Slashdot Mirror

rbreve writes "Celera Genomics said on Thursday it had come close to unraveling the complete genome sequence of three strains of mice. The U.S. company said it had sequenced 9.3 billion base pairs, or letters of genetic code, of DNA for the three types of mouse, about 95% of the mouse genome." The BBC has the story.

Quite a few people have submitted the the information that the Microsoft Anti-Trust Case has had its schedule set. Nov. 27 is the deadline for a submittal of MS's brief, which will be limited to 150 pages. The Justice Dept has until Jan 12, 2001 with 125 pages. And...you can read the rest.

Malk-a-mite was one of the first to e-mail about the announcement from AMD concerning their demonstration of a Dual Athlon workstation. It is using their "AMD-760 MP chipset, and next-generation Double Data Rate (DDR) memory. "Update: 10/11 06:26 PM by H : My mistake. This was a dupe article - the older story went up yesterday - Microprocessor Forum.

A reader writes: "DoCoMo has done it again. This time they have a phone where the speaker is your finger. Put your finger in your ear and listen as you speak into the mic which is integrated into the wristwatch. Also in the wrist watch is some sort of gadget which sends the sound waves up your wrist and into one of your fingers." Thanks to Cubase de Pilsen for sending me a link to one of the pictures.

Here is your regular irregular dose of Slashdot story updates and obsessive compulsion -- some of it sad, some amusing, some utterly neutral and of no caloric value. For instance: You can win more than 50 of Roblimo's personal dollars if you work really hard, and wait a really long time.

"Kilby ... Kilby .. Kilby ..." [WHACK!] BMagneton writes: "The Nobel Prize for Physics was just awarded to several electronics pioneers, notably Alferov and Kroemer, who invented a bunch of semiconductor device construction methods, and Jack Kilby, who pretty much invented the microchip. The Nobel seems to have gone to a more practical/applied achievement than it usually does." And sconeu writes: "Wired News reports that Jack Kilby have been awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his part in the invention of the IC. The prize was split with Herbert Kroemer of UC Santa Barbara and Zhores Alferov of Russia who worked on semiconductor development as well."

And as "Boo," acclaimed international film star Keanu Reeves! Godzookie2k writes: "I was bored out of my mind the other night, and stumbled to boo.com's old site to see what would pop up. Mouth agape, I read: 'Boo.com returns, October 30, 2000.' yippie, you can download the official "boo" screensaver and enter some contest. See for yourself."

Some things are worth bringing back (Old Coke, bermuda shorts), and others may not be. Frankly, I'd never heard of Boo except maybe vaguely in the background until they went bust, time number one. On the other hand, our friend Pee-Wee was pretty funny in Mystery Men, so maybe anything is possible.

A browser for your naked (P)PC; combine with image filtering, stir. Mozilla keeps getting better -- I'm not afraid to show it to anyone right now, for instance -- but it's not exactly lightweight. Anyone who's been following the progress of Galeon may be interested when Markos writes: "Tired of waiting for a lightweight browser, that supports https, frames and all the other good stuff? BrowseX may be what your looking for. 'BrowseX is an Open Source, cross-platform Web Browser written primarily in Tcl.' You can check out the screenshots, features, and download." Or, for those of the Motorola persuasion, you'll be happy to hear that, as sephus writes "Opera for Linux PPC is now available at http://opera.online.no/linux/tgz/ - by popular request from Slashdot readers :) Opera"

Remember, retailers, you better not install these on computer that you know full well are going to be loaded with a god-fearin' American OS-thingie, like Innernet 'Splorer!

"OK, Mr. Gates, Meet Mr. Ponzi. Howdya do?" robl writes "There was a suprisingly under-ranked comment in the Microsoft story yesterday [about Microsoft and Taxes], pointing to the Fool's take on Microsoft's tax situation. It does a great job of clarifying the sfgate article yesterday. You see, Microsoft exercises it's stock options by printing more stock certificates. So they really only lose the cost of the paper and toner to print the stock, and they gain the money from the employees who exercise the options."

In fairness, this is approximately the same system used to fill the hypothetical coffers of the Social Security administration, but MS probably doesn't pay $534.55 for each toner cartridge ;)

My god! And they claim to be secure!? sporri writes: "The OpenBSD homepage has been updated (or downgraded) and now announces "Three years without a remote hole in the default install!" after a root hole was discovered and exploted in a library used by chpass. The sad thing it was fixed in the "current" source tree in June.UpsideToday has an interview with Aaron Campbell." If that's the worst you can say about an OS's security, it's a pretty strong endorsement for it being exemplary in that regard. OpenBSD and Debian get my vote for Most Serious Projects. Comments on the strongest security for (any particular) default Linux distro? Makes me think about Bastille Linux ...

cprael writes "AT&T has decided that anyone using their broadband network is their customer, and any online merchant that sells them something owes AT&T a cut of the pie. They are apparently planning to charge for both delivery of the customer, and for the value of any goods/services bought by those customers. Article on Yahoo News." See also a CNN story on the same subject. Hey, it's just like the phone company takes a cut every time you phone in an order from a catalog... oh wait, they don't.

