Slashdot Mirror

bckrispi writes "An announcement from Sun spokesman Raghavan Srinivas indicates that, contrary to what we've heard in the past, Java will be Open-sourced. "We haven't worked out how to open-source Java, but at some point it will happen," Srinivas said."

An anonymous reader writes "The second version of Sun's Java Desktop System should be unveiled this week, according to this article. And as part of Sun's effort to entice programmers to its new software, the new JDS software will include the Java Studio and NetBeans developer tools." The JDS is their Linux desktop system.

An anonymous reader writes "Innovision Research & Technology, a UK company, has developed a radio frequency identification (RFID) reader that supports Near Field Communication (NFC), a new standard that will allow electronic devices to interact when "touched" together. The NFC standard is being backed by Nokia, Philips and Sony. It's meant to let users access content and services by simply touching 'smart objects' and connecting devices just by holding them next to each other. Some services include swapping music and buying movie tickets. Once a connection has been established between two NFC-enabled devices, another wireless technology such as Wi-Fi or Bluetooth will be used to actually transfer the data. By adding support for NFC, Innovision says it's getting ready for when mobile users will be able to download music tracks by just tapping their device against a poster."

A reader writes:"The creator of Snort, the open-source network-based Intrusion Detection System (IDS), says the software is up for an overhaul. Martin Roesch has told the AusCERT conference IDS has failed to impress the market, citing the inability of many to minimise the number of false alarms triggered by the monitoring devices. The next iteration will include "passive discovery" features."

An anonymous reader writes "In a wide-ranging interview, Microsoft's senior VP Bob Muglia talks about the work involved in getting Longhorn Server out by 2007. He also gives the lowdown on the next major release of Windows Server, code-named Blackcomb. 'If Indigo (a major feature of Longhorn) took four years to develop, some major infrastructure things inside Blackcomb will also take four years to develop,' Muglia said. On competition from Linux, he said: 'When I think of Linux, I don't think about it as our competitor. I think about Linux as a technology that is used by our competitors to build competitive offerings.' Very different from what Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates have been saying but Muglia says he's trying to teach them a thing or two."

An anonymous reader writes "Like his friends Sergey Brin and Larry Page, Craig Silverstein abandoned his PhD studies at Stanford to become employee No.1 and technology director at Google. While building the search engine in a garage, never in his wildest dreams did he think Google would become what it is today. Not only is it the envy of software giant Microsoft, Google continues to redefine the technology market with its creativity and tenacity. In this in-depth interview, Silverstein discusses a wide range of issues including the backlash against Gmail among privacy advocates, the company's cultural changes and its shifting reliance on PageRank."

jyre writes "ZDNet Australia has a special report that profiles and interviews five hackers over the next five days. Day 1: Raven Alder's page is up now (inludes photos). Day 2 will be Attrion.org creator, Jericho. Day 3: Adrian Lamo. Day 4: Kevin Mitnick and Day 5: L0phtCrack creator, Mudge."

jyre writes "ZDNet Australia has a special report that profiles and interviews five hackers over the next five days. Day 1: Raven Alder's page is up now (inludes photos). Day 2 will be Attrion.org creator, Jericho. Day 3: Adrian Lamo. Day 4: Kevin Mitnick and Day 5: L0phtCrack creator, Mudge."

jyre writes "ZDNet Australia has a special report that profiles and interviews five hackers over the next five days. Day 1: Raven Alder's page is up now (inludes photos). Day 2 will be Attrion.org creator, Jericho. Day 3: Adrian Lamo. Day 4: Kevin Mitnick and Day 5: L0phtCrack creator, Mudge."

An anonymous reader writes "Martin Pool is a Canberra-based software engineer working on open source software for HP. In 2003 he won the Australian Unix and Open Systems' Australian Open Souce Award for his work on the distcc distributed compiler. Builder AU recently caught up with Martin to talk about his work, SCO and open source software. Complete story" And, having meet him, and kinda worked with him a bit, Martin's one heckuva guy.

