Slashdot Mirror

glinden writes: "Two telescopes at the Kech Observatory have been optically linked to form the Keck Interferometer. The resolving power of this combined telescope will apparently be sufficient to see earth-sized planets around nearby stars." quoll contributes a link to NASA's own version of the story, too.

Davis King writes: "NCR is claiming that two patents it received in 1987, for a 'portable personal terminal for use in a system for handling transactions' cover the palm pilot; it's suing Palm and Handspring for patent infringement. Yet another company trying to get ahead with lawyers instead of with engineers." According to the article, "NCR asked for a jury trial on its demands that Palm and Handspring be blocked from making any more of the products, and that NCR be awarded compensatory and actual damages." What about my patent for a "medium-sized length of rope for use in jumping"?

Ant sent in this article about measurements of stress hormones on Monday mornings. "While on-the-job stress is a well known and widely felt presence, new research suggests that even thinking about Monday morning may send people's stress hormones upward." Clearly the lesson to be learned is: don't think.

Lumpish Scholar writes: "An article posted in a couple of places (here (1)( and here (2)) talks about two San Diego spammers who face up to nine years in prison for spamming (and crashing an open relay in the process)." Naturally, tbe D.A. reports that the two spammers arrested "appeared convinced that what they were doing wasn't illegal." Can this really be only the second time spammers have been prosecuted? That might explain all the pink goop clogging my inbox ...

drhpbaldy writes: "At the latest ACM meeting, scientists and engineers threw mud at computer scientists for not contributing anything useful. They lambasted CS types for developing complex and useless technologies. Some of the fault was placed on VC's for funding only the fanciest and stupidest technologies." Of course, when people say that "design" will save the world, they usually mean their idea of design, which might not jibe with yours or mine.

OdinHuntr writes: "Newsforge has an article detailing Eazel's layoff of over 50% of its workforce. Quite a day, eh?" And GrokSoup writes: "According to News.com, Eazel laid off 40 employees today -- or more than half of its staff. The company says it is trying to get its "... burn rate and business plan in line with the more sober economic environment," but we all know what that means. Don't we?" Update: 03/14 03:20 AM by T : And on a slightly more positive note, Dan Gillmor writes: "Hey, I stopped by Eazel today and Andy H showed me a nifty (but as yet unreleased) RSS viewer that's an intelligent icon on the Nautilus desktop ... I posted a screen shot in today's weblog."

manyoso writes "Helius, Inc. has announced a USB DirecPC modem for Linux. The software drivers are going to be available on their website, no word about what kind of license. The software is available on their Model 7100 router, which retails for $2,500. The router runs Caldera Linux and comes with: dynamic host configuration protocol (DHCP), SMTP e-mail, Web hosting, Web caching, NNTP news, FTP, UDP, Telnet, proxy, and firewall. The upload is standard phone line or ISDN." Looks like a fairly expensive way to get a 400kbs uplink (You need software, a router, and a normal modem/isdn ISP for outgoing traffic) but for people who live outside of DSL/Cable range, this might be a cool option. And it looks fun to play with ;) But my cable company promised that they could hook me up this spring, so I'm not sure if it's worth it ...

Porthos writes "There are several HOWTOs about installing Linux on laptops and several more about turning old P75s into Linux-based routers/firewalls, but I haven't heard much about turning old P75 laptops into Linux-based routers." Is there any reason to disrecommend a laptop as a router? I know people with their old portables running as servers, routers, and everything else ...

"As best as I can tell, an old laptop would make a perfect Linux router. You have a notebook-sized machine that has it's own monitor, mouse, and keyboard that easily hide away when the machine is not in need of human attention. Furthermore, most laptops have two PCMCIA slots to accommodate the two necessary network cards. My old WinBook XP even has a built in modem for dial-in access, should the situation demand it.

If the power goes out, a notebook computer would keep running for anywhere from 30 minutes to two hours. This would allow any critical systems to complete their tasks, assuming that they are on a UPS. And if you need to use such a setup at an alternate location, you could just pickup and go with the laptop.