Lets start this off with some eyecandy from Mdog. Hi res pics of coronal loops meet Rob's First Rule of Art. Wow. Not enough eye candy? tradica noted that Pixar's new movie 'Monsters Inc.' now has trailers available even the the movie won't be out for a year. Course since Jobs is @ pixar, no surprise that I can't watch the clip. Instead of food for your retinas, Nerf97A4 sent in recipes that will never be used on Iron Chef since they all involve cooking with twinkies in some form or another. Deep fried Twinkies? Makes me shudder... maybe instead you should look at jedigeek fouund an online store called CyberCandy which allows you to buy candy from around the world. funferal noticed that a OECD have publshed their Privacy Statement Generator. Ant noted one wizard that that probably doesn't exist in Word. alecto sent us a fun link where you can read 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall which has code snippets to generate the song in languages from APL to zsh. PhadeRunner sent us Mr. T vs. The Matrix. and FlameSnyper sent The Matrix and Ghost in The Shell. One is slightly more serious then the other. An anonymous reader documented filling a cubicle with packing peanuts in case your boss is out of time and you need some help. Speaking of bosses, Need a weapon? WD_40 aims you at a site where you can learn how to create your own spud gun. Course you could do it the old fashioned way: pimp showed us a site dedicated to electrocuting common household stuff. Like, for example, a furby. While on the subject of electricity, loose_change sent in several links about Power meters and how they aren't exactly the best in user interface. A competition followed to try to make a better on. The winner is definitely less hostile ;) CresentCityRon sent in something you don't want to electrocute: apparently MIT students are working on Geek Porn which is pretty much what is sounds like. School officials aren't so happy about it.

grantedparole noted that Scyld has announced that they'll be releasing Beowulf 2 on tuesday. Scyld's CTO is none other then Don Becker. Presumably they'll be showing this off at ALS this week (ALS is the Atlanta Linux Showcase, and is probably the best of all the Linux shows. Since its in Atlanta, its also the only tradeshow that doesn't require me to take a connecting flight!).

Carnage4Life writes "In a radical departure from it's previous stance of security through obscurity, the Computer Emergency Response Team, CERT, has stated that it will fully disclose all vulnerabilities in software that come to it's notice 45 days after the fact whether or not companies have provided a fix. The change of policy can be found at the CERT site and there is also a story on C|net. The change is not a complete embrace of full disclosure because CERT will not release exploits as some other software security watchdogs do."

dalibor writes: "Tired of skiing in crowded tourist resorts? Why not ski from the top of Everest, where you can enjoy virgin snow and ski for 4,000 meters? Davo Karnicar from Slovenia is the first to have accomplished a full top-to-bottom ski descent from the world's tallest mountain, Mount Everest! The event was transmited live via the Internet. http://www.everest.simobil.si/" Yahoo has a great report.

Agro writes "OpenTV is is trying to broaden one of their set-top box patents to include one click shopping. They say their claim predates Amazon's by "more than three years." The press release is posted here. I can't decide if the filing is the worst part or the fact that OpenTV has a Chief Intellectual Property Officer." As well: Darrin Cardani writes "This article on Yahoo claims that OpenTV thinks that Amazon's 1-click patent infringes on one of their patents filed 3 years earlier."

Cy Guy writes "Legislation signed by California Governor Gray Davis today establishes an Office Personal Privacy within the Office of Consumer Affairs, where consumers will be able to file greivances if they feel their privacy has been violated. Read the Press Release for more info." Says it will open for business in 2002. Why the delay?

john napiorkowski asks: "I do a lot of voice recording and have been using realaudio, which distributes 'free beer' tools for the job. However, I am greatly concerned by this reliance on such a proprietary tool; is there an open standard, free software replacement available? I have tried MP3, but it doesn't sound remotely as good as realaudio for voice recording at very high compression levels. Fifteen minutes of voice compressed with realaudio is under a meg and sounds almost exactly like the original, while MP3 sounds very poor to get the file that size."

ackthpt writes: "Yahoo News is carrying this short article indicating Microsoft's preference for a five month appeal process."

ackthpt writes: "Yahoo News is carrying this short article indicating Microsoft's preference for a five month appeal process."

The European Union appears ready to shrug and say "OK" to the AOL / Time-Warner merger, while a reader brings us sad and totally unrelated news for game fans. A (plausible, but complete?) explanation of the upcoming PS/2 Crisis, if you view it as such. Also, didja ever wonder how big a trophy it takes to fit 15 syllables? Read on, read on -- it's Slashback.

