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Much has happened in the world, some of it even worth reading about. For instance ... More on BIND and where it's headed regarding openness, licensing and other things; an update on Protozilla, and what is undoubtably not the final word on Linuxgruven, SAIR and company.

Why is there a lizard in my hard drive? chromatic writes: "The Protozilla team has responded to the earlier Slashdot article with answers to some common questions." This helps explain a lot of the questions raised in comments about why anyone would want or need to run CGI processes locally.Yet another win for documentation!

The ties that BIND make great cable-holders, too. fredpasteck writes: "LinuxSecurity.com has a FAQ from Paul Vixie that helps to explain some of the controversy and misunderstanding surrounding the ISCs creation of a 'members-only' mailing list. Perhaps the community was a bit quick in their assessment of what's going to happen?"

Do you feel reading Bugtrak makes it easier to talk to people? Speaking of BIND, to dispel any misconceptions which may have entered the minds of readers of this story (which cited the reaction of several Big Names to recent moves to restrict certain information about BIND), Kurt Seifried of Securityportal wrote to clarify:

I actually interviewed Vince/Theo/Dragos/Greg via phone/email seperately, they didn't post those things to Bugtraq. Although they are all Bugtraq users ... hehehehe. (that makes it sound like we're all shooting up heroin or something).

Let it not be said that Bugtraq is a controlled substance.

Stop kicking, stop kicking! A nameless shirker writes: "More 'clarifications' from Linuxgruven CEO Matthew Porter can be found during a recent discussion on the Kansas Linux and Unix Users Association(KULUA) mailing list. His answers were very evasive to what were considered very straightforward (if direct) questions. The beginning of his involvement in the discussion can be found here with follow-ups linked from that message. Other discussion on this topic before and after Porter's response can be found near near the bottom of the following archive thread page.

Just wanted to make sure everyone could see how "clear" Porter makes things in his "responses" to the questions he is asked."

xynopsis writes: "Based on the Indigo Magic Desktop on Irix, this Linux version contains a new window manager called 5dwm, an enhanced Motif library that supports the Irix look and feel, and widget sets specific to SGI. IMD goes further than those "themes" available that simulates the Irix desktop experience by allowing applications written in Irix to be ported to Linux with little modification in the GUI front-end. Linuxworld.com recently interviewed its creator, Eric Masson, who is single-handedly porting this great Unix desktop to Linux." Quote: "The first major difference between GNOME and IMD is the low-level API being used. In the case of GNOME it's GTK+, originally developed for the popular GIMP application, whereas for IMD it's Motif, a much more mature and standardized API ... "

Cynical Yorkshireman writes "I sold my soul to investment banking a long time ago ... It's nice to know that some of the Wall Street money machines are actually quite forward thinking about IT! Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein will announce today that (with Collab.net's help) that they are open-sourcing their internal systems integration toolkit. The official launch is today. Until recently I actually worked at DrKW, and have used this stuff a heck of a lot over the years. Basically, this is a toolkit that allows disparate systems to be connected (Sybase->RV->JMS->IIOP->ETX->MQ->UDB is a snap) in a very, very easy way. Without doubt one of the best pieces of software I have ever seen, and far and away the most useful! Go get it (when the site opens), and never worry about system interfacing again ..." There's also a Reuters story with more information. Note that openadaptor.org is still password-protected as I write this.

Johnathan Swift writes "As one of the biggest of the big on the Internet, Yahoo! is hardly a favorite of those Slashdot folks who like their net small and personal. Yet among its competition as a mega-portal -- AOL and MSN -- Yahoo! is different, and not just because it relies on free software like FreeBSD and Linux. This article in the San Jose Mercury News claims that, unlike the others, it still serves as a portal to the greater Internet rather than the "walled gardens" of AOL or MSN that try to isolate people from the rest of the net. If Yahoo! should merge with or be acquired by a media company like Disney or Viacom, it, too, would become such a walled garden, and the Internet would be that much closer to control by a few large corporations."

