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OctaneZ asks: "What are the relative merits and drawbacks of using Gnu Privacy Guard vs. Network Associates' PGP. I am not referring to the fact that GPG doesn't use any restricted implemtations or algorithems; or that GPG was not affected by the recent PGP hole; but other more everyday issues. How is interoperability between the two. As well as integration into common applications such as Eudora in windows and others, possibly PINE, in LINUX. Could this be deployed such that the learning curve of transitioning users from PGP to GPG is not too steep? I am a strong beleiver in encryption, and have used PGP for a very long time, however I would prefer to use an OpenSource/Non-restricted program; however the usefullness of said program, as well as the security takes precidence, at least in my book."

Mwongozi writes "Germany is planning to slap new taxes on computer, telecommunications and Internet products to ensure that authors are properly rewarded for the use of their work, a newspaper said Wednesday. The Berliner Zeitung said proposals had been drafted requiring manufacturers of goods from computers to printers, modems, compact disc "burners" and other devices to pay royalty fees that would then be forwarded to music and film companies." My guess is that Bertelsmann, the world's third largest media company, has a little something to do with this. In the U.S., any devices intended for digital audio are already taxed similarly to the above proposal but general-purpose computing devices are not. (Though the RIAA sought to include them too.) Has anyone considered what an extraordinary situation it is where government tax collectors are collecting taxes which are funneled straight to corporations?

linux slacker writes "Bob Metcalfe, Inventor of ethernet, writer of a weekly columnn on Infoworld, was on Boston U's NPR show The Connection this morning. Among other topics, he predicted the eventual downfall Open Source and Linux, citing as one reason the old argument that "Open Source leads to security breaches". Now, this guy did support the Microsoft anti-trust case and opposes monopolies, but he just doesn't like the Open Source idea. " To be fair, he did talk about a lot of other stuff - it was a pretty good show.

BulletValentine writes "ZDNet is reporting that approximately 400 machines have been found to be running Trinity v3, a DDoS attack program. Supposedly Trinity can set up to eight different types of flood attacks. ZDNet referred readers to Internet Security Solutions for more information about the attack and precautions to take."

Mixhaus asks: "I'm trying to promote the Linux culture in my company. I want to migrate or at least start all new web projects on a Linux/Apache setup. Currently all the development is done on IIS/ASP with MSSQL 7.0. Has anybody done this kind of migration before? Any suggestions?"

"These are some of the questions that come up to my mind:

• Be able to migrate IIS to Apache first, and still be able to access the MSSQL databases (FreeTDS?)
• Use a scripting syntax similar to ASP so that the programmers don't have much of a headache learning new stuff (PHP looks like a solution).
• Migrate MSSQL 7 to MySQL, PostgreSQL or other (Which one is better for web development?)
• Web log reports (I need to generate reports on the web site usage. What weblog report generators are available for Linux? Which ones do you use? Are there any that generate graphs, charts, etc..?)

Thanks to the whole Slashdot Community!"

qbasicprogrammer writes "The long awaited Perl 5.7.0 version has finally been released! Source code is available from CPAN. If you haven't upgraded yet, now is the time. In related news, development of Perl 6 is continuing swiftly as demonstrated by the Perl 6 Library." Check out the head's up story saying that it was coming - just a reminder this is *devel*. Don't play with it unless you know what you are doing.

A reader writes: "Reuters has a story on the European Commission having drafted a report opposing the merger of AOL and Time-Warner, in grounds that the new company would be too powerful."

A long outing this time -- a litany of updates and corrections for your edification and amusement. Microsoft apps that run on Free OSes? An art contest that you won't have to go through your high-strung middle-school art teacher for (and is judged by the family Johansen)? A titanium tank which could fall from the sky? All this and more, if you're willing to read on.

You want fries with that software? If the recent report of Microsoft porting apps to *nix, intrigued you, see Paul Thurrott's piece in Windows 2000 Magazine (yes, there is such a thing). Thurrott says, in part: "I can't tell you that the port is going to produce actual products. But I can tell you that Microsoft is looking into it. No, I don't think it's smart. No, it's not what I'd do. But yes, I believe it's true. So why would Microsoft try to port its desktop applications to a platform that has absolutely no desktop market share? I've no idea." Too bad for Microsoft Linux has "absolutely no desktop market share."