"Heck, gentleman, what right have we got to approve anyhow?" WPL510 writes: "Just saw this article on Yahoo! about the AOL-TW merger. Apparently all the begging and pleading did something because the EU is about to approve their mega-merger. One concession they didn't mention was opening up AIM, of course. Great -- all we need is a bigger monopoly."

This too shall pass. Lord_Macblaster writes "The GameFan Network is no longer hosting sites. Many sites, including VoodooExtreme and my own site, Monolithic Illusions are nothing but dead links now. It's a real shame. Plenty of top notch sites were shut down. Not major news yet, but info is available here on PlanetCrap, and here on Lum The Mad."

This is the kind of thing that could get me into gaming. nomadic writes: " Electronic News reports that the PS2 shortage (mentioned before on Slashdot) may actually be DVD-related. Some analysts point to a shortage in DVD drive parts that has been affecting the notebook industry as well, but others suggest that it might be their lax CSS security.

Guess the MPAA leaning on them wouldn't be too implausible, but it's interesting if you consider that Sony's a member of that august body. Wonder how much flak they got from their brethren over the DVD copy protection workaround that Japanese gamers found earlier this year."

Another thing that could get me into gaming -- TheMyth writes: "It appears the Vivid Entertainment Group, is trying to release interactive adult movies for the Playstation 2. Read the article here that tells it all. -- I can't wait to see the field day that our government reps are gonna have with this one. Is this another "targeting adult content to kids case" or is it "targeting adult content to adults that play video games"? Censorship here we come ..."

Giving competition a good name again. An unnamed correspondent points to the results of the century's last ICFP programming contest. ICFP stands for a real mouthful: "International Conference on Functional Programming." "This year, functional languages take all the prizes; OCAML gets 1st and 2nd place, Haskell 3rd, Mercury 4th, and the judges' prize (for best image) goes to a SML/NJ team."

Battling giants has its rewards. GoldSkin writes: "The Digital Divas have reached an out-of-court settlement against Microsoft and their Digital Diva site. You may recall this article from way back in May." From their site: "In the simplest terms, Microsoft's Stacy Elliot will no longer be known as the 'Digital Diva' and Microsoft will no longer use digitaldiva.com in connection with content like that formerly available at that site. Also, in accordance with our settlement agreement, Microsoft has posted a notice at digitaldiva.com. Please visit and see for yourself."

The European Union appears ready to shrug and say "OK" to the AOL / Time-Warner merger, while a reader brings us sad and totally unrelated news for game fans. A (plausible, but complete?) explanation of the upcoming PS/2 Crisis, if you view it as such. Also, didja ever wonder how big a trophy it takes to fit 15 syllables? Read on, read on -- it's Slashback.

"Heck, gentleman, what right have we got to approve anyhow?" WPL510 writes: "Just saw this article on Yahoo! about the AOL-TW merger. Apparently all the begging and pleading did something because the EU is about to approve their mega-merger. One concession they didn't mention was opening up AIM, of course. Great -- all we need is a bigger monopoly."

This too shall pass. Lord_Macblaster writes "The GameFan Network is no longer hosting sites. Many sites, including VoodooExtreme and my own site, Monolithic Illusions are nothing but dead links now. It's a real shame. Plenty of top notch sites were shut down. Not major news yet, but info is available here on PlanetCrap, and here on Lum The Mad."

This is the kind of thing that could get me into gaming. nomadic writes: " Electronic News reports that the PS2 shortage (mentioned before on Slashdot) may actually be DVD-related. Some analysts point to a shortage in DVD drive parts that has been affecting the notebook industry as well, but others suggest that it might be their lax CSS security.

Guess the MPAA leaning on them wouldn't be too implausible, but it's interesting if you consider that Sony's a member of that august body. Wonder how much flak they got from their brethren over the DVD copy protection workaround that Japanese gamers found earlier this year."

Another thing that could get me into gaming -- TheMyth writes: "It appears the Vivid Entertainment Group, is trying to release interactive adult movies for the Playstation 2. Read the article here that tells it all. -- I can't wait to see the field day that our government reps are gonna have with this one. Is this another "targeting adult content to kids case" or is it "targeting adult content to adults that play video games"? Censorship here we come ..."

Giving competition a good name again. An unnamed correspondent points to the results of the century's last ICFP programming contest. ICFP stands for a real mouthful: "International Conference on Functional Programming." "This year, functional languages take all the prizes; OCAML gets 1st and 2nd place, Haskell 3rd, Mercury 4th, and the judges' prize (for best image) goes to a SML/NJ team."

Battling giants has its rewards. GoldSkin writes: "The Digital Divas have reached an out-of-court settlement against Microsoft and their Digital Diva site. You may recall this article from way back in May." From their site: "In the simplest terms, Microsoft's Stacy Elliot will no longer be known as the 'Digital Diva' and Microsoft will no longer use digitaldiva.com in connection with content like that formerly available at that site. Also, in accordance with our settlement agreement, Microsoft has posted a notice at digitaldiva.com. Please visit and see for yourself."