An anonymous reader wrote in to say that Cray has announced that they will be selling their own Linux Beowulf clusters. They're apparently gonna be working with Scyld on the software, and they of course have some crazy hardware (of course the name is SuperCluster, but I guess stupid names are nothing new ;)

_ZorKa_ writes "Yahoo.Com is running an article about the latest partnership of Red Hat and Eazel. The future versions of Red Hat will include Eazel's Nautilus software package. The idea is to use the software as a desktop interface which also automatically updates Linux."

rampant_gerbil writes: "Apparently a company called Syngenta has sequenced the entire genome of the rice plant. Here is a link to the corporate press release. As the story points out, "Rice is the model for the other grasses, including corn and wheat," so this sounds like quite a milestone. Now if only they would engineer some nacho cheese flavor into those rice cakes..."

Tiburana writes: "NASA recently held a conference called "The Physics and Biology of Making Mars Habitable". The current line of inquiry is to introduce microbes to recreate the greenhouse effect that is wreaking havoc on our environemnt to raise the temperature of the Martian surface to accomodate the types of life with which we are familiar. " The submittor also expressed some concerns about how humans handling of the Earth - and whether we'll repeat the same problems on other planets.

Lepruhkawn writes: "As described in this Yahoo article , scientists say they plan to clone members of infertile couples. I imagine that it's not so much success that people are concerned about as the failed attempts. Alien: Resurrection anyone?"

JakusMinimus was one of several readers to point out that -- note my spelling carefully now -- etoy, the envelope-pushing European art group, has filed a lawsuit against eToys, the money-losing California company. I spoke with etoy's lawyer last night; he said that he has been trying to negotiate with eToys for six months, but that eToys is (not surprisingly) continuing to pursue its trademark on "ETOYS", which etoy (not surprisingly) feels endangers its right to continue using its name. etoy wants to see eToys barred from using that name in business, including using the domain name etoys.com -- basically, it wants the company to change its name. Here's the Reuters story, and here's the etoy press release. My thoughts below.

Is there confusion between the two names? eToys seems to think so, since it got etoy's website taken down in December 1999 for exactly that reason. The site was put back up later, and eToys' legal action halted, mostly because etoy was using its name, and had its website, long before eToys even existed.

And I can especially see why etoy is worried, since eToys has also filed a trademark application on "ETOYS" in the context of providing "interactive and arcade games via a global computer network." Which is, well, pretty darn close to what the artistic group has been doing for the last five years.

So if there's confusion, it really seems like eToys brought this on itself. When it set up in the first place, simply checking for the singular version of its corporate name would seem to me like a gimme. Failure to do so would seem like a clear-cut case of infringement.

Things are a little more confusing than that, though. The trademark that eToys bought was actually registered by an unrelated company in 1990 ("Etna Toys") -- the law starts to give me a headache at this point. Only a lawyer could love the difference between a trademark application and an Intent To Use declaration, I think. The resolution of this one may come down to whether it's appropriate to purchase a trademark of another company without actually purchasing the company itself, or any of its equipment, inventory, etc. In other words, are words themselves, words given legal protection by our government, subject to being bought and sold on the open market?

An interesting question. Not the same question as whether etoy.com and etoys.com should be able to coexist on the same internet despite unreconciliable philosophical differences, but ... an interesting question.

We'll keep you posted on how this one turns out. It's essentially the inverse of the fiasco in late 1999, with the lawsuit (apparently) pointed in the correct chronological order this time. Whether eToys will even exist as a company by the time this suit is resolved is, unfortunately, an open question.