Silly! The sky isn't falling! It's just sinking a little each day ... Johann writes "Here is a follow up story to last week's NY Times article which was debated here on Slashdot. The article states that 'Open water at the top of the world isn't evidence that the North Pole is melting, as an article this month in The New York Times suggested.' There are numerous quotes in the article that do suggest that global warming is fact, not fiction."

To which the dapper and elegant Party Remover adds: "The Associated Press reports that a recent New York Times story about liquid water at the North Pole was rather overstating the seriousness of the situation. It seems that the Arctic Ocean is typically 10% ice-free during the summer." And the wording of the correction is amusing, for those of us easily amused.

Getcher doo-dads! Red-hot, computer-generated doo-dads! Get 'em while they're hot, ladies and gents ... ussphoenix writes: "Regarding the /. story about Computer Makes Robot Offspring, here is an article in the journal Nature describing the system. There are also mpegs of the virtual machines and the corresponding real machines moving!"

Next week we explain the buggy-whip makers' case, too. breillysf writes: "Eric Sinrod has condensed the complicated legal issues surrounding 2600's hyperlinking ruling. You can read the article here: Upside Counsel DeCSS article. The article is concise and not filled with legal jargon. A good contribution for those with little time to understand the fundamentals of the case."

And on the DeCSS note, Jim Tyre writes "Tom Vogt, a defendant in the California DeCSS lawsuit brought by DVD CCA, has started DeArt, the DeCSS Art Contest, to further explore the expressive aspects of DeCSS. Original creations only, obviously must be related to DeCSS. The contest runs through Dec. 31, and there will be prizes. Tom and Jon Johansen are the current judges, Emmanuel Goldstein has been asked to be an additional judge. Time for Slashdotters to express their creativity in a new way." I think the most strategic contest area would be performance art. Since it must be digitized, a video recorder would be necessary, I guess. Anyone here watched Roger and Me?[grin]

And if you're feeling less artistic, don't worry: Carpman writes, "I have set up a project to create a letter to congress about the DMCA and its effects. I'm running this like an open source project, you submit, it gets reviewed, and added. Also, you can submit stand alone letters to send allong with the big letter. The page is here." Of course, note the verb sense of "carp" and this makes perfect sense ...

Oh, no, you must have misunderstood. What we meant was something totally different. thebaron writes "Here is a interesting back-pedaling by Sony in this article. One should think before opening mouth and inserting [one's] own foot, even if you're a company exec." Or perhaps especially then. As roblimo pointed out recently, big companies have trouble tying their collective shoelaces sometimes, never mind effecting their own conspiracies.

Hit that high hat, swing that hook! PenguinRadio writes: "The Washington Post notes in Tuesday's paper that Motorola has begun the necessary reporting to certain government agencies so that they can burn up the $4 billion in Iridium satellites. Interesting in this announcements is the fact that their engineers feels certain pieces of the birds may actually reach the Earth and not burn up completely. Most notably a 2 foot by 3 foot titanium fuel tank may make it through the atmosphere. Wanna bet we see it on e-bay if it does fall to earth?"

taracta asks: " Does anyone know the operating system for the iPhone from Infogear? I am trying to find out if it is possible to improve its Java capabilities. It is an extremely good Internet appliance and my computer illiterate girlfriend uses it exclusively. With its touch screen it is easy for her to use. However, the support for Java is limited. Most of the time it seems to lock up when accessing Java applets. Is there a work-around or upgrade?"

Carnage4Life writes:"Apple has found out the employee who leaked pictures of the PowerMac G4 Cube. So Apple has modified its original lawsuit against "unknown individual" for leaking trade secrets and changed the name to that of the employee in court filings. So as not to embarass any employees with the same name Apple has not revealed the employee's name as at now."

David D writes: "Apparently NVIDIA has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against 3dfx. The CEO of NVIDIA commented, ``We have always been on the forefront of innovation in 3D graphics technology and visual computing...''. The competition has been pretty even, with 3dfx having no apparent advantage over NVIDIA. Where will this lead?"

More below on what is surely one of the slowest patents ever granted (to our inquisitive friends with the radar domes, no less), and smidgeons of news on such various and sundry as Napster (perhaps you've heard of it?) and Iridium (perhaps you wish you'd never heard of it?), not to mention more on the destruction of the submarine Kursk.

The (cryptographic) wheels of government grind slowly. JOEL-V writes: "In August 2000, the United States Patent Office issued patent #6097812 to the National Security Agency, for 'Cryptographic System.' The patent application was filed in the year 1933, and this invention and patent are actually one version of the famous Enigma machine."