My question is this: Is there a downside to using an old laptop as a Linux-based router? Obviously you wouldn't use such a device in a large-scale office setting, but could this be a viable alternative to picking up one of those $130 Linksys Cable/DSL routers? If not, why not?"

nickfarr writes: "This article about Yahoo from Sunday's NYT gives some pretty good arguments against the profitability of portals; or the idea that massive visibility translates into massive profit. It definitely presents a broad middle perspective between the .com naysayers and the irrational optimists." The financial news is full of such things, and this is better than most -- all that infrastucture is looking for some money to swallow before it starves.

LordArathres writes "It seems that an German appeals court has ruled that America Online is responsible if its users trade copyrighted music online. The story does not go into much detail of what ramifications this might/will have on other courts around the world. The (short) article can be found on Yahoo!" When the story was written, not much detail was known - this will be an interesting case to follow.

bethorphil asks: "I'm a web developer at a company that concentrates on Coldfusion and Javascript for our applications. I've managed to subvert my workstation to the point where I'm using Linux 80% of the time, yet I'm still stuck with windows for certain aspects of development which are too time consuming without a nice IDE. I need FTP and RDS support integrated into the editor, and it would be nice if javascript debugging were available too. I haven't had much luck running ColdFusion Studio or Dreamweaver through WINE, and VMWare is too expensive. Several of my coworkers have expressed an interest in this too, so I'm pretty sure that a week after I find the right setup, the whole development team will blow away their windows partitions and join the rebel forces... :-) Does anyone have any suggestions?"

xpccx writes: "I've seen in several scientific journals articles about a device called a 'Smart Probe.' It's a device from BioLuminate which is licensing technologies from NASA and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. (Read more.)

From the press release:

Sensors on the tip of the probe measure optical, electrical and chemical properties that are known to differ between healthy and cancerous tissues. The "Smart Probe" can detect multiple (5 to 7) known indicators of breast cancer. Tissue measurements are made in real time in both normal and suspect tissue.

I did a Google search and information can be found here(1), here(2) and here(3) amongst others.

It's still an invasive procedure, but if it does work it would be a great relief to women who would normally go through unecessary biopsies. "In the U.S. each week, approximately 16,000 women undergo unnecessary, surgical breast biopsies on suspicious tissue that turns out benign.""

aihacker writes "This New York Times article talks about a robot that lays fiber-optic lines in city sewers. What a brilliant way to bridge that "last mile"!" We've run a few stories about wiring (is that the right term for running fiber-optic cable?) cities for broadband, but the actual procedure is pretty interesting.

mgoodrum writes "Emily Dresner-Thornber has posted an editorial/rant about Linux's viability as an end-user OS over at Netslaves. An interesting mix of criticism and her history as a Linux user." I think she's on the right track, but most of the places she says "Linux" I would substitute "one distribution". GNU/Linux need not be a monolithic entity to be adopted, there just has to be one user-proof distro available.

Several people have submitted stories about the bad news that Yahoo released today (it seems appropriate to link to the story on their site). They appear to be having the same difficulty with ad revenue that is hitting everyone else. It's not a good time to be dependent on revenue from dot-coms that are themselves struggling to stay afloat.

phil reed writes "This article at The Register provides a deeper view of what has started out as the discussion about copy protected hard drives. Basically, the author is saying that the end of the general-purpose PC is in sight, and we're likely to end up with special purpose appliances (witness Tivo) with all kinds of built-in copy protection. He does a good job of justifying his view, and it's depressing. Comments?"

s3hel writes "As if things weren't already hard enough, online retailers are experiencing yet another e-rip-off: electronic price tag alteration. This is kind of neat, set your own price for that new laptop! " Basically it points out a very simple vulnerability in web applications. It's nothing surprising at all, people do this sort of stuff to Slashdot all the time -- fortunately we're not selling anything ;)

AYeomans writes: "LINE version 0.3 has just been released.'LINE is a utility which executes unmodified Linux applications on Windows by intercepting Linux system calls. The Linux applications themselves are not emulated. They run directly on the CPU just like all other Windows applications.' Could this be the thin end, to which the Linux wedge is attached, allowing people currently tied to Windows the opportunity of easily using native Linux applications?" I wonder how many Windows users are actively waiting for Linux programs to use. (TuxRacer one day maybe?) The version number is low but this is an interesting, oddball project.

twivel was one of many to send this in: "According to this article a hacker has obtained top secret space codes that could yield access to guiding ships, rockets and satellites. Why launch your own spy satellite when you can just borrow ours?" The funny thing is that the code was stolen only a couple of days after it was deployed.

twivel was one of many to send this in: "According to this article a hacker has obtained top secret space codes that could yield access to guiding ships, rockets and satellites. Why launch your own spy satellite when you can just borrow ours?" The funny thing is that the code was stolen only a couple of days after it was deployed.

frankie writes "Several news agencies are reporting that Sun is breaking the $1000 mark with its Blade 100 workstation. It's got USB, FireWire, and PCI -- aimed at competing with the x86 desktop market. One thing it doesn't have, though, is any mention at all on Sun's own web site..."