Ravn0s writes "Pluto, subject of much controversy since it's discovery, has now been demoted from a planet. The Rose Center for Earth and Space, which opened last year at the American Museum of Natural History in New York is now saying that Pluto is not necessarily a planet at all but just a smallish lump of ice. Essentially, Pluto is now a largish comet. Details in this article." Other groups disagree, as the article points out.

evenprime writes "Zdnet is reporting that N2H2 is selling statistics from their BESS filtering software (a product designed for use in schools) to marketing companies who are interested in students' browsing habits." N2H2's stock price jumped dramatically last month when they put up a helpful website to explain how schools can comply with the new federal mandate which requires the installation of censorware. And just wait for the profit reports once Europe makes it mandatory too. Anyway, this selling-traffic-patterns story is interesting because it's the next logical step in the continuing trend to cash in on kids -- if anyone gets suspended for reading Coke.com on Pepsi Day, let us know, OK?

evenprime writes "Zdnet is reporting that N2H2 is selling statistics from their BESS filtering software (a product designed for use in schools) to marketing companies who are interested in students' browsing habits." N2H2's stock price jumped dramatically last month when they put up a helpful website to explain how schools can comply with the new federal mandate which requires the installation of censorware. And just wait for the profit reports once Europe makes it mandatory too. Anyway, this selling-traffic-patterns story is interesting because it's the next logical step in the continuing trend to cash in on kids -- if anyone gets suspended for reading Coke.com on Pepsi Day, let us know, OK?

gmr2048 writes "CNN is reporting that scientists have named a dinosaur species the "Masiakasaurus knopfleri". I dont know about you, but I'd have voted for a "KeithRichards-o-saurus" before a knopfleri."

quakeaddict wrote to us with the news that Open Source Development Lab has gotten two (initial) new projects approved. The first is dedicated to increasing Linux TCP/IP concurrent support from 20,000 to more than 40,000 connections, while the second is focused on scaling Linux to support applications running on 16- and 64-way systems. The wire story is out now with more details.

djradon writes: "According to this link, Microsoft and Sun have settled the Java lawsuit. Looks like Microsoft won't be supporting Java in any way, anytime soon, which is too bad because I think the ability to write COM components in Java was the best development option for IIS."

Rurik writes: "Over at MCV, a UK based site, they have a front page article about the death of the DreamCast. It seems Sega is losing too much money off the DreamCast, and are halting all production." An unnamed reader also points out this feature on cex.co.uk on same. Patrick Lewis writes of the move: "... and this time they mean it. Yahoo/Reuters says so." And of course, there's also coverage at Daily Radar, too. Update: 01/23 10:21 PM by T : Note that many of these stories prominently feature the denial by Sega representatives of the quitting-hardware reports; according to both the Nikkei news service and the Nihon Keizai Shimbun, though, sales will halt once the current inventory is gone. Sure sounds like quitting to me.

Newsforge (also owned by the sinister Andover keiretsu) is reporting on Corel's latest move in the world of Linux - an advance in the retrograde direction. Corel apparently plans to sell off its Debian-based distro, but retain WordPerfect and CorelDraw. Yahoo and Linux Today also have stories.

yulek writes "This AP article summarizes the IPCC report released today which states that global temperatures will rise as much as 5.8 degrees instead of the 3.5 degrees (C) originally estimated for the period between 1990 and 2100. The U.S. is still the primary culprit responsible for 25% of climate affecting pollution."

NanotechNews.com writes: "The article describes a new milestone in the Top Down nanotechnology process: "Exponential assembly is a manufacturing architecture starting with a single tiny robotic arm on a surface. This first robotic arm makes a second robotic arm on a facing surface by picking up miniature parts ? carefully laid out in advance in exactly the right locations so the tiny robotic arm can find them ? and assembling them. This is an exponential growth rate, hence the name exponential assembly." Standard MEMS, the largest independent high-volume manufacturer of Micro Electro Mechanical Systems and Zyvex created a partnership, the second article available here. This partnership could lead to a better assembling technology in MEMS and the Top-Down Nanotechnology and Nanolithography."

Logic Bomb writes: "The New York Times has a story (free reg req) on the latest twist in the battles over High Definition Television. The FCC has concluded that cable companies can not be compelled to carry both the digital and analog versions of a broadcast station's signal. This will definitely make the transition period to full digital even more turbulent, since in individual markets people who have or have not updated their viewing equipment may end up watching different channels." deebaine points also to this CNN story on same; all this HDTV is going to get worse before it gets better.