An anonymous reader writes "Looks like the GNOME site (both web and FTP) is back up and running again (from a replacement system). The restoration work is still going on, and dynamic content does not work yet. Bugzilla should be up by tomorrow (it is already in testing mode). More details are available in this announcement. Kudos to the GNOME sysadmin team for such a rapid recovery." However, blurzero writes "GNOME 2.6 was scheduled to be released sometime today, however after evidence of possible intrusion on the web server, the release has been delayed by one week, until March 31st." Update: 03/24 14:08 GMT by T : An anonymous reader points to this story on the delay at ZD Net Australia.

JJP writes "ZDNet Australia is reporting that two new worms, Doomjuice and Deadhat, are taking over computers previously infected by the MyDoom virus. Apparently they try to uninstall the MyDoom virus and then take over the PC to start their own malignant work. Whilst the threat these two worms pose shouldn't be too big, both needing a MyDoom backdoor, it is still a novel way to spread a virus. In the Netherlands there is a newspaper reporting this proves MyDoom was initialy spread by organised crime in a dark plot to wage cyber-war and steal confidential data from our computers."

JJP writes "ZDNet Australia is reporting that two new worms, Doomjuice and Deadhat, are taking over computers previously infected by the MyDoom virus. Apparently they try to uninstall the MyDoom virus and then take over the PC to start their own malignant work. Whilst the threat these two worms pose shouldn't be too big, both needing a MyDoom backdoor, it is still a novel way to spread a virus. In the Netherlands there is a newspaper reporting this proves MyDoom was initialy spread by organised crime in a dark plot to wage cyber-war and steal confidential data from our computers."

An anonymous reader writes "Quake master Johnathan Wendel, better known as Fatal1ty, talks about his life and the professional gaming scene over at ZDNet. Asked how he keeps his reflexes sharp, he said: 'I use the same tactics in 'Quake' that I used in tennis. It's all about mind games, knowing what your opponent's thinking, knowing where a shots going to go. Anything in a computer game, I can relate it to something in sports I've played. The rail gun (the heaviest weapon in 'Quake') -- that's like going for the overhead slam in tennis. You set 'em up and then you drive it home with your hardest shot. It's like all the shots in tennis are, back and forth, trying to get them off balance. And when you do, you slam it down their throat. Same as gaming.'"

rj writes "ZDNet Australia is reporting the Music Industry Piracy Investigations (MIPI) this morning raided the offices of Kazaa owners, Sharman Networks, along with P2P company Brilliant Digital Entertainment, and the homes of key executives. Background on prosecution of copyright music in Australia over P2P is also available."

rj writes "ZDNet Australia is reporting the Music Industry Piracy Investigations (MIPI) this morning raided the offices of Kazaa owners, Sharman Networks, along with P2P company Brilliant Digital Entertainment, and the homes of key executives. Background on prosecution of copyright music in Australia over P2P is also available."

rj writes "ZDNet Australia is reporting the Music Industry Piracy Investigations (MIPI) this morning raided the offices of Kazaa owners, Sharman Networks, along with P2P company Brilliant Digital Entertainment, and the homes of key executives. Background on prosecution of copyright music in Australia over P2P is also available."

Gnea writes submits this article "about the current state of IPv6, the Next Generation of Internet Protocol version 6, mostly according to Cisco. It's also an interesting roadmap about where and how IPv6 will proliferate around the world.. Apparently China has a grasp already with Korea and Japan, who leads the "Five key Chinese carriers, including China Telecom, China Unicom, China Netcom/CSTNET, China Mobile, China RailCom and CERNET (China Education and Research Network), are slated to join CNGI, building their own national IPv6 backbone independently, while interconnecting with at least two IPv6 IX." while Verio appears to have already tuned into some turnkey solutions recently that are publicly available." And SgtChaireBourne writes "ZDNet is reporting that the EU and South Korea will collaborate to develop IPv6 applications and services. The agreement was finalized at the Global IPv6 Service Launch Event in Belgium last week. There are good reasons to move to IPv6, including security, multicasting, simplified header structures, and better routing to name a few."

Noddy writes "The Australian Linux Conf 2004 wrapped up today, with a few geek notables being dunked for their contributions.. to charity that is. Cystic Fibrosis benefitted from the likes of Andrew Tridgell, Damien Conway and Linus Torvalds stripping down, Linus getting into his speedos, and all getting wet. Video of the Linus dunking and a few images are available (thanks Internode). Bet the girls can't wait for the 'Geek Boys of Open Source' pinup calendar after seeing these shots of Linus. Great work guys! More conf wrap-up info also at ZDNet."