Lumpish Scholar writes "This Interactive Week article suggests that P2P is a wonderful thing, the direction the Internet is going ... and utterly breaks ISPs' business models, to the extent they may raise their monthly rates, or at least offer two-tier plans that will charge some users more. If true, ISPs might be seeing cost increases from two directions: more dialup ports (because users are staying on longer, so peak usage increases), and fatter pipes to their upstream or peer ISPs. On the other hand, to quote the article: "We're seeing greater decreases in the cost of the bandwidth than we are seeing increases in individual bandwidth usage." A price increase might or might not be justified, but Slashers will surely be interested if increases are coming." People have been making this arguement for a while - remember when web surfing started to become common, and people stayed on for longer, the ISPs claimed the same things.

Lumpish Scholar writes "This Interactive Week article suggests that P2P is a wonderful thing, the direction the Internet is going ... and utterly breaks ISPs' business models, to the extent they may raise their monthly rates, or at least offer two-tier plans that will charge some users more. If true, ISPs might be seeing cost increases from two directions: more dialup ports (because users are staying on longer, so peak usage increases), and fatter pipes to their upstream or peer ISPs. On the other hand, to quote the article: "We're seeing greater decreases in the cost of the bandwidth than we are seeing increases in individual bandwidth usage." A price increase might or might not be justified, but Slashers will surely be interested if increases are coming." People have been making this arguement for a while - remember when web surfing started to become common, and people stayed on for longer, the ISPs claimed the same things.

Gendou_Knepper writes: "The ancient and beloved proto-anime classic, Robotech, is being brought to DVD by AD Vision at only $15 per six-episode disc. Check out the article at the new official site. On a side note, the original Japanese version, Macross, is being brought to us by the wonderful folks at Animeigo." Now if only someone would do the same for Starblazers (in Region 1 anyway)... also interesting, moonboy submitted an AICN story linking to info about Ghost in the Shell 2 .

remy the man writes: "Yahoo has a story about some group [the Internet Advertising Bureau -- t.] basically wanting to have larger banner ads on websites. If they weren't already annoying enough, this group wants to make them bigger." Betcha didn't know there was a group called the "Internet Advertising Bureau. (Which despite its quasi-official sounding name, is an organization of advertisers, not a regulator body.) Look out soon for ads like the Wide Skyscraper (160 x 600 pixels) and -- even more fun -- a standardized pop-up ad (250 x 250). Mmmm.

One year ago, we ran a story about the effects of Napster on the RIAA's 1999 profits, which Michael gave the great title: "Pirates Steal Negative $1,400,000,000 from Music Industry." It's a year later, the new numbers are out, and the RIAA is lying through their pointy little teeth about them. The AP wire story's second paragraph says "Sales of music compact discs fell by 39% last year," which they would have quickly seen was a blatant lie if they'd bothered to look at the numbers. Fortunately, Slashdot is here to bust up the spin. Keep reading, if you aren't afraid of numbers.

(Update one hour later by J : The story was on the AP wire, e.g. here, so it's not the BBC's fault. It was unfair of me to single out the Beeb when they just happened to be the source the submittor submitted this morning.)

The RIAA's figures were released last week, but the AP story was delayed until Monday, when the story would get the most exposure.

CD sales plummeted last year in the U.S. and record industry officials say the figures prove that Napster, the Internet music-sharing service, has harmed their business.

Sales of music compact discs fell by 39% last year according to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).

"Napster hurt record sales," said RIAA president Hilary Rosen.

This article reads like it might have been ghost-written by someone from the record industry. It isn't until paragraph ten that journalistic integrity kicks in enough for the AP to quietly mention what they're actually talking about:

Some experts say [sic] the drop of CD singles as being part of an industry-wide slump, due to economic factors and a weak year musically. (Emphasis mine.)