On a similar note, Paul Maud'Dib writes: "The Slashdot crew might be interested in checking out Enigmatic. They have java emulators for the Purple, Sigaba, Enigma, Russian Espionage Cipher and a public domain Bombe. They also have rather lucid descriptions of the various systems used. Interesting reads all."

That which does not kill him makes him stronger. You may recall that some maladjusted script kiddies threw a spanner in the works of the excellent kuro5hin a little while ago. Emmett told you more about the attack and its aftermath shortly thereafter. Looks like it's time for the (all volunteer, cool-content, graphically appealing) kuro5hin to emerge from a quick breather.

pope nihil writes: "kuro5hin.org has an update on their page. things should be back up (according to the update) by Sept 15 or so. check it out." Yes, Go there! Congratulations, guys.

88 bottles of bits on the wall, 88 bottles of bits ... NoWhere Man writes "The bankrupt Iridium venture has received another bid to save the wireless phone company's $5 billion satellite system from being pulled from space and destroyed. A California-based organization named CMC International is offering to pay $30 million to acquire Iridium's 88 satellites and other assets, according to a court filing submitted Friday."

It certainly would be nice if someone could eke out (even a meager) connection from Iridium rather than incinerating the satellites in the atmosphere, but honestly, the Will Burn / Will Fly status of these birds flip-flops enough to put a politician to shame. I'd like them to stay up, if only not to spook other folks from putting data-bouncing satellites up for our browsing pleasure.

In a nutshell, this is the problem with carrying around cavitation weapons. aleclee writes "It now appears that the Kursk was indeed carrying cavitation weapons and that she was sunk by a misfiring rocket. Supposedly, the rocket/torpedo can travel at 200 knots! Details can be found here."

Update: any port in a storm, and this one sounds nice. Patrick Ryan wrote: " Hello, I wanted you to know that CDSA [as mentioned in this slashdot story] has been updated at Intel and now includes a Linux port." Visit http://developer.intel.com/ial/security/ for more information about CDSA, and then the download site for your free-downloading pleasure.

cchuter writes "Apparently Sun has been getting it's customers to be 'mum' about a certain memory problem for as long as 18 months. The problem is assumed to be the cause for many website outages (most visible, ebay). "

qbasicprogrammer writes: "Vital Source Technologies is now providing time-limited medical textbooks to universities. Password protected books as predicted in The Right To Read by Richard Stallman are finally becoming a reality." Starting on Oct. 28, (when the other part of the DMCA comes into effect), you could face a civil lawsuit and criminal penalties of up to five years in jail and a fine of $500,000 for reading someone else's textbook. See the NYU FAQ, the Advogato discussion, or the company crowing about new revenue opportunities.

stevarooski writes "I saw this over at Ars. Apparently a judge ruled in a lawsuit about the alleged illegal transfer of the domain name 'sex.com' that URLs do not qualify as property, at least under current law. They are instead a "designation for a service -- akin to a phone number." I dont know if I buy that. . .People very much treat domain names as property--buying and selling them on the web all the time. (Examples from Ebay and Yahoo.)"

David Savage writes: "AOL and MSN are about to announce the release of broadband Internet connections that will allow users to access the Internet at cable and DSL speeds via satellite dishes. The MSN service will allow users to download and upload data via a satellite dish. The AOL service on the other hand will require users to upload data through a regular dial-up connection and download through the dish. Both plans will have prices that compete with current cable and DSL prices, but will have hefty setup fees (in the hundreds of dollars). Both companies are planning to begin offering their broadband services, which will be available almost anywhere within the U.S., in the next couple of months." As the article points out, satellite access has been around for a while but whether because of cost, complexity or low marketing not made the splash that cable and DSL access have. But when the 800-pound gorillas (AOL and MSN) jump in, that scene could change a lot. I'd like a little price competition in space (since it seems more likely than among local land-bound connections), but why can't the dishes and setup be free like they are with satellite TV promotions?