Kyudosha asks: "With the recent emergence of some of these high-quality SNES emulators for Dreamcast, I find myself wondering about those emulators that aimed to do the same thing for the PSX. I seem to remember a few... what happened to them? The PSX has good hardware, it should be able to handle SNES emulation, shouldn't it? Plus, with the advent of some of these compilers for the PSX, wouldn't it be easier to port, say, SNES9x to to the PSX?"

Talespinner writes: "Wired has this article on THX certification being ready for the PC. Lucasfilm, in combination with Dell, created the new THX-certification standard for the PC. The new systems for Dell start around $2000 and come ready with "multimedia speakers, Dolby Digital surround sound and integrated audio and video systems." "

MrWeird writes: "I just found this and this over on Yahoo News. Apparently, Microsoft has been threatening a startup called Crossgain to sue them about noncompete agreements of former MS employees they had hired. The company had to let go 25% of their staff including CEO and two founders, all former MS employees. The second Yahoo article has a good point about how to MS, "the competition" is almost every software company out there." I don't think Microsoft's actions make much difference in the larger scheme of things, but I found this interesting because so many people sign non-compete agreements without really thinking about the consequences. Have you signed one? What do you expect to do when you leave your current job?

MrWeird writes: "I just found this and this over on Yahoo News. Apparently, Microsoft has been threatening a startup called Crossgain to sue them about noncompete agreements of former MS employees they had hired. The company had to let go 25% of their staff including CEO and two founders, all former MS employees. The second Yahoo article has a good point about how to MS, "the competition" is almost every software company out there." I don't think Microsoft's actions make much difference in the larger scheme of things, but I found this interesting because so many people sign non-compete agreements without really thinking about the consequences. Have you signed one? What do you expect to do when you leave your current job?

wfaulk writes: "Sun has just annouced their Netra X1. It's a 1U high server w/ 400MHz UltraSPARC processor, 128 MB RAM, and a 20GB IDE drive for under $1000."

Another reader, nameless for his or her own protection, writes with more Sun hardware information: "Sun / Cobalt announced their new XTR machine ... I know a bit about it from their beta but couldn't say anything due to non-disclosure until they announced it.

It's not an AMD chip as has been reported, it uses Intel Coppermine P3's running up to 933 Mhz (or at least that's the highest they offer right now). Apparently the P3 was picked for lower heat/power consumption and so that they can do SMP in the near future. The unit we saw had a 2nd socket for SMP but the BIOS and software is not ready for it for this release. I'm guessing in another 6 months or so they'll release an SMP version.

This unit also had standard IDE drives in the 4 (yep, 4 all available in the front) hotswap bays but the sleds and backplane look like their considering SCA SCSI drives in the future, all they need to do is swap the controller card and drives and everything is ready since the controller is no longer built-in to the motherboard and the backplane has SCA connectors (the sled adapts the IDE drive to an SCA connector)."

That X1, besides giving you a rack-mounted 400MHz UltraSPARC for your under-a-grand, has what I think is the largest silkscreened logo I've ever seen on a computer. Why don't they just admit they want to and start hiring graphic artists from skateboard companies?

JimRay writes "According to this C|Net article, the DivX program will soon be open source. NOTE, this is not Circuit City's failed out DVD rental plan, but a set of programs for lossy compression of digital video. Is this the mp3 for video or what?" DivX is based on MPG4 - and contrary to earlier submissions, Project Mayo has stated they own all copyrights to the code - it is not a knocked off version of Microsoft's MPG4.Update: 01/17 02:52 PM by H :Thanks to paradigm from Mayo for sending this update/correction: "This is a release of our codebase as it stands now, we have cvs, mailing lists, bug tracking, everything set up. We are working towards our current goal of releasing Divx ;-) Deux which will, of course, rock. This code works, but we are making it better. We are developing this code still, not just throwing it to the open source world for the hype, we just thought others would want in...all of our developers are on the mailing lists and activly post in our forums."