That's right, CD singles. Unit sales for the singles were down 39%, revenue down 36% (they raised prices, of course).

And CD singles account for how much of the RIAA's profits?

Not quite one percent.

Yes, that's right: they lost 36% of 1% of their profits.

And the news media is reporting it as a 39% loss.

The facts are that their "CD sales" are up this year, even over last year's stunning performance. The RIAA increased the average price of a full-length CD from $13.65 to $14.02, and still managed to sell 3,600,000 more of them.

Total profit increase on this, the core of their business, was 3.1%, or just shy of an extra $400,000,000.

But full-length CDs only account for 92% of the RIAA's revenue. They did have weak performance in the other 8%. CD singles, as already noted, dropped revenue by 36%. But the real casualty percentage-wise was cassingles, which lost over 90% of its revenue from last year.

Gee, why could that be? Maybe because nobody wants them?

In fact, the RIAA's only real money-losing format of any significance was cassettes, which, along with music videos, were the only format actually cut in price. Cassette revenue dropped $436 million.

Wait a minute, what am I saying? "Money-losing"? They aren't losing money on cassettes -- they're just not raking it in this year as fast as last year. And gee, why might that be? Again, because nobody wants them?

And it's not like the RIAA is struggling to get by on slim profits. The big picture is that, in the last nine years, they have tripled their annual income.

But they are desperate to spin this as a loss. The actual fact is that their total revenue is down 1.8% from 1999. Last year, they made $14,584,500,000. This year, they made $14,323,000,000.

But how could they blame Napster if they told the truth? What would they say? "Napster is killing us! Our income is down almost two whole percent! We are only pulling in $14,323,000,000 this year!"

That probably wouldn't fly.

Especially because in the three categories which Napster has precisely zero effect on -- cassettes, vinyl, and music videos -- their combined year-to-year loss was $579.5 million.

That's right. In the digital formats which Napster can trade, they are making more money: $318,500,000 more revenue. In the analog and video formats where Napster is irrelevant, they are making less money: $579,500,000 less revenue.

That's the real story here.

But don't trust the press to report this one fairly. Don't trust the RIAA's press release. Go read the RIAA's numbers yourself.

(Hell, don't even trust those numbers -- they don't add up. I was silly enough to type them into a spreadsheet, and someone over there has some problems doing simple arithmetic. Their 1998 total revenue includes the DVDs twice.)

The RIAA is desperately trying to spin this so that they won't look like greedy bastards for turning down Napster's offer of a billion dollars over the next five years.

If they just took that generous offer, then -- in a year that the AP wire suggests might be an "industry-wide slump, due to economic factors and a weak year musically," and in a year for which Bertlesmann admits "we didn't put that much good stuff out" -- their revenue would only be down $111,000,000 from last year. And that would have been $750,000,000 more than they made in 1998.

But that isn't enough for them.

Why would anyone think the RIAA is greedy? They just want what's coming to them.

(Update one hour later by J : Mea culpa. Three paragraphs up, I originally calculated the numbers as if the billion dollars was all applied in one year; that isn't so. The billion would have been applied equally over the next five years. Actually it probably wouldn't have been applied to year-2000 revenue at all, so it's more of a rhetorical point than anything. Thanks to dachshund for pointing out that it wasn't a lump-sum payment.)

(Update four hours later by J : The AP wire seems to have updated its story, now stating explicitly that it's CD singles, not "CDs," which dropped 39%. I see factually correct versions now at CNN, Salon, Yahoo, and wire.ap.org (search on Napster). The BBC version is still incorrect. In my opinion, the new versions are still misleading. Focusing on a large percentage drop within a subcategory which is a tiny percentage of the whole is a classic example of how to lie with statistics. But compare this to the RIAA's press release, claiming that CD singles had "flat growth in '98 and '99," though 1998 revenue actually dropped 22% -- that's just plain lying.)

hooptie asks: "For the past three years, I've been employed by a contract agency to develop medical outcomes measurement software for a military medical center. Since neither of my immediate corporate nor military superiors really understand the GPL, they've all agreed to license the software under it; and from day-one, everything developed has been released under the GPL, with my name as the holder of the copyright. Now, this 'home grown' system is actually being looked at by the MEDCOM commanders to be deployed Army wide; and, there are some people in the chain of command, under the auspices that the Department of Defense owns the software and that THEY didn't agree to the licensing, don't want to adhere to it because they want to incorporate it's functionality into a closed, propietary system that they've been developing. If I've followed the appropriate steps for applying the GPL to the software, do I have any recourse if they try to close the source? Is this situation parallel to the ASPL or am I missing something?"

