Slashdot Mirror

abouttime writes "What happens when your webmasters and the show scheduling people don't communicate? This page on the mtv site is where the winners of the awards are known before the show even airs tonight... Way to go MTV....." I wonder if it will be pulled by the time the story goes up....oh and in case you can't figure it out, spoiler alert...

Fastball asks: "I have a couple ideas for some web-based games that I'd like to develop. I'm an avid Linux, Perl, Apache, and MySQL user, and I believe in the GPL. However, I'm trying to figure out how I can develop these games as open source and still make a buck. It would be rewarding to produce them without seeing a profit, but I'd like to make enough money to get a company going and quit my current, uninspiring job. Can I get there via open source, would I be more profitable going closed source, or should I forget about make money altogether?"

nm1m writes: "For the last few months I have been following with some interest a few stories (story link may not work) in the school newspaper about a new structural technology being developed at BYU. It is called PYRAmatrix, and is 12 times stronger than steel, yet less than 10 percent the weight of steel. A 47 foot cylinder of this stuff, 16 inches in diameter and weighing just 47 pounds, can support almost 4 tons. It seems to have obvious applications in aerospace, electricity utility poles, radar and communication towers, and just about any structure that needs exceptional strength. An interesting press release with facts and figures can be found here. Photos can be found here." The link worked for me -- and reminded me of the plastic-walking scene in Sabrina .

orn writes "Rep. Lampson introduced a bill (pdf) (H.R. 4742) to the House on May 16th for a human space exploration initiative. I haven't heard a peep about it from the popular press, just a few articles on various space sites: SpaceRef's, the Planetary Society's, the Mars Society's. If you're interested in the sort of thing (and you live in the U.S.), contact your representative and let them know! While you're at it, figure out how to get the popular press aware of this..." On a related note is a story dicussing the controversy over whether the Moon should be developed, which seems a little premature to me.

David_Bloom writes: "Evidence that chimps have been using simple tools over 500 million years ago has been unveiled by an archeological dig in West Africa. Tragically, it will probably be another 500 million years before my mom figures out how to use the simple Windows taskbar. [sigh]" Update: 05/23 22:45 GMT by T : Actually, as the linked article really says, that should be five million, rather than 500 million.

We posted this story over a week ago but the mainstream media has flooded us with stories about felt tip markers and copy protected CDs so I figured I'd post it again since I'm really sick of deleting hundreds of submissions from people who didn't read Slashdot on May 13 ;) Basically you can mark the rim of some CDs and defeat the copy protection. And we all know what the DMCA says about tools for circumventing copy protection.

10Brett-T asks: "Is it possible to build a Linux box with two interfaces to test a network's ability to carry traffic between two ports? I work for a company developing ethernet switching hardware. We need to test its ability to carry traffic correctly under a variety of conditions. Various vendors have expensive test platforms available that may or may not do the tests we want, but we have a tight budget. We decided to try building a Linux system with two ethernet interfaces, and modify the routes to force the traffic to go across the network. Testing would be as simple as running an FTP connection between a client on one interface and a server on the other. This would be a great victory for Linux in our company, if I could get it working. The problem is that I cannot figure out how to bypass the Linux kernel's TCP/IP stack routing optimization. All the combinations of routing table modifications and iptables that I've tried still don't make the packets flow out the interfaces and on the wire instead of within the stack. Has anyone else tried something like this before? How did/would you approach this?"

eaddict asks: "I have just purchased over 20 older laptops. These laptops are old Toshiba Satellite CS110, Acer 350P, and IBM Thinkpad 365Xs. Most have bad floppies, damaged cases, and no battery. When I power them up all the displays look decent. So now I wanna hack and play. I am trying to figure our how to reuse the laptop screens so I can use them to build things like: a combined larger display, an automobile display for a DVD player, photo frames, and other nifty ideas." This question is a replay from about 2 years ago. What hardware will you need to drive a single screen (once it's been severed from the laptop corpse), or a group of them, as mentioned above?

usermilk writes "Now that the X-Files has finally ended, I recommend you all check out The X-Files Timeline. It has a list of all the episodes, chronologically, and what happened when. A very good utility in figuring out what the heck happened, and when." If it hasn't shown in your timezone yet, obviously, don't click through.