Max Entropy writes: "I can't make this up, guys. NASA plans to shoot a comet with a copper missile according to this article from Reuters' Chilean bureau. It says: 'In January 2004, a rocket would launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida, a spacecraft that would orbit the sun. In July 2005 the spacecraft would separate from a battery-powered, copper projectile that would collide with the comet 24 hours later at a velocity of 6 miles (10 km) per second....It would produce a crater the width of a football field and up to 100 feet (30 meters) deep.' They say that using copper will help get more accurate readings."

Slashback tonight brings you updates on: that silly plastic barcode scanner by that company, what's-it-called ... oh yeah, "Digital Convergence;" how to spread your genetic code the polite way; and why you won't be voting on an MS-Dell-Unisys machine unless things change from vapor to reality, soon.

Aren't you ever gonna get that thing declawed? AnonymousCowhand pointed to this NYTimes story on the CueCat. The article is a nice overview of the way the little-bar-code-reader-that-could (that could track users by serial number, that is) came to be mailed out to hundreds of thousands of people, and how successful it's been. A hint: " After partners like Forbes, Wired and other publishers distributed the CueCat device to several million subscribers, the technology was criticized by reviewers and consumers for being impractical and of limited benefit."

I'd be nearly as willing to vote with a fake machine ... Anonymous Coward writes "Forbes reports that the Microsoft, Unisys, & Dell plan to build a new voting solution is 'phony'. A Microsoft spokesman denies that the company is part of such a partnership."

My favorite line in a long time is this one: "When Unisys says it's "offering a fully integrated approach to election management," it does not mean it has something specific to offer." Well, then, just so that's clear.

Like, OMG! Chuck Borromeo wrote in response to the story that hemos posted the other day about XML, bioinformatics, and markup languages for genetic information.

He says: "I noticed your posting on Slashdot. You're right, XML will be very helpful in the Bioinformatics field. However, there is another gene expression XML DTD in the works. It's being proposed by an OMG group called MGED (www.mged.org). GEML is proprietary and is being supported by its creator Rosetta Pharmaceuticals. MGED is going to become an OMG standard and already enjoys support and contributions from a wide variety of academic and industrial leaders."

Another installment in the reprint of Jon Katz' series of columns, emails and comments is online for your perusal.

nordicfrost writes: "Everyone in Norway has aquired a law-given right to say "no" to spam. This is also happening in other countries like Germany. The spammers have to check that the people they send advertisements to aren't on the "opt-out" list, a list centrally operated by the government's National Data Register. This means that anyone sending me something I haven't requested, faces fines and up to six months of jail time." Recently a spammer got one of my addresses and is spamming me 10 times a day. Forged everything, random everything, many different messages, only a similiarities in the subject line to tie them together. At least I can filter it, but I'd love to see this ass get 6 months of jail time, especially if he's doing this to thousands of others.

psyklohps asks: "I work at a local newspaper in Dover, DE. My boss is trying to setup a forum based site that will cover local news and get responses form the community. Unfortunately bosses are not very smart, and he is trying to develop the site from scratch. So I feel that I should tell him about the forum-based-code engines that are free. Of course my first choice would be Slashcode, but after looking on Google I found alot of different engines. PHPNuke, Zope, Squish.dot, and others that I have forgotten are available. What are the pros and cons for each of them?"

Yahoo has a story up now about a class action Lawsuit against VA, which is my employer, and owns Slashdot, so of course I'm biased blah blah. Of course, I have no clue about any of the stuff in the article because it's about stock allocation by Credit Suisse during the IPO, and that sort of stuff is way outside the realm of things I have any understanding of. Update: 01/11 09:58 PM by H : The Milberg people have a website with more info and PDFs about it -- and I just tried VA, who have "categorically no comment."