RapaNui asks: "I'm working on a project that uses a remotely controlled camera for video and still work. It currently uses a small board camera and a microwave (analog) downlink for video (the video feed is only used for targeting the onboard DVcam and still camera). Anyway, the telemetry downlink has just been upgraded and we now have 50-60 Kbps available that (if possible) we would like to use for a video downlink. All we need is 1/4 frame (PAL, 384x288) at around 2-5 fps What I was thinking of is a PC/104 or similar PC, running Linux and a vid-capture card (or an old parallel port video capture box - Snappy?). Whatever it is needs to be relatively small and light. Are there any usable (under linux) PC/104 or similar video capture (or still capture) cards? Or is there a unit (like some of the cams made by Axis) that could take video (composite or S-video) in one end and dump out a serial data stream at the other end? (This would be preferable, 'cause it would mean less hardware, and complexity on that end)."

Lumpish Scholar writes "The Chicago Tribune (no registration required:-) has this long awaited article on Web-based cartoons and cartoonists. (A couple of Web-based cartoonists put together the recent Berkely Breathed interview, as reported here.) The Trib article mentions some of my favorite online cartoons: Kevin and Kell, College Roomies From Hell, and Helen, Sweetheart of the Internet (now in dead tree syndication and online here). Other sources: Keenspot, hosting service for forty online strips; Planet Cartoonist's list of the top 100 online comic strips; a similar list from Big Panda; Yahoo!'s same-day-as-the-papers strips; King Features; Comics.com, home of Dilbert (a.k.a. Dilbert.com), Peanuts (Snoopy.com), and other United Media comic strips, and cartoons from the New Yorker; Plan 9 Publishing, bringing online comics to dead trees near you; oh, yeah, and let's not forget that other online strip." I just wish Gary Larson would come back.

Lumpish Scholar writes "The Chicago Tribune (no registration required:-) has this long awaited article on Web-based cartoons and cartoonists. (A couple of Web-based cartoonists put together the recent Berkely Breathed interview, as reported here.) The Trib article mentions some of my favorite online cartoons: Kevin and Kell, College Roomies From Hell, and Helen, Sweetheart of the Internet (now in dead tree syndication and online here). Other sources: Keenspot, hosting service for forty online strips; Planet Cartoonist's list of the top 100 online comic strips; a similar list from Big Panda; Yahoo!'s same-day-as-the-papers strips; King Features; Comics.com, home of Dilbert (a.k.a. Dilbert.com), Peanuts (Snoopy.com), and other United Media comic strips, and cartoons from the New Yorker; Plan 9 Publishing, bringing online comics to dead trees near you; oh, yeah, and let's not forget that other online strip." I just wish Gary Larson would come back.

Salsaman writes "The company which cloned Dolly the sheep has now apparently succeeded in turning cow skin cells into heart cells."

Slashback is back this evening with more on censorship down under, games that you'll brag to your grandchildren you were glad to be beaten with a hot iron while playing, and more. Enjoy with care.

"Luxury!" DagBot writes: "TW2002 is still alive and can also be played as TCPIP telnet No BBS need to log into. Its called TWGS (Trade Wars Game Server). There is Still TW2002 communities going strong and I run a TWGS server now and have about 40 regular players playing. There is no large time-wasting BBS to log into, but its quick and easy to get into a game and get back to the good old days where you had to know how to read and have quick fingers to play.

There are also 2 TW2002 helpers that will run right out of the box with full telnet and ANSI support along with user-edited and scripts. Both are great programs Attac uses REXX scripts and Swath uses a Java based script for user defined scripts. Both will get you up and playing in a few minutes thinking about the good old days. My TW2002 stand alone server can be found [here] login, play, get a feel for the good old days."