An anonymous reader writes "SCO public relations director Blake Stowell today said that the company had secured permission to present the code alleged to have found its way into Linux to a closed court. Once again SCO is refusing to tell Linux users just what code they claim is infringing on their IP rights, while still threatening to sue corporations running Linux."

ilovestuff writes "According to ZDNet, Sun Microsystems has decided not to join the Eclipse open-source tools effort backed by rival IBM. In addition to dropping the plan to join Eclipse, Sun said Wednesday that it will no longer try to merge the Sun-sponsored NetBeans.org open-source Java tools project with Eclipse. The Eclipse open-source project, founded by IBM in 2001, is an IBM-owned consortium which has gained the membership of several development tools companies over the past year."

An anonymous reader writes "In an interview with Red Hat Asia Pacific boss Gus Roberston, he tells ZDNet why he believes Unix will be dead since in future, there will only be two operating systems left (for corporations). "We don't see ourselves competing against Microsoft. We are taking market share away from Unix," he said. However, IDC counters Robertson's claim saying Unix market share has actually been increasing in that part of the world."

An anonymous reader writes " The editors over at NewsForge.com have combined their efforts to put today's big news about Novell's purchase of SUSE in perspective: what the news means in business terms and to the Linux community, today and in the future. A good read that includes quotes from industry insiders, IRC inhabitants, and NewsForge.com readers." Another reader writes "This is a good analysis piece about how Linux has become Novell's lifeline, especially since NetWare's been dying...and post-Ximian."

An anonymous reader writes "It's official, Samba creator Andrew Tridgell is Australia's smartest man... in IT anyway. He's received Bulletin magazine's 'Smart 100' award for the IT sector. He's also written about how Samba came into being, which was basically because he was trying to avoid doing any real work on his PhD. He also tells us how he discovered Linux and why he believes Open Source Software is superior to proprietary code... He also talks about rsync and his plans for the future..."

An anonymous reader writes "It's official, Samba creator Andrew Tridgell is Australia's smartest man... in IT anyway. He's received Bulletin magazine's 'Smart 100' award for the IT sector. He's also written about how Samba came into being, which was basically because he was trying to avoid doing any real work on his PhD. He also tells us how he discovered Linux and why he believes Open Source Software is superior to proprietary code... He also talks about rsync and his plans for the future..."

An anonymous reader writes "In what is believed to be the first case of its kind in the world, the Australian music industry has listed an Internet service provider (ISP) as a respondent in a court case involving music piracy. The ISP is being sued for 'profiting' (by hosting it) from a site which distributes copyright-infringing material."

rocketjam writes "Web developers are expressing frustration with Microsoft's apparent abandonment of its 'operating-system-integrated' Internet Explorer web browser. An article on C-Net points up the efforts of the Web Standards Project as well as Adobe Systems to prompt Microsoft to fix long-standing Cascading Style Sheet bugs in IE as well as continuing to add other improvements which have virtually ceased since Microsoft won the browser war. While alternatives such as the Mozilla Project and the Opera browser still exist, their marketshare is miniscule." In a related story, an anonymous reader points out that the bugs aren't just in rendering, they're security holes as well: "iDefense and eEye have basically said that Internet Explorer is full of holes and just surfing the Web using it is "unsafe". There's 31 un-patched holes in IE, but MS won't talk about it... It took them nearly a month to roll out a new patch after this one was found to be more or less useless."

ilovestuff writes "The winners of the annual Australian Unix and Open Systems User Group's open source awards were announced in Sydney last night. Winners included Andrew Tridgell, Rusty Russell, Kimberley Shelt and Martin Pool."