Geek Boy writes: "Yahoo is one of the many sites with the story that Microsoft has purchased 24 million non-voting shares of Corel!" So now Microsoft has Word, and a big stake in Word Perfect. Hedging your bets ain't bad, course what will this mean for the Corel Office for Linux suite? And while they are non-voting shares, this looks like a huge percentage of Corel.

gorsh writes: "Voting has begun for the at-large positions on ICANN's board of directors. If you are one of the lucky ones who was able to register as an at-large member, you should go to the site to vote now. These are the people who will help decide lots of important issues like the creation of new TLDs and who gets ownership of disputed domain names, so make your voice heard..." I'm not allowed to vote. Course, if I could, all I would do is try to get control of the .dot TLD.

bemis writes "Red Herring is running an article about Gnutella and how its success may ultimately cripple it ... also covers the background for the uninitiated (like much of the 'management-types' that read RedHerring) of Gnutella, and Nullsoft itself." The article covers a lot of ground and is worth a read.

bob_shoggoth asks: "A while ago IBM released a royalty-free motherboard design around their PowerPC chips. Have any computers based on this design actually been made? I would consider a PowerPC computer for running Linux if I could actually find a reasonably priced one. Since Linux (and the BSD's) have such good cross-platform support, why do I seem to be limited to just the x86 platform when there is a market that does not need binary backwards compatibility?"

kwhite asks: "Unlike many of the /. community I have not made the jump to Naptser, Gnutella, etc. due to the belief that I think it is wrong. I was just curious to know of what 'legal' websites there are out there that give away MP3's or some other kind of compressed music format. The only good site I have found so far is downloadsdirect.com. This site has a lot of free downloads, and others that allow you to pay by song. Just curious as to know whether anyone else has found any other good sites out there?" There is, of course, the ever popular MP3.Com but are there other sites out there that legally distribute MP3s? Do others feel as I do that the RIAA should have answered this question a long time ago? (Especially considering the fuss they've made about Napster.)

bwoodring writes "Yahoo! Business News is reporting that 3dfx has been admitted to the OpenGL Architectural Review Board. This could be an indication that 3dfx plans to retire their proprietary 3D API Glide soon in favor of the more ubiquitous (and Linux friendly) OpenGL."

bwoodring writes "Yahoo! Business News is reporting that 3dfx has been admitted to the OpenGL Architectural Review Board. This could be an indication that 3dfx plans to retire their proprietary 3D API Glide soon in favor of the more ubiquitous (and Linux friendly) OpenGL."

What will They think of next? Easier to start with what They've thought of previously. For instance: How is Steven King's online book experiment going? And speaking of Them, where lies the trend in The War Between The Pitiful RIAA and the Splendid Universities? And when will They realize that I don't want to talk into my address book, even if that's a PDA? Those people have a lot to answer for.

Allegedly U.S. $299, allegedly end-of-year, allege, allege. Good news for those of us equipped with the quaint alternative to Palm Computing's organizers, even if less than impressed by most combination PDA / phone attempts -- InaneBoy writes: "Handspring's got a bunch of pictures and details of their new 'Visor Phone' Check it out! Super-keen!"

Of course, hemos is right -- there's a reason that most phones aren't as wide as your average PDA. This one looks like a reasonable -- if expensive -- way to combine the two items, especially if it will work with the combination mic / speaker earbud things. (But shouldn't the people making Springboard modules be a little busier with my GPS reciever?)

Plus, many colleges have declined to ban copying machines, tape recorders and ethernet. carlocius writes: "It appears that my college, Michigan State University, just handed Metallica and Dr. Dre another loss in their attempt to get Napster blocked on large Universities. MSU's administators stated that the Acceptable Use Policy of the university already covers copyright issues and there is no reason for Napster to be banned before a trial. GO STATE!!!"

Likewise, jellings writes: "The University of Pennsylvania joined the ranks of leading universities who are refusing to shut down access to the Napster on their campus, according to an article from the university press. U Pres. Judith Rodin said that "banning the Internet service would go against the University's educational mission by denying students freedom of inquiry and expression" and pointed to the Digital Millenium Act for further justification, saying that limiting access is not her responsibility ("Internet service providers cannot be held accountable for illegal activity on their networks if they are unaware of the activity"). Although the awareness of the activity of the issue may be questionable, it is certainly good to see a big U not yielding to the demands of Dr. Dre & Metallica ..."

The list of schools refusing to buckle under keeps growing; campus admins and sysadmins seem justifiably adamant about letting their policies be dictated by corporate vulture groups. Bandwidth reasons may be another story entirely, though.