Ummagumma writes: "CNN is running a story on how the courts have ordered Verisign to stop their deceptive 'renewal notices' to other registrars' customers. I've gotten a couple of these, and was smart enough to figure out what's going on, but this is a dirty practice, of borderline legality. Let's hope they get smacked down hard for this one..."

This week, Rusty, the general manager of Internet Radio's SomaFM, is the subject of the Slashdot Interview Spotlight. Some of you may remember Rusty from a recent Salon interview. Now he's making himself available to Slashdot and I'm sure you all can figure out a few questions to ask that weren't covered before. I'm sure many of you have questions about CARP, the future of Internet Radio, and the technology behind it. So let's get to it! As usual, we'll send off the 10 highest moderated questions on to Rusty, and we hope to have the answers for you sometime next week. <PLUG TYPE=SHAMELESS>BTW - If you haven't checked out the streams available at SomaFM, give it a try. Taste the Groove Salad, and the other 8 commercial free streams available on SomaFM. Ah, if only normal FM radio could be this good!</PLUG>

FortKnox asks: "I, originally, asked this in my journal, but figured more people would have the same questions. As most coders, I'd eventually like to crack into the gaming industry. Yes, this is similar to an older AskSlashdot, but that was more about how someone going into college wants to get into the gaming industry. My question is how does a veteran computer professional crack into a designer job?"

"I am a coder by trade, so I would like to try and get a job as a game designer. What kind of experience (besides other game company experience) grabs attention of gaming companies? Project Management experience? Software Architecture experience? Create a design document (high and low level) for a game?

Most people say 'You need a demo or create a game for gaming companies to consider you', but the time it takes to make something like that isn't available to all; yes, I understand that most gaming companies require long shifts, which I am fully capable of doing, but that isn't the same as having the extra time to design and code a game. Is there anything besides a lot of luck that will help get a job in the industry as a designer? As a side question: Do designers make enough to support a family well, or is the pay pretty low?"

Pomeranian writes "Sci fi readers often deplore book bestseller lists -- because review editors actively ignore many sci-fi sales, since they don't consider that stuff "popular", even though sci-fi titles often sell in far greater numbers than "serious" highbrow lit. But this all might change soon, with the launch of Bookscan: New technology that tracks actual sales at the cash register with greater precision than ever before. When similar technology launched in the music industry ten years ago, it proved the popularity of "new country" and hip-hop overnight. This story in the Washington Post wonders: Will Bookscan do the same thing to sci-fi? NOTE: this is a *shameless* self-aggrandizing plug, because I wrote the Washington Post story! But I figured it'd be of particular interest to Slashdot readers" CD: While I'd love to see lists that are more reflective of reality, I don't think that a pure unadulterated list is in the interest of the reading public. When I worked at Waldenbooks many moons ago, we would commonly receive copies of one book, Dianetics, from the publisher, with our (And our competitors) sales stickers already on them. While this was an extreme case, it does serve as a cautionary tale about the lengths some will go to manipulate the numbers.

photozz asks: "Our company has got itself into a bind. We need to standardize on a TN3270 emulator for the Wintel boxes in our environment (primarily Win2K) The Linux/Unix guys are OK already )of course), unfortunately, the budget has run out. Our preferred solution would be something host based, but a client side solution would work. Sun has some Java stuff, but I figured if anyone would have a range of solutions, it would be this community. Anyone have ideas? If it matters, we are looking at 1000-2000 clients."

An Anonymous Coward asks: "Recently I've begun to get spam on my e-mail equipped cellphone. Now, you have to realize I took every precaution to make sure this never happened: I have never used that e-mail address anywhere; I have an alias set up on my server that forwards to it; and I only use the alias for my own personal use. However, the spam I'm getting is not going through my server's alias to get to the phone -- I checked the logs. Multiple complaints to Voicestream's abuse address have not even evoked a response. The only way I can figure they got my address is either: Voicestream supplied it to the spammer; or the spammer entered all Voicestream phone numbers in e-mail format. Either way, I'm pissed at Voicestream. Also, I know for a fact I'm not the only Voicestream customer having this problem. The guys at work are getting the exact same spam at the exact same time. Is anyone else having this problem now? It's enough to make me drop my e-mail address on my phone. Could you imagine deleting 80 spams a day from your cellphone?"