Until everyone has one, it will keep being submitted, and maybe even then. azephrahel writes: "I am sure almost all of Slashdot's readers have drooled over the possibilities that many of the pc-on-a-stick products now offer. You can buy the uCsimm for $300, the matchbox PC for only $1,495, from emj you can get a 386 on a stick for $130 but you have to fit all your os & code & drivers into .9 Megs. Still that is probably the most reasonable, and made by Jumptech. They make fun toys, but there hard to buy peicemeal at a decent price.

Anyway after all that rambling, I just found this companies site, there called i-Button. They sell java computers called TINI, in a 72 pin simm format, and little button shaped devices called i-buttons (yes the thing in the java ring featured on slashdot in March) The important part, they sell peicemeal, reasonably. I just blew $120 bucks on their site and ended up with a java computer on a stick (TINI, complete with an ethernet controller onboard), a javabutton, a tempterature probe, and a project board to hook up and play with these toys on.
I figured that a few others here would like to hear they can get these toys without selling a spleen."

All these things have been mentioned on Slashdot before, but it looks like the era of ubiquitous little tiny parts has arrived, and at a price level sustainable by occasional weekend medical experiments, too.

Fraidja can't see that w'out p'mission, bub. For those of you unhappy with the apparent moves toward censorship in South Australia, Danny Yee writes: "Electronic Frontiers Australia has put online analysis of the South Australian legislation and suggestions for action."

travisbecker writes "As a follow-up to this ./ article, take a look at this U. of Washington study (article courtesy of SpaceDaily.com) that shows that *if* other dimensions exist, as postulated in string theory, these dimensions would have to occupy a space smaller than 0.2 millimeter. Research is continuing in the 0.1 millimeter regime. The findings will be published in the Feb. 19 issue of Physical Review Letters."

root_dev_X ventures: "Admittedly, this is a random question, but here goes - Does anyone out there know of any ways to totally erase the data on a drive? Some friends of mine got into a discussion about this not too long ago; one of them told me they had heard from a friend in the military that they hooked up old HDDs to modified stun-guns and zapped them in order to totally erase them - apparently this method scrambled the magnetic field of the disk, leaving the data irrecoverable. Does this work? Are there any other methods for "data-destruction" (keeping the platter intact, that is)?" A nice "obliberate data to the point of senselessness" tool would be nice -- or is keeping the platter intact a senseless question if you want true security?

Monkeyman334 writes "Here is an article about a student who was suspended for making a parody site about his vice principal, and the ACLU filed a lawsuit because they felt it was a violation of his free speech rights. The judge sided with the ACLU and the student was awarded $62,000. Someone should let these guys know."

Ggggeo writes: "I saw this story at Yahoo! about Sony in a deal with Sega and Namco about networked arcade games. Not just local networked games, but wide area networked games you can play in one arcade against other players in other arcades far, far, away. The article also mentions DoCoMo (in regard to bringing iPhone content to your TV through a PlayStation.) Basically it will be a pumped-up version of the home PlayStation with lots of additions and enhancements (cameras, monitors, and high speed networks among others)."

twivel writes "This Yahoo article clarifies their position. It is not "open source" software that "destroys intellectual property", but in fact it's the GNU General Public License that does. I can't wait for RMS' response. " What's interesting is their retroactive clarification that it's about taxpayer-supported software - a silly assurance, IMHO. Why? Because taxpayer software should be kept open - we paid for it, we should be able to use it. Locking it up into companies is not the answer - but Microsoft at least acknowledges other potentials, like the BSD license ^[?] . Check out Dan Gillmor's take on this - well done.

prac_regex was the first to write with news of planned cuts announced today for VA Linux. "The title doesn't say it all, but it says a lot. Yahoo reports the cost cutting VA implemented today." VA reported higher-than expected per-share losses, and announced some big organizational changes as well. Guess "playing in the big leagues" means taking the occasional bean-ball. (Note: OSDN, of which Slashdot is a part, is itself part of VA, in case you hadn't heard;))

ECaldwell writes: "It looks as though Sharp is stepping up to the PDA plate with a unit (the Zaurus) that uses Linux instead of Palm, CE or a proprietary OS. These units are designed to be direct competitors with Palms, Handspring and other PDA's. The timing for a release of is planned for around Christmas. The problems for Palm and CE devices so far is the limit of easy to use programming languages which makes it difficult for a novice to write even an basic progam (I don't know C or C++). The good news here is, with Linux loaded on a Zarus we should be able to use any of the great languages that Linux already supports to flood that market with good software." (Read on for more).