ptbrown writes: "The world's largest steerable radio telescope is being dedicated today at Green Bank, W.Va. The 100 meter Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope (named after a West Virginia senator) is 485 feet tall, weighs 16 million pounds, cost $75 million, took almost 10 years to build, and is expected to last for at least 25 years. The telescope it replaces (designed to last 10 years) collapsed in 1988 after only 26 years. This is a pretty unique dish: assymetrical, side-mounted feed arm, movable surface panels, and laser-assisted ranging. And they give tours, so if you're ever around southern West Virginia think about stopping by. "

ptbrown writes:\w"An investigation by Interhack revealed cookies, Web bugs, and other methods that were tracking visitors to TRUSTe's Web site in violation of their own privacy standards. TRUSTe's David Steer said the tracking was done by thecounter.com, part of Internet.com. After being contacted by a reporter on Thursday, the tracking code was removed. "If we find that Internet.com is fraudulently breaking this agreement, then we're going to come down hard on them...&quot says Steer. Original AP story" Somehow I'm not surprised. Although honestly TrustE's sin here - tracking users with temporary cookies rather than long-lived ones - does not seem especially bad. But TrustE's whole point is that sites should tell users what they're doing, and even TrustE can't do it correctly.

truefluke writes: "This was forwarded to me, from a friend who is a very loyal Debian supporter, with the cool news that Debian could become 'more up to date more often'. This news appeared here on the Debian news source. A good idea, and prob incentive for more folks to try out Debian without resorting to the old saw of 'too old / too slow.'" Debian developer Anthony Towns says in the list posting mentioned there that "[t]his is a (mostly finished) project that will allow us to test out distribution by making it "sludgey" rather than frozen[.]" Sounds like the same logic behind the Caldera "Technology Preview" and Red Hat's Rawhide -- give people more of what they want of The Bleeding Edge, without getting reckless with the official release.

slashdoter writes "Motorola said on Wednesday it was finalizing a schedule to destroy the 66 satellites of Iridium." They have finalized the schedule because they've been unable to find qualified buyers for the satellites. Wow. Billions of dollars coming streaming down into our atmosphere.

object.orient() writes "Yahoo! News has a story about a web site that will be starting on-line auctioning of uranium fuel for nuclear powerplants. Wow, now all those blueprints for nuclear weapons I downloaded might be useful! (Seriously, they say it's safe from terrorists.)" Granted, it does look like you have to be a registered purchaser and it's not plutonium or anything - but the whole thought amuses me, in a science project gone awry way..

Welcome to the Slashback. This time around you'll find bits about the speed of light, project Monterey, and coverage of the recently departed (alas!) San Jose LWCE. And word from Microsoft about porting Office apps to Linux gets my thumbs up -- your thumb direction may vary. [Updated by timothy with a special bonus story, 22 Aug. 0:30 GMT]

Show of hands if you think Windows is easy to use ... If I'm driving a car with a radio, I usually fiddle with the dials way down around 88-90 FM to listen to NPR, for Car Talk, All Things Considered, and the occasional science show. Now AlKini gives me another reason: "National Public Radio's "High Tech" section covers the Linux World Expo: Linux Moves to Heart of Corporate America (top item ATM).

NPR's Chris Arnold for All Things Considered: www.npr.org/ramfiles/atc/200008 16.atc.07.ram (Real Audio)"

A major issue raised by the High Tech section article is ease of use; maybe I'm crazy, but putting on Mandrake and going nuts with the included programs is pretty darn easy. Putting on 98 and NT I thought was rather a nightmare.

Well, surely all this has shown ... something! OK. Perhaps now everyone can stop submitting the story about the experiment which has been reported as showing a previously unheard of increase in the speed of light. drinkypoo writes: "It turns out that 'Not only does the speed of light remain unsurpassed, but Wang's experiment wasn't even about that.' To be specific, 'the team developed a method of manipulating the wavelengths of a beam of light, thereby altering the way it arrives at its destination. Because short wavelengths become longer and long ones become shorter, the natural fanning outward that marks a light pulse is eliminated; consequently the shape of the pulse at its destination appears the same as at its origin.' It seems that the journalistic frenzy and a NEC press release are to blame. Salon Magazine is carrying the full story here."

Reports have been greatly exaggerated. We reported a few days ago that IBM's Project Monterey had been killed. Not so, says dentar, who writes: "I am attending SCO Forum 2000, and contrary to what was published in Sm@rt-aleck Reseller, IBM is NOT ditching Monterey. It is going to be called AIX-5L. (NOT AIX-RL like the article says). The Sm@rt reseller article is very poorly researched and is pure yellow journalism. In fact, IBM is very ticked about the article."

Where are the software-release-date betting pool sites? fonixmunkee writes: "Found an interesting story on BetaNews regarding Microsoft reportedly working on porting some of their software to linux. Check it out here."

