor can be written that can take an HTML file and expand the equations in one form "(a ^ 2)/3" and convert it on-the-fly into MathML at display time? There are plenty of solutions out there that one could use to pull this off.

Michael Stricklen writes: "The company I work for, NaviSite, Inc. is going to stream the Mir re-entry at http://www.mirreentry.com. I'm not sure what kind of view you'll have of it, but I figure with as many stories as /. has had on Mir, one more marking it's death couldn't hurt." And Kevin points to an article on Yahoo! which says that the mirreentry.com video will not be a live broadcast, "since 'the aircraft which will track the spacecraft's final descent will not have enough bandwidth to stream the footage as it occurs.' The film will be supposedly available on the Internet within two hours of reentry. The site currently target's Mir's 'latest probable deorbit date' as March 22." I wish I saw a link to other than "Windows Media Format" on that page, though.

Boise3981 writes "An article for the New York Times is talking about geolocation software, originally meant to deliver localized ads to web surfers, being used by some countries (and possibly even states or cities) to enforce local decency laws on the internet. In one instance a judge in France decided to fine Yahoo! $13,000 a day for displaying nazi memorabilia on its auction website. The article talks about web sites dumbing down their content to the lowest common denominator, lest they break some obscure decency law in some tiny village somewhere. fun."

rev420 writes "Wired is reporting that Napster traffic has fallen by 60% since it instituted it's (er, the labels') name-blocking scheme. Despite their best efforts, few people seem to be finding name-scramblers like Catnap to be useful and the Aimster's Pig-Latin encoder is no longer available because Napster requested that it be disabled." No big shocker here.