Of course, not everyone has the awesome power of ResNet behind them ... ca1v1n writes: "The awesome power of the record labels has come through again. The Offspring have cancelled their plans to distribute their next album for free, after legal action and the threat of a lawsuit from Sony music. Yahoo! news has the scoop. So much for protecting the artists' interests."

An enquiry into establishing a curve of electronic book sales ... Triumphant former astronomy student jamie points out this CNN story on the continuing book experiment by Stephen King, who is still selling his novel online. Here's a telling snippet:

...since the first installment's release July 24, the percentage of readers paying for their downloads has dropped from 76 percent to less than 70 percent for the second installment. Part three goes up on Monday.

jamie points out that 70 "but he's giving us part 3 anyway. The more telling figures: 172,004 people had paid for part one and 74,373 people had paid for part two."

maomoondog pipes in: "Apparently, King's company is upset that too few of the downloads are being paid for. Stephen King comments on the progress here. Personally, I'm impressed that 70% of the downloads are being paid for. With as low a per-item cost as a text download is, the author should really clean up in this sort of arrangement."

If you're one of the 172,004, liked the story, but are not part of the 74,373, please consider joining the second group on jamie's behalf, because as he says: "It's actually not a bad story and I want to see how it ends :)"

jzuska writes: "Sun Announced it's UltraSPARC III today. The link is here. 29 million transistors and 900MHZ, 9.6 Gigabyte/second processing bandwidth woohoo!!!" And this is an announcement of "volume shipments," not *coughcough* EventualWare. So lessee ... for boxes that you might reasonable put on your desk right now, there are how many architecture choices? (And how many of them run Windows?)

On a semi-related note, Sulka writes: "Motorola just introduced a new G4, the MPC7410. While this is a processor meant for embedded systems, it's essentially the same CPU as the G4 in Macs. What's significant is the price -- the 500 MHz version carries a $195 price tag. This is much cheaper than the Intel and AMD high-end offerings. I wonder how much the G4e is going to cost." Sounds like a cool basis for (awfully) high-end set-top devices at that price, but imagine what that will cost 12 months from now! Yoiks.

safariman writes: "An article on Yahoo news reports that Transmeta is claiming a five year lead over Intel and AMD. Does anyone else think this claim is a bit excessive? After all, Transmeta itself is not five years old. Besides, once an idea is public, it is a lot easier to copy."

ucribido writes "Here is an interesting story regarding wearable computers and other communication accessories utilizing technology developed by Martin Cooper, who is regarded as the "father" of the portable cell phone. The fashion show was sponsored by Charmed Technology which is a spin off of MIT's Media Lab. Check out the hot "geek" chics sporting the latest in info-gagetry. Apparently, the CEO of charmed regards his company as the answer to Bill Joy's warning that technology will soon wipe out mankind if not kept in check. Find out for yourself."

Pulzar writes: "Fujitsu will release two notebooks containing Crusoe processors from Transmeta in November, the company said today, bringing the total number of companies coming out with Transmeta-based products to seven."

SEWilco writes: "This AP story points out major problems with the X-33 prototype shuttle. It's out of money and the composite hydrogen tank came apart in a test. The aerospike engine test seems to be doing nicely, but it needs a ship attached. Congress is considering NASA's Space Launch Initiative Program, which apparently includes more X-33 funding along with considering other technologies. The Delta Clipper is my favorite, although the ET Scenario engine-only-return design is interesting."

ucribido writes "StarWars episode II, as yet untitled film, has wrapped up shooting ahead of shedule. No advanced story lines given although the just freshly completed script was apparently stolen and offered of sale for $100,000 big ones to the fan site The Force.net. More about the shoot here "

malahoo asks: "I've recently registered my own domain name for personal fun and education, and am trying to find interesting things to do with it and my Linux box. High on this list is setting up a Web-based e-mail site, like YahooMail or Hotmail, for my family and friends to use. What open source projects out there would be suitable for this? On freshmeat, I've found such projects as WebMail, PHPWebMail, acmemail, etc. But I haven't found a way to evaluate these programs based on features, stability, security, and other factors. Have any of my fellow members of the Slashdot community set up a Web mail site? What tools did you use, how did you decide on these tools, and what is your experience & reccomendations for someone following the same path?"

Donavan writes "Yahoo Finance is reporting that the merger between AOL and Time Warner has been reccomended for approval."