For either P.R. or experimental purposes at least, though, doesn't it seem like Microsoft will offer some Linux software soon? While there's often no accounting for corporate decision making, to ignore the large, vibrant, growing Linux market would be to ... ignore a large, vibrant and growing market. Fine by me; I never much like having my words mangled by Word, and I have never pined for Outlook.

The more numerous the laws ... werdna writes: "Counsel for Napster, Inc. just submitted their initial brief on Appeal, explaining why the preliminary injunction should be reversed. The brief sets other arguments, any one of which could be a basis for reversal.

Whatever may be said of Judge Patel's decision, she set forth her reasoning squarely, which made it possible for Mr. Boies to crisply and concisely join the issue: Whether the test for contributory infringement of an internet service will be that the services has a "mere capacity for substantial non-infringing uses" (the test adopted by the Supreme Court for VCR's), or Judge Patel's new creation of a "present primary purpose " test, in direct contravention of the Supreme Court's decision in the Betamax case. The answer to this question can have broad-sweeping impact on the internet as a whole.

Interestingly, the brief shows that the Ninth Circuit itself originally adopted the "primary purpose" test when it first reviewed the Betamax case, noting that the Supreme Court expressly rejected that argument there. It is sometimes advocacy to a judge to remind them that the District Court they are reviewing just made the same mistake they made years ago."

JoyToy writes ""AS PART OF its crusade to marginalize operating systems such as Windows, IBM is leaning toward giving the Standard Edition of its WebSphere application server to the open-source community." "

Vawlk writes "Just before planning to go public, Transmeta and AMD might swap spit (patents) as explained in this Yahoo article. " AMD has done this in the past, most notably with Motorola.

cprincipe writes "According to this story on Yahoo, Houston DSL customers of SBC Communications have filed a lawsuit alleging that SBC has intentionally lowered connection speeds to its customers. " SBC, it should be noted, is the parent of Southwestern Bell, and recently acquired Ameritech.

cprincipe writes "According to this story on Yahoo, Houston DSL customers of SBC Communications have filed a lawsuit alleging that SBC has intentionally lowered connection speeds to its customers. " SBC, it should be noted, is the parent of Southwestern Bell, and recently acquired Ameritech.

gribbly writes "Forget emulation -- now you can read classic Atari design docs!" It's all documents from the early 1980s, I think, and looks totally...I dunno. It's like taking a journey into the past.

Richard Finney writes "Reuters News Sevice is reporting that Transmeta is filing for an IPO." They are looking to raise $200 million - the rest of the details are sketchy.Update: 08/17 09:59 PM by H :Check out the FreeEdgar filing.

cmickelson asks: "Adobe has filed a suit against Macromedia for infringement of Adobe's patent on 'tabbed palettes.' Details available here. What does the Slashdot community think of this? I'm especially concerned with the possible effects of UI patents as it relates to open source software. Is it possible that an open source project could be sued for violation of some company's obscure patent on UI elements? Are developers concerned about this? Should companies even be able to patent something as nebulous as a user interface?" Patenting a "look-and-feel" is about as trite as patenting an idea. Who cares that your UI "looks like" somebody else's. If UI "a" performs better than UI "b", well isn't that what competition is all about?

Welcome to another episode of Slashback, since stories keep popping up in parts rather than in neat, hermetic, well-encapsulated little packages. So read this -- it's like going to the demolition derby. You want to see the slip-ups, the revisions, the torture of correction, but without having beer poured on you by strangers. Read on if you'd like (at the very least) to know more about the the British Columbia law which relegated naughty (violent) video games to the back of the arcade.

And no, he didn't just slip through the bars. Grexnix writes "ShapeShifter, the 2600 staffer arrested during the Republican convention protests, has finally been released, after a series of events that clearly illustrate the sort of things to expect when the wheels of judicial bureaucracy start grinding. Read the article here."

Sticking up for common sense in the Great White North. Ant writes "http://www.globeandma il.com/gam/National/20000812/USOLDN.html Victoria -- The U.S. manufacturers of Soldier of Fortune are launching a legal battle over an unprecedented British Columbia ruling classifying the graphic computer game as an adult motion picture. Activision Inc. announced yesterday it will appeal the decision by B.C.'s provincial director of film classification that restricts minors under 18 from renting and selling the CD-ROM game. The Canadian distributor of the game, Beamscope Canada, has also filed an appeal with B.C.'s Motion Picture Appeal Board."