Lynuhx indicates a Japanese-language page where you can see a cute mockup of this thing, and denisbergeron points to these two links on yahoo for a bit more: [(1) and (2)] Sharp's products and reputation seem to have languished in the U.S., so this planned offensive will be interesting -- especially if by Christmas, "Linux PDAs" has become a crowded field.

ECaldwell writes: "It looks as though Sharp is stepping up to the PDA plate with a unit (the Zaurus) that uses Linux instead of Palm, CE or a proprietary OS. These units are designed to be direct competitors with Palms, Handspring and other PDA's. The timing for a release of is planned for around Christmas. The problems for Palm and CE devices so far is the limit of easy to use programming languages which makes it difficult for a novice to write even an basic progam (I don't know C or C++). The good news here is, with Linux loaded on a Zarus we should be able to use any of the great languages that Linux already supports to flood that market with good software." (Read on for more).

Lynuhx indicates a Japanese-language page where you can see a cute mockup of this thing, and denisbergeron points to these two links on yahoo for a bit more: [(1) and (2)] Sharp's products and reputation seem to have languished in the U.S., so this planned offensive will be interesting -- especially if by Christmas, "Linux PDAs" has become a crowded field.

z7209 asks: "I'm reading this article on Salon about audio streaming (MS v RealNetworks!), and happened to be asked last week to advise my company to make a recommendation for Webcasting and audio streaming server software. I dutifully researched MS, RealNetworks, QuickTime and other even more propietary software. None of these are great for one reason or another. But it now occurs to me that I don't even know how to implement the above on my favorite OS (nope, not Linux) FreeBSD. Where is OSS streaming server software? Is Icecast.org the answer? Shouldn't we focus on providing an alternative to these ugly propietary systems, esp. for such an important purpose?"

An unnamed correspondent writes: "The University of California school systems is considering to stop using SAT scores in college admissions. Story at Yahoo." The usual double-edged sword here: the SATs, ACTs and similar tests may be close to worthless, but other factors (like how GPAs ^[?] are calculated and weighted) varies wildly from school to school. (What might a GPA of 3.9 at Stuyvesant High be worth elsewhere, for instance?)

angst_ridden_hipster writes: "OK, living in Southern California where the sun always shines (except this week) and the energy's getting scarce, the plan's become to put up a solar system at the new house. I'm well aware that there's no "economic sense" to buying a system like this -- even with the current rebates, it's more expensive than buying electricity elsewhere. It's more of a philosophical thing; I'd rather generate/buy expensive electricity than buy relatively cheaper electricity that results in more air pollution, etc. I recognize not everyone shares this philosophy, but that's not really what I want to discuss here. I want to talk hardware. In any case, I've been looking around online, and there's a lot of contradictory and incomplete information." Would some of you folks out there who happen to work with solar power hardware care to clear up some of the contradicitons?

"Based on what information I have been able to find, here's what I think I'll need:

Current usage is a squanderous 10kWH/day average. I'm figuring that a 1kW system would probably handle around half of that on sunny days. I figure doing a grid-tied system is probably the cheapest/easiest, and I'm not too concerned about maintaining backup power when the grid's down. (A grid-tied system basically pumps any energy that you generate and you don't use out onto the grid, turning your meter back... you sell to the Electric Co. In order to protect the line workers, it doesn't output any energy when the grid's down.) That leaves me with some consumer-oriented system like the Trace Engineering Sun Tie system, ten Siemens SR100 panels, plus cables, mounting hardware, lightning arrester, and some form of PV ground fault interrupters.

Is this a reasonable system? Does anyone know about better/cheaper/more-efficient configurations? Anyone have any suggestions and/or experience on this stuff?"

Nick pointed us to this AP story about self-healing composites, fibrous materials with integrated, fungible glue capsules - so that each stress which breaks fibers also breaks the glue capsules to repair those fibers. Very cool stuff, especially if they could make the glue set fast enough to repair in "real time". The Washington Post has another article about the same thing with a bit more detail.

Dan93 writes: "Here is an article on what is planned for GNOME 2.0. Pretty interesting stuff such as GNOME VFS, and the cleanup work that is supposed to fix every known architectural problem in GNOME." Also, I heard at LWCE as well from the Eazel folks that by this point in the evolution (ha ha) of GNOME, the nearly-ready-for-prime-time Eazel desktop will be included as well.