Donavan writes "Yahoo Finance is reporting that the merger between AOL and Time Warner has been reccomended for approval."

the_quark writes: "According to this ZDNet story, RedHat will be rolling out a subscription update service with 7.0, which will be available by FTP on Monday." They're also announcing the "Red Hat Network" which essentially adds something like Debian's apt-get function that I've been using for a couple years now *grin*. BTW, has anyone played with gnome-apt? Not bad.

iie1195 asks: "Even though you can set up LiLO to dual-boot operating systems, in my opinion, there are better and easier ways to accomplish this, since LiLO isn't very newbie-friendly. There are several commercial boot-managers out there. Among the noteworthy are PQBoot from Powerquest and System Commander 2000 from V Communications (you can read a review on System Commander 2000 here.) Open Source boot-managers have not been plentiful, but there's hope. One of these is Smart BootManager. It has the look and feel of an early version of System Commander, and is fully Open Sourced. I have not tried it much myself, since I'm perfectly happy with System Commander. But since blowing $49 on a boot-manager might be a little steep, the free Smart BootManager seems like a good alternative." Any experiences or testimonials from users of this program? Does it serve your booting needs or are there areas that could use improvement?

Hackers is probably the first book I read that made me think of computers as the substrate of a social world rather than just boxes with lights. The book came out in 1984, though, and a lot's changed since then. Read on, as topeka lets you know how well Levy's techno opus has aged.

Hackers author Steven Levy pages 455 publisher Anchor Press / Doubleday rating 8.5 reviewer topeka ISBN 0-385-19195-2 summary A fast-paced, readable history of the early days of hacking, seen through the eyes of the participants.

After reading a reference to Steven Levy for the nth time on Slashdot, or hearing him discussed at a LUG meeting, I decided it was time to find a copy of his book and see what it was all about. Slashdot has made a few statements over the past months in effect trying to educate those new to hacking. One way to do this is to spread the rich history of the hacker ethic. There are certain books that have made their mark among hackers over the years, and I think Steven Levy's, Hackers, is near the top of that list. For that reason, I thought it would be useful to reexamine a book that was first published 16 years ago and hopefully convince some people to go find a copy and read it.

Getting the Book

The first challenge to reviewing this book was finding a copy. It was first printed in 1984, and as far as I know it ran its final printing in 1994. Not having a used bookstore nearby, I decided the Net was the best choice. So I set out looking it up on the usual Amazon and Barnes and Noble sites. Amazon suggested checking back soon, but seeing as the last printing was six years ago I wasn't holding my breath, plus the fact that Amazon's "defensive" patents make me leery of giving them my business. Similarly, B&N did not have the book either, but they did have several copies listed in their network of rare and used book affiliates. But the cheapest version of the Hackers I could find was over $60. So, the next step was to search Yahoo, but after trying a dozen or so sites, I had no luck. All of them seemed to carry an unrelated subset of the subject I wanted: Hacking. That's when I stumbled on Abebooks.com. This site is one of my favorite discoveries of the year. This site brings together over 6,000 local bookstores and puts their catalogs online. Best yet, the site does not mark the books up any higher than they are in the local shop. And, they give you the option of buying through Abebooks, or going directly to the local site by Internet or phone to purchase. Here I happened to find several different copies of this book, many of them the same entries as I found on the B&N site. The great part though, is that the version from B&N for $60 was selling directly from the shop (through Abebooks) for $35! So, I bought it. Of course, there is always the public library.

Synopsis

Levy's narrative talks about three different generations of hackers: the Orthodox Hackers, the Hardware Hackers, and the Game Hackers. The story starts in the very late 1950's at MIT -- not at the console of a computer, but in the cave-like home of the miniature models of the Tech Model Railroad Club (TMRC). The MIT professor who shepherded the TMRC, and hence the first hackers, had connections to the phone industry (which of course had the best electronics of the day). These Hackers used them to build an incredible railroad model. Work was affected however, when the hackers discovered a punch card machine in the basement of building 9. Levy describes in intricate detail the first hackers' interaction with first the punch card machine and then, their TX-0 and to the Hacker's paradise, the PDP-6.

Along with those first hackers, Levy describes the bureaucracy that they hate, and its incarnation at MIT, the IBM "Hulking Giants."

From MIT, Levy branches out in his exploration of the early hackers to the West Coast and the Stanford AI lab. He discusses in depth how the movements in the 60's affected the hackers, and how some of them shared their populist views by taking hacking to the streets to support the ideas of free speech and access to information. Levy discusses the debate that raged over whether or not hacking for MIT was The Right Thing, considering almost all of their funding came from ARPA (which was a part of the DoD).

This eventually leads into the second generation of hackers, the Hardware Hacker s. These individuals were, unlike the MIT and Stanford Hackers, decentralized, with no academic structure to support their activities. The second generation of hackers cared less about software but instead, fought for the idea that computers should be liberated from the massive industry bureaucracies, led by IBM, the maker of the Hulking Gi ants. They formed computing clubs which eventually fostered the introduction of kit computers. Levy talks in depth about the Homebrew Computer Club and its rivals. He entitled an entire chapter, "WOZ." Levy diagrams the introduction of the Altair, to the building of the Sol, the TRS-80 and finally the Apple II.