Well, it's not a law of nature, fellas. Ian01 writes "Here is an article from MIT's Tech Review magazine about how Moore's Law is false." Well, "false" is a little strong a word for as loose an idea as Mr. Moore's -- errr, "conjecture" -- but isn't it nice to see things keep getting smaller faster and cheaper?

Lars Lars Lars Lars Lars Lars Lars Obiwan Kenobi writes: "As quoted from the Q Online article: 'Napster's number one critic Lars Ulrich - who can barely contain his pleasure at seeing the file sharing company in strife - has done a U-turn. The Metallica drummer's business, the no-brainer monikered The Music Company, will promote work from its artists online at www.theMusicCom.com. And users will be able to sample one of the artists, Goudie through MP3 downloads on the band's official site, which it linked through The Music Company site.'

Dudn't it just seem...you know...ironic?"

While Lars hawking online music may seem ironic at first blush, reading the words he spoke to slashdot a few moons ago, it's not that surprizing at all. Metallica, after all, has long allowed fans to bootleg their concerts, and as Lars said, "So of course there will be at some point -- we are not stupid, of course we realize the future of getting music from Metlalica to the people who are interested in Metallica's music is through the Internet. But the question is, on whose conditions, and obviously we want it to be on our conditions." Now at some level, doesn't that strike a chord?

Jon Ahrens asks: "Whenever you scan reviews on video technology, the articles consistently use a phrase "...VHS quality transmission". How do you measure VHS quality, qualitatively or quantitatively? And if quantitatively, what are the measures used, for example, number of pixels, depth of color, etc.? Are there specific IEEE or NBA standards that explain VHS quality?"

qbasicprogrammer writes "Chris Coleman wrote to Daily Daemon News suggesting a unified package collection. Currently OpenBSD, NetBSD, and FreeBSD maintain separate ports/package trees. Chris points out the various BSD package collections all carry different versions Mozilla; a common ports system would certainly benefit everyone."

Wister285 asks: "I've been hearing a lot about new RAM technologies. Two of the main new forms seem to be RDRAM and DDRAM. Little known to a lot of people currently though is MRAM (magnetic RAM that works more like a hard drive than an electric memory saver, which means that RAM memory is never erased until the computer says so, even through power offs). MRAM seems to be the best form of RAM, but it might not be out for another 1 or 2 years. With these three choices, what is the next generation RAM?"

VF/VT Hunter was first with the news. Could you gush about a product announcement for us, Mr. Hunter? "Oh hell yes :) This link over at C|Net details Sony's plan to release a Transmeta-powered notebook by year's end. I KNEW I should wait! What's better, it will include a built-in digital camera. Add standard USB and iLink (aka Firewire) support which seem to be prevalent on most Sonys, plus Sony's reputation for making the coolest looking gizmo's, and I think I've found my next big purchase. It just better not come with a Winmodem." But since it's not a full-sized laptop, should we assume it will be full-featured? Update: 08/15 11:15 AM by michael : The Picturebook line of Vaios doesn't sell very well - it's too small to be useful as a "real" laptop. If only Sony were smart enough to put this chip in their regular Vaios, they wouldn't be able to keep them on the shelves.

umjaja96 writes: "Reuters is reporting that IBM is rumored to be looking to buy Novell. Perhaps Big Blue is looking to strengthen its mid-range and lower end servers with something not from Redmond?"

qbasicprogrammer writes: "At Daily Daemon News, Josh Pennell says the Reform Party's National Primary Online Election was constantly under attack during the 72-hour election window, however IOActive (the Reform Party's hosting service)'s OpenBSD server kept the kiddies and crackers away. According to the reader comments, Ralph Nader is using BSD/OS, as is the Libertarian Party Web site. It's nice to see political parties believe in freedom of software."

qbasicprogrammer writes: "FreeBSD Basics on The O'Reilly Network covers some of the more useful FreeBSD commands that make computer life easier, including commands for things like scrolling through virtual terminals and checking date, time, and current working directory. Good read for the BSD neophyte."

A couple people wrote in regarding the ZD article talking about Gnome taking the battle to Windows. Having talked with Nat Friedman ^[?] and Miguel de Icaza ^[?] , I can definitely say that is their intent - and with how good both Gnome and KDE look, Windows should be getting some serious desktop competition.