Thornburg writes: "The Dreamcast Broadband adapter is finally available for sale directly from Sega's online store. I got the story from Console Wire, here." So the next time you hear someone complain about how the Internet isn't how it used to be and Why Back In The Day Sonny We Didn't Have "Keyboards," you can tell him how you "use your existing Ethernet network, DSL or Cable modem services for smooth, low-ping gameplay."

quakeaddict writes "Pretty scary stuff.....makes ya want to go home and hug your kids. Here's the story." It's pretty obvious that sooner or later, by accident or on purpose, we'll create genetically-engineered bioweapons with as much destructive potential as nuclear weapons. So far, we've managed not to wipe ourselves out with nukes.

quakeaddict writes "Pretty scary stuff.....makes ya want to go home and hug your kids. Here's the story." It's pretty obvious that sooner or later, by accident or on purpose, we'll create genetically-engineered bioweapons with as much destructive potential as nuclear weapons. So far, we've managed not to wipe ourselves out with nukes.

deebaine writes: "CNN has this article describing the settlement of the case of Toysmart.com's customer database, which Toysmart proposed to sell to the highest bidder in order to pay off their creditors. Apparently, the settlement stipulates that a Disney subsidiary will pay Toysmart $50,000, and they will destroy their own records. The FTC is hailing it as a victory."

Dredd13 writes: "According to this Yahoo!News article [note: the same story is also being carried at MSNBC and ZDNet] , anti-piracy features in Whistler "won't allow the use of the customer's product key on a PC different from the one originally activated"... which means that if you have that older computer and decide to try and move your Whistler license (that you buy at a retail outlet like Best Buy or wherever) to your new whiz-bang fast model, you'll be completely boned. The code won't actually activate without authorization from a clearinghouse first. So much, also, for high security installations (where any connectivity, whatsoever, with the outside world is verboten)... without the ability to connect to the clearinghouse to "authenticate" the product key, they too will be unable to use their license. Part of me is happy because this is obviously a Bad Move by MS and will hurt them, but what if other software vendors start to think that this is a Neat Idea? {yuk!}" It's not a new idea, and lots of software is already sold this way -- but this time it seems to have caught a lot of people's attention. Windows' ubiquity, and Microsoft's history of mostly looking the other way when it comes to illegal copying of their OS, may mean that a lot of eyes get bigger, soon.

zookie writes "According to this Reuters article, the U.S. Supreme Court has essentially upheld a Virginia law that says public employees can't access sexually explicit material from state computers. The challenge to the law was from several professors saying that the law prevented them from doing their research. I'm curious what Slashdot readers think about the effects of this ruling from the highest court in the land -- does this bode poorly for future challenges to laws censoring the Internet?" Keep in mind that Virginia already has the usual abilities to fire someone goofing off at work - the only thing this law affects is employees who have legitimate reasons to view sexually explicit art, poetry, etc. as a part of their job. If you have a sexual disorder and plan on going to a Virginia university hospital, perhaps you should reconsider - your doctor is barred by law from researching your disorder online. The first decision in the case, that was favorable to the ACLU et al., is available.

Moeses asks: "I am working on a Web site that uses the Altavista search engine software. The latest version of the site has moved most of the data from static pages to dynamic pages. This causes some issues to arise, but I've developed work arounds for most of them, such as generating pages with URL's that contain all the query string information to index the whole database and code to handle situations where a user searches for something that can't be displayed because of some state information specific to that users session, but there are still enough issues that I can't index all the states of the files that I need. Building a custom search engine for the database isn't within the budget of this project. What are you others doing to index and search your dynamic sites?"

cheese63 asks: "I was reading an article in the New York Times about the usage of geothermal energy for homes. Does anybody out there use this type of energy? If so, how viable is it in reality?"

Nevyan writes: "A conglomeration of Japanese firms plan on making space flight available to the general public. Cost: $26,000. Duration: 3 hours. Training: even a monkey (or a politician) could do it..."

Okay, we give up. Even though we ran this story a few months ago, it seems that Reuters has picked it up and slathered it all over the world, and now everyone is submitting this New! Improved! Palm Pilot Robot. Read the current story anywhere that has a Reuters feed. The design was purchased by a company called Acroname, which has a few neat pictures on their website. Personally, I'm putting in my application to be Goodlife as soon as possible.