Flamester writes "In a ZDNet Australia story, Microsoft is claiming that half of all MS Windows crashes are the fault of third party code, not their own. That is, according to Dr. Watson. The article also goes into the 'rigor in which MS tests their products before release'. "

D4C5CE writes "The number of European countries enacting their ignorance of the sad experiences from Four Years under the DMCA has just risen to 5, as the Upper House (Bundesrat, incidentally) of the German Parliament on Friday failed to veto (sorry, some press releases are only available in heavily spin-doctored German Legalese at this point in time) and is hence considered to have consented to the adoption by the Lower House (Bundestag) of a federal law implementing the dreaded DMCA's European sibling known as EU Copyright Directive 2001/29/EC." Read on for more on the copyright laws being considered around the EU.

D4C5CE continues: "Earlier implementations have been reported from Austria, Denmark, Greece and Italy.
Legal scholars consider the directive itself an invalid "monstrosity", and the German law unconstitutional. In fact, this legislation is viewed as so terribly awful that even from the U.S., the EFF tried to prevent it in a rare intervention overseas.

Declaring that the circumvention rather than the use of Copy Protection is a Crime, the German parliament threatens to make things even worse by adopting a "second stage" with further steps to impose DRM and additional levies later this year, but unsurprisingly, all of the issues that DMCA-style laws have become notorious for are already there: Overbreadth, overprotection of technical measures, and Chilling Effects aplenty.

Record companies eagerly awaiting this "lex Bertelsmann" have already caused ISPs to send out warning letters to P2P users for alleged copyright infringement, and are expected to take legal action against individual users of file-sharing networks, following in the footsteps of RIAA.

Confirming the fears expressed by Alan Cox on Slashdot, computer gurus will soon find no place left to go even on the European side of the pond, and the Free-X "Independence Day" XBox exploit posted by one brave German just in time before this dismal day may well have been one of the very last legal disclosures in this part of the world as well."

D4C5CE writes "The number of European countries enacting their ignorance of the sad experiences from Four Years under the DMCA has just risen to 5, as the Upper House (Bundesrat, incidentally) of the German Parliament on Friday failed to veto (sorry, some press releases are only available in heavily spin-doctored German Legalese at this point in time) and is hence considered to have consented to the adoption by the Lower House (Bundestag) of a federal law implementing the dreaded DMCA's European sibling known as EU Copyright Directive 2001/29/EC." Read on for more on the copyright laws being considered around the EU.

D4C5CE continues: "Earlier implementations have been reported from Austria, Denmark, Greece and Italy.
Legal scholars consider the directive itself an invalid "monstrosity", and the German law unconstitutional. In fact, this legislation is viewed as so terribly awful that even from the U.S., the EFF tried to prevent it in a rare intervention overseas.

Declaring that the circumvention rather than the use of Copy Protection is a Crime, the German parliament threatens to make things even worse by adopting a "second stage" with further steps to impose DRM and additional levies later this year, but unsurprisingly, all of the issues that DMCA-style laws have become notorious for are already there: Overbreadth, overprotection of technical measures, and Chilling Effects aplenty.

Record companies eagerly awaiting this "lex Bertelsmann" have already caused ISPs to send out warning letters to P2P users for alleged copyright infringement, and are expected to take legal action against individual users of file-sharing networks, following in the footsteps of RIAA.

Confirming the fears expressed by Alan Cox on Slashdot, computer gurus will soon find no place left to go even on the European side of the pond, and the Free-X "Independence Day" XBox exploit posted by one brave German just in time before this dismal day may well have been one of the very last legal disclosures in this part of the world as well."

An anonymous reader writes "Free-X have released an exploit for the Xbox that will let you get Linux on the machine without any hardware mods at all... Microsoft is already threatening them with legal action. Here's the Free-X statement. Free-X say they had been trying to contact MS for a month but were ignored, which is why they've released the exploit. Should be interesting to watch this one."

An anonymous reader writes "Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has released the second annual report on obstacles to the free flow of information online. Vint Cerf wrote the forward, where he argues it is the responsibility of every citizen to test the truth of information on the Web, and draw attention to incorrect information, rather than the government's responsibility to dictate the 'truth.' ZDNet Australia has an article on the report."