The Apple II sets the stage for the third generation, the Game Hackers. These were anyone who could write software for the meager processors in the Apple II and the Atari 800, the vast majority of which were games. Levy tells the story of the game company Sierra On-Line and its humble beginnings. And, he tells the story of the game hackers, who were the first in large numbers to become wealthy beyond their beliefs (spurred by 30% game royalties.)

The narrative is not all happy either. Levy discusses the controversy Bill Gates caused when he found out that hackers were "stealing" his BASIC interpreter for the Altair. He also talks about the chaotic split that occurred between the original Game hackers and the game publishers as the industry matured and its new bureaucracy cut out hackers, no longer giving them authorship credit for games and slashing their royalty shares. Finally, Levy discusses the tragic split of the MIT Orthodox Hackers as the first LISP machines went into production.

The final chapter is entitled "The Last of the True Hackers" and tells the story of a young MIT hacker named Richard Stallman who liked to be referred to by his initials (RMS) because it symbolized his login name.

Though the discussion of the last 40 years worth of computers is in depth, Levy's is a story of people, and how their interaction with machines created a new kind of ethic. Levy defines and explains what exactly The Right Thing is, and why it was so important to the hackers. He discusses all of the computers in terms of the people who us ed them. From the MIT Hackers Greenblatt and Gosper to the Berkeley street Hacker Felsenstein to master of Atari 800 assembly language John Harris to Apple Computer's Steve Wozniac, Levy's narrative runs deep into the Hacker ethic within these individuals and what they did for the fledgling computer industry.

Levy's book chooses to follow the course that the Hackers made. In fact, the word "UNIX" is mentioned exactly one time in the entire book, on page 434. The invention of UNIX is not covered, and the only languages Levy mentions are: assembly, LISP and BASIC. There is also no mention of the development of ARPAnet, it just sort of appears when the hackers start to utilize it. This is truly a story of people and not simply a history of the Computer "Industry."

Conclusion

The most important reason to find a copy of this book, though, is to read with the now 15 years of hindsight. It is truly amazing to see the concepts Levy helped define take form and continue to prove themselves true. I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested "where it all came from," especially to those who have only stumbled upon hacking in the past few years. I wonder now if Levy is still around, and if so, whether he has updated his copy of Hackers to include the forth generation of hackers, the GNU/Linux Hackers.

The Evil Dwarf from Hell writes "Hardware sites for the most part concentrate their reviews of new equipment for the Windoze OS. AnandTech has a head to head review of the Linux drivers for the GeForce2 MX and the Matrox G450. The GeForce2 MX dominates in the test scores, but the G450 is interesting in its ability to use 2 monitors simultaneously. A single desktop that is 3840x1280 is incredible."

An anonymous reader was the first to note that Sun acquired Cobalt. The press release is full of all sorts of PR-speak to basically say that sun wants to enter the low-end server market, and this is how they intend to get into the market.

delfstrom asks: "Retention time for online reference material is decreasing. First it was Deja moving archives offline. Now try to find the AP story you saw on Yahoo from earlier this year about a judge's order against a CyberPatrol decryption tool. You can't, because anything older than 30 days is canned from news.yahoo.com. Likewise, certain online newspapers (not to mention any names) are removing content after a mere 7 days, though for $25 per retrieved article you can go back to 1977. This certainly goes against the philosophy of not breaking links. What responsibility do information providers have in maintaining articles that they post? In this era of electronic publishing, academic papers are beginning to contain URLs in the references. To what extent can we keep copies of such information and provide it to others?"

delfstrom asks: "Retention time for online reference material is decreasing. First it was Deja moving archives offline. Now try to find the AP story you saw on Yahoo from earlier this year about a judge's order against a CyberPatrol decryption tool. You can't, because anything older than 30 days is canned from news.yahoo.com. Likewise, certain online newspapers (not to mention any names) are removing content after a mere 7 days, though for $25 per retrieved article you can go back to 1977. This certainly goes against the philosophy of not breaking links. What responsibility do information providers have in maintaining articles that they post? In this era of electronic publishing, academic papers are beginning to contain URLs in the references. To what extent can we keep copies of such information and provide it to others?"

MagicYoshi writes "Ziff Davis has this story about Oklahoma State University confiscating a student's PC after the RIAA complained that he was distributing copyrighted music and movies." This doesn't make any sense: why would you go after this kid? Shouldn't you sue the people who wrote his operating system and FTP server? *cough* *cough*.

Extra, extra -- Read more about it! Yes, that means another round of Slashback, bearing this time: The stillborn auction of [expletive deleted]company.com's domain name; why EPIC has decided to stop sailing with Amazon; and another tantalizing glimpse of a world so advanced we can watch instruction videos on personal computers. More, too.

Even Richard Feynman could have figured this out! Logos writes: "It seems that EPIC has decided to end their relationship with Amazon. Here is a link to the letter that I received on their mailing list. The final straw was Amazon's announcement that they are no longer able to ensure the privacy of their Customer Info."