A handful of updates and new nuggets await you below, on everything from Iraqi PlayStation purchases to package manager news of the week, in tonight's release of Slashback.

apt-get install common.sense According to this message from Pixel in the apt-rpm mailing list, Linux-Mandrake is the second RPM-based distro to use APT, after Conectiva's own distro. So, despite the existance of non-free similar products recently covered in /., APT is gaining acceptance to be the unified package manager front-end for Linux.

Can your parents install Debian?

Now there's some smidgeon of Justice for ya Foggy Tristan writes "

According to Wired news story, Uzi Nissan has won a battle, but not the war, against Nissan in a domain name dispute over nissan.com.

For now, however, Uzi Nissan must display a prominent banner on his site that tells people he has nothing to do with the car company and where people can find Nissan.

" You knew this was going to happen ... RobM9999 writes: "The BugTraq mailing list over at SecurityFocus is reporting what appears to be the first vulnerability in the NSA's Security-Enhanced Linux that was originally written about here. The original post to the BugTraq mailing list is here."

What would have been more surprising is if no security bugs were found when a project like this has its source opened to the world. Best to get that laundy clean, eh?

Could be they're just serious gamers tech81 writes "Here's an article on MSNBC that has an update to this story previously posted on Slashdot concerning Iraq possibly buying and stockpiling PS2's for military purposes. Looks like they weren't able to get an PS2's, so they grabbed the originals. . ."

So that's why the bidding on eBay went so high, eh?

Read 'em and weep The next part of our continuing reprint of Jon Katz' Hellmouth series is up.

Nevyan writes: "A group of researchers from the University of California, Berkeley are developing a device to carve patterns for microchips. They are using a method that creates a much smaller path with less distortion than traditional methods. They are trying to aim for a width of 50 nanometers for placing the maximum nuber of transistors. http://enews.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Archive/mask less-chips.html"

Nevyan wrote to us about the proposed plan to launch a satellite for the purposes of studying dark energy, by examining the acceleration of the Universe with the satellite. The satellite will be called SNAP - the Super Nova Acceleration Probe.

ewhac was one of several to inform us that Yahoo has knuckled under. Their auction site will now start using "computer software," which as we all know is infallible, to roboban auctions of Nazi and Klan items (see SFGate's story or CNN's story). France wanted its countrymen kept away from these items, and since Yahoo couldn't block the French, they blocked the stuff. Cigarettes, switchblades and used underwear are also forbidden, but it seems only the hateful stuff gets autoblocked. "Photons have neither morality nor visas" my ass. Just wait until every one of the planet's sovereignties gets a proscripted category of its own -- will I be able to sell paintings by John Wayne Gacy? Wounded Knee medals? Confederate flags? The world's full of offensive knickknacks, Yahoo, have fun banning it all.

The actual terms of service forbid: "any item which, in Yahoo!'s sole discretion, is inflammatory, offensive, unlawful, harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, tortious, defamatory, vulgar, obscene, libelous, invasive of another's privacy, hateful, racially or ethnically objectionable, or otherwise inconsistent with the spirit of Yahoo! Auctions." It's the robo-enforcement that's new.

LordXarph writes: "AP reports that on new year's day 2001, a 6 foot tall monolith has appeared in seattle. If Monolith Software weren't based in Seattle, I would be worried." Anyone have pictures of this thing? It makes me want to hum Particle Man by They Might Be Giants. Oh wait- Wrong song.Update: 01/03 04:39 AM by H :Check out the picture that a number of people sent in.

syrinx writes "Cassini has started its flyby of Jupiter. It will continue to be near Jupiter until March, when it will begin its journey towards Saturn, hopefully reaching it in 2004."

DC2001 sent us the latest internet scare piece running at Wired. This one is about companies charging for the right to link them. Of course so far this is totally unenforcable, since it would render search engines worthless (Google says they have 1,326,920,000 pages- if they had to pay even a penny for the right to have each of these links, my guess is that we'd be back to 1992.

gags bunny wrote to us with the official word from Slackware that Slack now runs on Sparc. If you've got a Sparc sitting around the download site is live - else just grab the mini-ISO image and work from there. We had a story on this recently as well.