Sean Burford writes "The South Australian Partnership for Advanced Computing (SAPAC) has unveiled its new AU$1.7 Million supercomputer named Hydra. It is an IBM 1350 Linux cluster with 126 compute nodes (xSeries 335), 1 head node (xSeries 335), 1 storage node (xSeries 345) and 1 managment node (xSeries 345). Hydra has a peak theoretical performance of 1.2 Teraflops, and has currently benchmarked at 682 Gigaflops. The current benchmark places it in the fastest three supercomputers in Australia and equivalent to the current number 80 in the world. The cluster has a total of 258 2.4Ghz Intel Xeon processors and 258GB of RAM. SAPAC expects to achieve a benchmark closer to 700 Gigaflops with further tuning. Hydra is hosted at The University Of Adelaide, who already host a 40 node cluster of Sun e420 machines."

Slashback is packed tonight with updates and clarifications on several fronts: read on below for, among other things, BitTorrent download stats after the recent Red Hat 9 release, the BSA's questionable statistical methods when it comes to calculating incentives and losses in the source-secret software world, and (can you believe?) yet another way to assemble an eerie pulsing light fixture.

Click on through for some impressive graphs ... . bramcohen writes "Since RedHat 9 got /.'ed last week there have been over ten thousand complete downloads using BitTorrent. Initial traffic got very high, transferring over a gibibit a second. All throughout the BitTorrent servers, run by volunteers using stock tools, held up just fine. Meanwhile downloads from RedHat Network, only available to subscribers, transferred at a crawl. The third Animatrix also got quite a few downloads. Thanks to everyone who left their downloaders running, and David Stutz and Eike Frost for setting things up."

If you exaggerate enough the first time, subsequent revisions sound like concessions. Russell McOrmond writes "An article in ITBusiness.ca includes references to the methodology of the BSA studies, and how it confuses Free/Libre and Open Source Software with piracy. There are some related articles talking about CAAST/BSA on my work weblog from the past."

Tap, Tap, Tap. feagle814 writes "Recently, I saw a question on Ask Slashdot that intrigued me. The person was asking for ideas relating to building your own glowing and color-changing ball. Being the kind of person to take such a general request for comments and turn it into a personal reason for living, I quickly skimmed the description on ThinkGeek and came up with these requirements for my project:

1. It must meet the generic description of the Ambient Orb,
2. It must cost less than $50 to make,
3. It must be wireless, with at least a 30-foot range, and
4. It must be controllable by home computer.

After much deliberation, I came up with the following solution. I've included pictures and instructions, as well as a recounting of my experiences."

Not just a simulation. Olmy's Jart writes "This is a followup to yesterday's article on "Samba Exploit Discovered, Fixed". Digital Defense has posted an apology to the Samba Team for posting a complete live working exploit (not even a mere "proof of concept", but a zero day rooter) on their site for this vulnerability. The exploit has been taken down, for what that's worth now. This is being reported in an article on ZDNet AU. Digital Defense now claims that this was done without the approval of their management."

Funny, CompUSA is finally selling duplicators, too. Unominous Coward writes "According to this article, the man who planned to install CD copying machines around Australia has withdrawn from the idea. Not surprisingly, this was after a lawsuit by the music industry."

Anyone who would like to buy me one is free to do so. prostoalex writes "Sharp Zaurus deal is back at Home Shopping Network. Sharp Zaurus SL-5500 is $199, but a coupon code HSN4897 knocks the price down by 15%. With standard shipping the order comes to around $173."

We need both more Korean food and more Korean electronics. Jo "directhex" Shields writes "HEXUS.net has completed its extensive messing around with GamePark's GP32 Handheld, which recieved a mention a couple of days ago on Slashdot (and recieved the usual thrashing from members too busy to read the article but not too busy to post trashy ill-informed comments about it).

It should help to clear up a few myths about what the unit is, what it tries to do, and what it succeeds at doing. Read the review, and pass mighty Slashdot Judgement."

Slashback is packed tonight with updates and clarifications on several fronts: read on below for, among other things, BitTorrent download stats after the recent Red Hat 9 release, the BSA's questionable statistical methods when it comes to calculating incentives and losses in the source-secret software world, and (can you believe?) yet another way to assemble an eerie pulsing light fixture.