Ankou writes: "Today (May 6th, 2002) marks the first day of the Hewlett Packard and Compaq merger. The finalized buyout of Compaq is expected to be done today and are expected to be working together "as a combined entity" by tomorrow. This also means a new stock symbol will replace the old HWP to the new symbol HPQ. Behind the hype this merger will cost, according resources at CNN on this article, a total loss of 15,000 more jobs with over 150,000 following the next two years. The same article details more information regarding the new merger and the recent events which have lead to today." Update: 05/06 15:03 GMT by T : Note: that job-loss figure is off; the 15,000 jobs projected to be cut are from a total of 150,000 between the two companies.

Kappelmeister writes "The Washington Post has an article about red-light-running and speeding cameras all over D.C. that have issued over half a million citations to date. (Police send you a ticket and photographic proof up to a month after the fact.) Though the cameras successfully reduce dangerous driving and boost the city's revenue, a lot of wrongful citations fall through the cracks and give some that guilty-until-proven-innocent feeling. Once again, how far is too far?" I came across this much more informative investigation of D.C.'s traffic cameras a few weeks ago. It's heavy on facts and figures, and hammers home the observation that an extra second of yellow light is at least as good at promoting good behavior, but much less lucrative for the local government and the contracting firm.

Eliot Van Buskirk writes "I interviewed Congressman Rick Boucher about the DMCA, copy-protected CDs, free speech, and the effects of RIAA/MPAA lobbying both in the U.S. and abroad. The transcript is available in the MP3 Insider column, and also as a downloadable MP3 , available under the EFF's Open Audio License, meaning that you can put it in your file sharing directory's upload folder completely legally. This is sort of an experiment. Boucher might be the leading defender in Washington of our right to Fair Use, so I figure it makes sense for the interview to spread around the P2P networks." Boucher's one of the smart ones.

mike asks: "I'm mulling the logic of my company building its own desktop computers. As the IT Manager (plus sysadmin, janitor...) of a struggling-yet-thankfully-still-alive dotcom, money is really tight. We have around sixty ~400MHz desktops which are increasingly showing their age. Acceptable P4 systems from the big guys run at least $1000. By recycling the OS (Win2k), case, cdrom, floppy, and K/V/M, I figure I can assemble a good AMD system for about $600. That's a 40% savings. Is it worth it? The cost difference could very well determine whether this project proceeds or gets put on the back-burner again."

"Some negatives about rolling my own:

• Management: I won't get the special business features offered by some manufacturers. Dell's OpenImage, for example, looks awfully nice. But how much does that really buy me in a company of 60 machines? I don't use such stuff now; am I missing out on nirvana?
• Time to build: Even though we'd leverage Ghost wherever possible, handmade systems nevertheless take time to build, load, & configure.
• Supporting different platforms: Because money is so tight, I can at best afford a capital replacement rate of 25%-33% (15-20 units) per year. That means I'm committing to the support of 3 or 4 different platforms. Having just one platform is great, but how many companies, even ones that actively strive for it, truly enjoy that luxury? I inherited two platforms (Micron & Gateway); support isn't that bad. With proper planning, I don't see why we can't support four.
• Hardware quality: How much can I trust a popular Athlon chipset in a business environment? I feel silly bringing this up because I have a few Athlon systems at home, each with a different chipset, and they've been nothing but rock solid. But I know the lack of a really good chipset has been a large contributor to why AMD's aren't more prevalent in the business world. (well, that and long term bullying by Intel).
• I don't get a proven, prepackaged system that works right out of the box.

Positives of rolling my own:

• Cost savings. Plain & simple.
• Increased horsepower per dollar spent.
• By choosing my own equipment (mobo especially), I suffer fewer OEM shortcuts.
• I have to admit that I'd enjoy the pure geek satisfaction of rolling out 'my' creation to the company.

So is it worth it, or am I setting myself up for disaster?"

For those that are curious, Ask Slashdot did an article on the AMD issue, here.

dannyp asks: "Does anyone have advice and/or references for working with a (very large and cautious) corporate legal department to establish a policy for submitting company-developed patches back to Open Source projects? I work at a large company outside of the technology sector (financial services). As we've succeeded in getting Open Source packages approved for use within the company, we're trying to figure out how to submit patches back to the community. We have to convince management that it makes sense to give this Intellectual Property away, and then (more difficult) convince Legal that we aren't going to get sued for doing it. Any advice?"