10 Yogurts writes: "Saint Song Corp. recently announced the release of the Cappuccino G1, successor to their acclaimed pocket PC, the Espresso. Although no longer a "pocket PC," due to the docking bay's features being integrated into the unit, the Cappuccino is a very small (and very, very cool) set-top box--and Saint Song is specifically touting "Linux compatibility." What does the Cappuccino have that the Espresso didn't? How about S-Video and RCA outs, Ethernet, swappable DVD-ROM/CD-RW drive, V.90 modem, 16-bit sound, IrDA support, more bus ports, and a new chipset (i810E), to name a few. Impress Watch (Japanese text) has several photos of the box, including two interior shots. Tsukomo, also in Japanese, has even more photos, and is selling the units for ¥84,800 (about US$720)." It looks like a sleek little device - and is cheaper then the iPaq I bought from the shady looking store in NYC. But does anyone have more detailed information? Please post below, if so.

Richie asks: "For the third time in as many months, I have had a rebate request rejected after having followed the instructions on the rebate form to the letter. This time it was a $35 rebate from Intuit for buying Quicken and Turbotax. I received a a letter from Intuit's rebate fulfillment company stating that my rebate is being rejected as I purchased the product directly from Intuit. This is after submitting the appropriate proof a purchase along with a receipt showing that product was clearly purchased from Egghead. After a call to the fulfillment company they apologize and ask that I re-submit the request. I'm still awaiting the rebate check." First it was Microsoft with their stubbornness to live up to the wording in their own EULA's regarding refunds. Now this. Why do software companies feel they are entitled to keep consumers' money after every sale, even though they may have promised to give some back?

"A month earlier, I bought a 128MB Kingston DIMM from buy.com and once again submit the rebate as instructed. A few weeks later I receive a postcard saying that my request was denied as I didn't submit the original purchase receipt showing the price of the item. After sending an e-mail to the fulfillment company stating that I submitted the only receipt that I had from buy.com which is the print out of the Web page after you complete your order, I receive a response stating that my rebate has been approved. This particuliar rebate was an offer only valid through buy.com and Kingston which makes it difficult for me to believe that the fulfillment company wouldn't know what a receipt from buy.com looks like. I'm also still awaiting the rebate check.

I'm beginning to wonder if this is just a case of bad luck or whether these rebates are only a scam by companies to get people to buy the products due to the advertised after-rebate prices, and then they figure that most people won't submit the rebate requests to begin with and for those that do, they will make it as difficult as possible to receive the promised rebate money."

Anonymous Coward writes: "This story will be very interesting for women and space geeks. A State University of New York at Stonybrook researcher has invented a machine that stimulates bone growth in subjects by just having them stand on a vibrating platform. A sheep using the gizmo 20 minutes a day had 20% denser bones after only a year. The idea was to help post-menopausal women, but now it might be used to strengthen astronauts' bones before and during flights. As you know, bones in zero gravity tend to get weaker and more brittle. The weird part is how the device works. Muscle builds by responding to damage, but that's apparently not how bone gets stimulated into growing. It seems that muscle contractions occur within frequencies of 20-50Hz and bones "hear" that oscillation as a message to build up. According to the article, the platform mimics that signal by vibrating undetectably within those frequencies. Cool, huh? Here's the story."

fenrissmurf writes: "The New York Times reports on new measurements of muons, done at the Brookhaven National laboratory. The muons didn't behave as expected, and scientists are saying that the "classical model" is now in doubt." We just posted another story about this, but the NYTimes article is good. There's another NYT article about a certain quantum force that I thought was interesting, too.

Falrick writes "Microsoft, the company that has its fingers in inumerable pies, decided to follow suit by also placing their toes in them with this anouncement yesterday that they will also be moving into the embedded chip market. While the article doesn't say that Microsoft will actually be producing chips, they are apparantly licensing special versions of WindowsCE for use on a variety of chips including those made by Intel, ARM and MIPS. On the upside, though, for those of you who would like to get back those licensing fees, or Microsoft Tax, that you paid on that shiny new system a few years ago, MS may also be partenering with Bally Gaming & Systems to put WindowsNT into their casino slot machines. Now, what's the payoff on three blue-screens in a row again?"