Click on through for some impressive graphs ... . bramcohen writes "Since RedHat 9 got /.'ed last week there have been over ten thousand complete downloads using BitTorrent. Initial traffic got very high, transferring over a gibibit a second. All throughout the BitTorrent servers, run by volunteers using stock tools, held up just fine. Meanwhile downloads from RedHat Network, only available to subscribers, transferred at a crawl. The third Animatrix also got quite a few downloads. Thanks to everyone who left their downloaders running, and David Stutz and Eike Frost for setting things up."

If you exaggerate enough the first time, subsequent revisions sound like concessions. Russell McOrmond writes "An article in ITBusiness.ca includes references to the methodology of the BSA studies, and how it confuses Free/Libre and Open Source Software with piracy. There are some related articles talking about CAAST/BSA on my work weblog from the past."

Tap, Tap, Tap. feagle814 writes "Recently, I saw a question on Ask Slashdot that intrigued me. The person was asking for ideas relating to building your own glowing and color-changing ball. Being the kind of person to take such a general request for comments and turn it into a personal reason for living, I quickly skimmed the description on ThinkGeek and came up with these requirements for my project:

1. It must meet the generic description of the Ambient Orb,
2. It must cost less than $50 to make,
3. It must be wireless, with at least a 30-foot range, and
4. It must be controllable by home computer.

After much deliberation, I came up with the following solution. I've included pictures and instructions, as well as a recounting of my experiences."

Not just a simulation. Olmy's Jart writes "This is a followup to yesterday's article on "Samba Exploit Discovered, Fixed". Digital Defense has posted an apology to the Samba Team for posting a complete live working exploit (not even a mere "proof of concept", but a zero day rooter) on their site for this vulnerability. The exploit has been taken down, for what that's worth now. This is being reported in an article on ZDNet AU. Digital Defense now claims that this was done without the approval of their management."

Funny, CompUSA is finally selling duplicators, too. Unominous Coward writes "According to this article, the man who planned to install CD copying machines around Australia has withdrawn from the idea. Not surprisingly, this was after a lawsuit by the music industry."

Anyone who would like to buy me one is free to do so. prostoalex writes "Sharp Zaurus deal is back at Home Shopping Network. Sharp Zaurus SL-5500 is $199, but a coupon code HSN4897 knocks the price down by 15%. With standard shipping the order comes to around $173."

We need both more Korean food and more Korean electronics. Jo "directhex" Shields writes "HEXUS.net has completed its extensive messing around with GamePark's GP32 Handheld, which recieved a mention a couple of days ago on Slashdot (and recieved the usual thrashing from members too busy to read the article but not too busy to post trashy ill-informed comments about it).

It should help to clear up a few myths about what the unit is, what it tries to do, and what it succeeds at doing. Read the review, and pass mighty Slashdot Judgement."

cdthompso1 writes "In a pragmatic article at ZDNet Australia entitled 'Porting to .NET: Style at the sake of speed?' author Tim Landgrave analyzes the pros and cons of rearchitecting a legacy C++ application to .NET using the lastest services-oriented approach. His conclusions may surprise some, particularly if you are contemplating or already in the middle of a .NET migration yourself."

I've just recently returned from Linux Conference Australia 2003, held in Perth, Western Australia. I've had an incredible time, and this has easily been the best technical/Linux show I've been to since ALS was still operating. I've got a write-up below, and some notes on what happened, what's the plan for next year (It'll be in Adelaide, and I'm greatly looking forward to it!), and a photo round up. A number of other articles have appeared, and Kate MacKenzie's write up in The Australian was good as well, in addition to Telsa Gwynne's excellent write-up and Linux Magazine Au has some articles as well. Update: 02/04 02:42 GMT by T : ilovestuff points out ZDNet Australia's coverage as well.

I was actually invited to come to present the hacker survey that OSDN had done in conjunction with the Boston Consulting Group. However, upon looking at the conference plans, it was quickly apparent that that would be one of the few non-technical presentations, which was a pleasant change from my normal conference regime, in which the technical stuff seems crammed into one half day. I've heard that OLS is quite similar, but have not had a chance to attend. Nonethless, obviously my work withstanding *grin* the presentations were excellent - read the program to see for yourself.