How apropos! Servius writes: "Doublespeak is a wonderful thing. CNN has this story about EPIC dropping out of the Amazon affiliate program because of Amazon's recent relaxation of their rules for the use of personal data. Quote: 'The new policy is actually stricter than the previous one because it spells out the conditions under which personal information can be transferred.' I hope that makes you feel a lot safer."

Potty mouth, potty mouth, Milkman Dan! Domain shoppers everywhere, your time to mourn has come. After placing the domain f*ckedcompany.com for sale on everyone's favorite auction site site owner Philip Kaplan pulled the auction.

h0ngk0ngph00ey writes:

"After a quick check back at eBay today to see how high the bidding went for f*ckedcompany.com, I was somewhat surprised to see that the auction was ended. A look at the bid history seems to indicate that either eBay pulled it for being offensive, or the seller just got too many responses from people who weren't at all serious. /.'ed to death it seems."

lee@lvcm.com has a different perspective:

"Well without warning the owner pulled the auction from ebay. I was one of the serious high bidders and was never contacted by the owner. CNNfn contacted me and asked me questions (along with several other news organizations) and they were all under the assumption that he really wanted to sell the domain. I guess it was all a publicity stunt."

Will the Geeks in Space have to play Apollo 13? rak3 writes: "The Sync, home for the broadcasts of Geeks in Space and JenniShow (of JenniCam fame), seems to have run into some troubles. The company was going to be acquired, but this has fallen through and they might have to shut down the site. Read more about it here."

It's sad, since the folks behind The Sync have served to support everyone from local artists to aforementioned Geeks in Space. Hopefully, they can pull through this. If not, smart companies everywhere will start mailing them job offers right about now!

Soon I will watch Carlito Brigante kick ass with penguin supervision. cyber-vandal writes: "Two days after the Ask Slashdot on Intervideo's LinDVD, the announcement has been made here. No sign of the actual player being available, but this is a good sign that it wasn't merely MPAA-inspired vapourware. At last I can look forward to fragging my Win9x partition."

And here's another tibdit to add to the DeCSS gallery, for anyone else who admires the technical possibilities of the DVD format but not the politics attached thereto, GeekLife.com writes: "[H]ere's the DVD Logo rendered in beautiful shades of gray using the DECSS code as ink. "

photozz writes: "Salon is running this story about Tivo and their plans to track user viewing habits for targeted ads. It also explores their stance on the 'hacking' of the Tivo for more memory." According to their CEO Mike Ramsay, "We do that in a non-personal way, protecting everybody's privacy," but the details of the actual data aggregation aren't addressed here. That the data is gathered should come as no surprise to anyone who notes that Tivo features a "learning" program-suggestion feature, but the mechanism and how closely data is linked to the customer is something I wish they would explain in more detail.

Logic Bomb writes "Yahoo is carrying a wire story about a report by the House Subcommittee on Government Management, Information and Technology. It gave the US government an overall grade of D- on computer security. That probably isn't a big surprise, but the details of the report are scary -- the Department of Defense got a D+. Isn't that lovely? The big question though is whether this is an example of particularly poor government performance or just typical of what you'd find in most Internet-linked systems. My guess is the latter."

TrumpetPower! writes "NPR just reported that Western Union is recommending that customers who used their web page to send money should cancel their credit cards after somebody cracked their online credit card database. As I type this, the Western Union homepage simply states, "Our Web site is temporarily out of service We apologize for any inconvenience To find the nearest agent location plase call: 1-800-325-6000."" Not much online yet besides the AP brief. (Normally we don't post this stuff, but its getting submitted a lot, and it is kinda a big deal). Lends more credibility to the disposable credit card concept.

Ricky Ng-Adam asks: "The Science Advisory Board of the EPA has 'consistently ranked indoor air pollution among the top five environmental risks to public health'. As most of you are probably spending most of your time indoors like myself, I'd like to know how this affects you and what do you do to deal with it? Is it worth it to buy an air purifier and if so which one?" Also, how well do purifiers deal with common indoor air polution, like smoking...and pet hair/dander (for those of you who spend lots of time working at home)?

OCatenac writes: "Frank Schirrmacher, head of the arts and science department for the influential German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, considers the question of how much metaphor and model influence our view of the world."

droleary writes: "Something of an update to this Slashdot article, a Yahoo News story reports that a number of large ISPs are caving in to a massive lawsuit brought by Harris Interactive regarding the delivery of their "online polls" (aka, spam, according to MAPS). I find it disturbing that large ISPs are so willing to let external agencies control what runs through their systems."

WillSmith sent in a bit running over at LinuxToday addressing the fact that RMS thinks that Python 1.6 is incompatible w/ the GPL. The article is basically how to resolve this within Debian.