Curtis Diesel asks: "The way I understand the Crusoe processor is that it translates instructions on the fly to its native VLIW Instruction set. It is claimed to be 100% x86 compatible. What about Macintosh? One would think that the conversion to x86 Wouldn't be much more difficult than from Mac's Instructions. Personally, I'd love a Crusoe Web pad running OS X. How about IA-64? Alpha? Maybe even Mips or SH-3? (to run Windows CE or something along those lines) Can I run multiple "code morphing" routines simultaneously? Am I limited to one at a time? Do I need to flash my processor every time I switch, or is the Crusoe just another x86 processor?" Interesting thought. Transmeta has been relatively quiet about Crusoe since the initial release, but it would be interesting to note if it could be tuned to not only emulate x86, but other platforms as well.

As the title says - Yahoo released their Yahoo Messenger for Linux and for FreeBSD. You can find it here. The Linux versions have been tested on Redhat 6.0,6.1 and 6.2. I really hope that Yahoo will think more about Linux/BSD users who want to use other Yahoo's services like Yahoo's Financevision service. Do you hear me Yahoo?

As the title says - Yahoo released their Yahoo Messenger for Linux and for FreeBSD. You can find it here. The Linux versions have been tested on Redhat 6.0,6.1 and 6.2. I really hope that Yahoo will think more about Linux/BSD users who want to use other Yahoo's services like Yahoo's Financevision service. Do you hear me Yahoo?

Lumpish Scholar writes: "Slashdot already reported Looking Glass Studios (creators of Thief, Thief II, and other games) declared bankruptcy. The irony was, their publisher, Eidos Interactive, was pumping all their money into Ion Storm's effort to finish Daikatana. Now, according to this story in Salon, Eidos has bought the rights to Thief III (presumably an asset when Looking Glass was dissolved) and has handed the work over to Ion Storm (under the helm of Warren Spector, not Daikatana's John Romero). Small world, innit?" Wow, that's cool. This should happen more often, I think.

Spudley writes "The BBC is reporting that Yahoo! has been given a reprieve by a French court. The judge had previously ruled that they must block access in France to any Nazi-related auctions on their site. The judge has now asked for a panel to be set up, to provided technical information, before he decides the case." For more information, check out original article about this. It's a pretty interesting debate - how do national laws apply to the Internet?

G. Waters writes: "Ars Technica writes that "3DLabs and Real Time Visualization have teamed up to design an accelerator that accelerates both voxels and polygons in the same scene." A link to the announcement can be found here. Perhaps voxels will become more mainstream with similar developments." I'm still waiting for the cards with accelerated bezier patches, but this is cool too. *grin*

plasmar writes: "ReplayTV has announced a new service due to roll out this Fall that lets you control your ReplayTV unit from a Web browser anywhere in the world. Full story available here." Just what I need, someone reprogramming my settings. I come in from dinner, and all of a sudden I'm watching 30 hours of Ron Popeil's Showtime Rotisserie Grill.

plasmar writes: "ReplayTV has announced a new service due to roll out this Fall that lets you control your ReplayTV unit from a Web browser anywhere in the world. Full story available here." Just what I need, someone reprogramming my settings. I come in from dinner, and all of a sudden I'm watching 30 hours of Ron Popeil's Showtime Rotisserie Grill.

angst_ridden_hipster noted one that you'll find hard to believe. Adobe is suing Macromedia over the patent they seem to have on tabbed widgets. Now I'm torn: Is this lamer than one click shopping? Definitely not as lame as hyperlinks, but pretty sad.

angst_ridden_hipster noted one that you'll find hard to believe. Adobe is suing Macromedia over the patent they seem to have on tabbed widgets. Now I'm torn: Is this lamer than one click shopping? Definitely not as lame as hyperlinks, but pretty sad.

Curtis Diesel writes "C|Net is reporting that a Virginia Judge has struck down a law that made it a criminal offense to deliver or make available sexually explicit material to juveniles. This law didn't really have a leg to stand on since it was passed." One of those well-meaning, but not thought out laws - good riddance.

jwambach writes: "This brief article over at Yahoo! describes how scientists are attempting to create molecular electronic circuits using DNA. They say that they could potentially create circuits 10,000 times smaller than with current technology." The article says that "[r]esearchers have already created molecular wires, logic gates (a building block of computers) and switches, which could be hooked up to make a working computer a fraction of the size of ones based on silicon chips." The coolest part is that assembling the tiny components could be done with DNA-tagged components, shaken (or stirred) in a test tube.