I was able to attend Tridge's keynote, having only arrived Wednesday morning, a ARQuake presentation done by Wayne Pierkarski (we've mentioned it before). The afternoon was spent at Conrad's presentation on sweep, which is a hella cool audio app. Finally, the Q&A was Rusty, BDale, Tridge and Linus. Some of the typcial questions were asked, but there were some other questions 'round about DRM, IPv6 and some of the more social questions that were interesting. I think the DRM issues is one of the areas that some people are greatly concerned about, while other people have adopted a more Pollyana approach to it.

Unfortunately, on Friday, while I was presenting, there were two other presentations that I wanted to attend, but alas, had to speak myself. Rasmus, as usual, did a number of talks, and I was able to catch part of PHP printing with PDF, which was informative. Alex Reeder, part of VA Linux Japan also did a presentation on his work with bioauthentication, and my final piece of the show was Horms' presentation on Perdition, a mail retrieval proxy he's been working on.

But presentations aside, which were as a rule exceptional, I think one of the best parts was the relaxed feel, and the amount of interchange between just about everybody here. Almost every one that you talked to was fluent in Linux, programming or what not, which made for easy conversation with everyone there. The Perthites who really managed to put this together also did an exceptional job. To be frank, this is the only show I'd ever consider travelling 13,500 miles for.

I'd encourage anyone who attended or was part of it to post below -- and here's to looking forward to next year. One of the most amusing pictures though has to be the Linus in the penguin suit. The hats are off to the organizing team for their hard work -- and the speakers who traveled afar to be part of this. And from the wonderful uses of pizza box - yet more zaniness.

You can also check out some of photo round ups from Leon, Noel, and, of course, Marc Merlin's done a great round-up, as well as group round-up and one final one.

Overall, I highly highly recommend this show -- probably one of the best on the planet -- and for those in know, 23 will fall.

aebrain writes "The recent launch of the FedSat microsatellite will have significant long-term consequences for Ka-band comms in remote areas (ie cheap 2GB broadband anywhere) and Re-Configurable Hardware in space -- which could lead to cheaper, more reliable deep space missions. The latest news (including pix of telemetry) is here, with some details on the hardware and software here. Also available, a Rogue's Gallery of the Australian team that put it together."

ynotds writes "ZDNet Australia has an interview with notorious Australian IT Minister Senator Richard Alston which could even be read as suggesting that he, like some others in the Australian government, has learned a little about his portfolio during his 7 years at the helm. He responds openly about his censorhip regime, lack of action against spam and his antipathy towards Electronic Frontiers Australia but refuses to get into details on cyberterrorism response and security expenditure."

ilovestuff writes "Sun Microsystems is building a Java-based development kit for its StarOffice software to help corporate programmers customise desktop applications, a move that better pits it against Microsoft's dominant Office. The software development kit will be available in the middle of next year as part of a minor upgrade to the business version of Sun's StarOffice 6.0, said Joerg Heilig, director of engineering for StarOffice at Sun."

Slashback tonight with several updates, ranging from patent encumbrances to SOAP 1.2 to the transcript for Eldred v. Ashcroft, with more bits in the middle on the recent Geek Cruise in the Caribbean, the all-important cable TV lineups, and more. Read on below for the details! A little light reading. hayek writes "The transcript of oral argument at the Supreme Court in Eldred v. Ashcroft is now available online."

And then we saw the sharks. a9db0 writes "Part II of Doc Searl's travelogue recounting his experiences on the Geek Cruise has been posted here by the fine folks over at the Linux Journal"

In an earlier report from Geek Cruise, Linus predicted 2.6 by June 2003. If you liked the list of features being considered for 2.6, you can thank puriots0 for "the list of what's been included in time for the feature freeze for Linux 2.6", as found at kernelnewbies.org.

Peel back your eyelids and let these images flood your brain. strredwolf writes "I think we had half the story when Cartoon Network said they were going to remove Zoids and G Gundam in their Toonami block. It was more like remove Zoids, move G Gundam to Midnight Run with GI Joe, put HeMan and Transformers on full weekdays, and double up on DB and DBZ. The website and broadcast prove it now. (This report was done while watching to Toonami live.)"

And Stalke writes "Recently, rumours about Stargate SG1 7th season included it both being renewed as well as speculation that it might be cancelled. MGM and Scifi put those rumours to rest today by officially announcing a 7th season. It will begin filming next year with a full 22 episodes ordered. No word about Daniel Jackson returning though :("

Cracking down on alien fraudsters. yep writes "Administrators of the alien-hunting distributed computing experiment SETI@home have announced they will crack down on cheats who rort statistics on computing power lent to the project. The announcement follows a united protest from the chief contributors. SETI@home director David Anderson announced SETI@home would do its best to investigate users returning suspiciously high amounts of work and delete their accounts if it uncovered solid evidence of cheating."

Sure they're not. tiltowait writes "The Hartford Courant article "The FBI Has Bugged Our Public Libraries" has been retracted (this was mentioned here - but the older article has been removed). Even if the retraction can be trusted, this doesn't change the fact that the FBI can still bug libraries as freely as the CIA can assasinate with impunity, or that more McCarthyism is on the way."

This story retracts the claims of bugging made in the previous one. Since the FBI has little incentive to tell the truth on this count, I don't see what incentive anyone has to believe their denial.

Cleaning up the future for SOAP. Makarand writes "A major hurdle in finalizing the SOAP 1.2 specification has been removed. Both Epicentric, a subsidiary of Vignette, and WebMethods, which makes integration software, had said in earlier statements that they may have patents that cover the technology used in the SOAP 1.2 specification which would have made SOAP 1.2 non royalty-free hindering approval by W3C. Epicentric has now amended its earlier statement saying they no longer believe they hold any such patents, and even if they did, they are interested in making them available on a royalty-free basis. WebMethods has made no comments yet."

Megor writes "Well it was bound to happen, people are cheating on Seti@home to inflate their work unit statistics, and the people who administer Seti are ignoring the complaints. ZDNET has an article explaining how they are cheating."

ilovestuff wrote to us with a disscussion starter from ZDNet Australia about the changes in dress code at IT jobs. How much is everyone else going through?

blamanj writes "The aussie version of ZDNET is reporting that money to continue the SETI@Home project is in jeopardy, and it may fall by the wayside unless further funding can be found."

nihilist_1137 writes "Zdnet is reporting on a new information facility that is built to surive the worst.Triangular in shape, two of the sides house offices while the third, a large rectangular block if taken in isolation, contains two data centres, as well as the infrastructure to ensure that Web sites continue to function come fire, flood, natural catastrophy or foreign invasion."

nihilist_1137 writes "Zdnet is reporting on a new information facility that is built to surive the worst.Triangular in shape, two of the sides house offices while the third, a large rectangular block if taken in isolation, contains two data centres, as well as the infrastructure to ensure that Web sites continue to function come fire, flood, natural catastrophy or foreign invasion."

m0f3z writes: "According to this article, auDA has organised to auction off previously reserved internet names, such as hotel.com.au and banks.com.au. It's believed the auction is the first of its kind in the world."

Your day wouldn't be complete without Microsoft news. Ralph Nader has written an open letter to Judge Kollar-Kotelly. Seems he has a few bones to pick with the settlement. MSNBC is running a WSJ article detailing how Microsoft beat down the DOJ in settlement negotiations. Even Israel knows Microsoft is a monopoly. Microsoft reveals its keep-them-in-the-dark plan for Microsoft security vulnerabilities. Amazingly, some security firms seem to be willing to go along with it. I guess they figure setting up a sort of cartel for security flaws is in their best financial interest. SANS is keeping their list of top security vulnerabilities up to date with the latest IIS exploits. And finally, MS wishes their new disclosure rules were used for yet another huge hole in Windows. Microsoft says it's "irresponsible" to expect them to get a patch out for a critical flaw within "a few days". As usual, switch off active scripting, even though that will make essentially every webpage that's designed for IE not work.

malibu_mex writes: "LinuxToday, ZDNet Australia, and NewsForge are all reporting on a loadable kernel module + GUI combination that implements an auditing subsystem on Linux (Like the NT event logger, or solaris BSM). This could be yet another reason for big business and government to migrate away from the costly commercial alternatives to Linux. First it was SAMBA, now it's SNARE. What have these Aussies got with 5 letter 'S' names? This topic has been discussed on Slashdot previously here."