Slashdot Mirror

Anonymous Coward writes: "I saw this article on NewsForge. It looks like these guys are going to stop preaching to the converted & start showing off open source software to those who need showing of to." I usually figure that if it isn't in Debian unstable, I don't need it. :) But perhaps this site will be useful to people once it has some submissions.

CBNobi writes: "The National Committee on Information Technology Standards (NCITS) has rejected 4C Entity's proposal of the CPRM, a copy-protection that can be placed on future hard drives. While this may be a win for us, many other organizations are attempting the same thing. Full article at ZDNet." This is only a very temporary victory - there is nothing to prevent this addition to the ATA standard from being proposed again, or to prevent Intel, IBM, Toshiba and Matsushita from figuring out another way to implement it. Another submitter notes: "According to The Register, Apple, Adaptec, ST Micro, Western Digital, Maxtor, LSI Logic and Hale Landis voted against "Generic Functionality" in ATA devices for content control. Voting in favor of content control were IBM, Toshiba (4C members), Hitachi, Iomega, Microsoft, Phoenix, Absolute Software, and Circuit Assembly."

alphaparadigm writes: "Is Star Wars: A New Hope the most violent movie ever? What I mean is, does it have the highest body count of any movie ever? They blow up a planet full of people and then a death star full of people! I figured if anyone would know, it would be you guys." That's a very good point. If violence is measured by number of sentient beings killed, then Star Wars Episode IV is going to be first on the chopping block when the Republicans come to censor our movies. And censor they will. Also there's the one episode of Star Trek: Voyager in which not just planets but entire species are wiped out, but then they crash Voyager into the time ship and the timeline reverts to the way it was so nobody ever really died ... or did they? Anyway these are the films, ladies and gentlemen, the mass-murdering films and TV shows, that John Ashcroft will ban, in conjunction with the Christian Coalition. Anyone standing up for them will be tarred as defending mass murder. Mark my words.

varp writes: "Scientists at Baylor College of Medicine have figured out a way to reduce body fat even though you keep pumping yourself with all the grease you can lay your hands on while sitting on the couch and doing nothing. Next wish: Please, please identify the gene which can cause my arteries to choke."

mr writes "The boys and girls at Evans Data want to sell you a 178 page report about Linux. Now, they had a page that put FreeBSD between Caldara and Debian as far as how often it is used as a web server. They have pulled FreeBSD from the list. Seems Evans Data just figured out that FreeBSD isn't Linux. Did Evens Data use pages from TigerSoftware or perhaps the crack staff of Tucows?" There's also a Daily DaemonNews story with some figures.

Stavr0 noted that Everything 2 has now hit its 1 Millionth Node: [list collector] by [stepnwolf]. Long long long time readers of Slashdot remember Everything as The Mystery Project thought up and developed years ago by Nate & I, which has since taken on a life of its own. Congrats to Nate, Bones, Darrick, Tim, Ron, and the thousands of people who have contributed a million nodes, both priceless and worthless to this bizarre experiment in distributed collection and maintanence of information. Nostalgia rises up in me whenever I read the original nodes that Nate and I wrote when Everything was just a wierd drunken idea. If only we figured out a way for it to break even ;)

jeffersonebell writes "Today Turbolinux becomes the latest software company to pull its IPO. Story is here. They sight "current market conditions" as the major reason behind the move." I suspect that most people had figured this would be the case - now isn't the ideal time for an IPO.

Michael Stricklen writes: "The company I work for, NaviSite, Inc. is going to stream the Mir re-entry at http://www.mirreentry.com. I'm not sure what kind of view you'll have of it, but I figure with as many stories as /. has had on Mir, one more marking it's death couldn't hurt." And Kevin points to an article on Yahoo! which says that the mirreentry.com video will not be a live broadcast, "since 'the aircraft which will track the spacecraft's final descent will not have enough bandwidth to stream the footage as it occurs.' The film will be supposedly available on the Internet within two hours of reentry. The site currently target's Mir's 'latest probable deorbit date' as March 22." I wish I saw a link to other than "Windows Media Format" on that page, though.

^Phantom asks: "I am a telecommunications major at college. Due to the lack of lab time at school I am always trying to practice as much at home as possible, the problem is I don't have the money for the latest/greatest things, usually I end up with scraps that 'helpful' friends and co-workers come up with. A common example is the Motorola Powerstacks I have on my floor now. I would like to put these to use, and I have heard linux can be made to run on them, but I have been unable to find info except message threads stating the problems that others have faced but with no solutions. I did find one HOWTO but when I followed the steps listed I ended up with a box that kernel panics on boot and no idea why. Is there any websites dedicated to putting old/odd hardware such as this to use?" You'd be amazed how many people out there are finding yesterday's powerful machines in a surplus sale and would love to figure out where to find hardware for it, or figuring out what OSes it will run. Are there any resources on the interenet that might help one with obtaining this information?

We'll start this off with Ant's submission -- a hilarious story about The Endor Holocaust which no doubt follows the destruction of the 2nd Death Star. After reading something so clear, confuse your mind confuse your mind (thanks to The Musician). Now that you are adequately confused, cardoso sent us a ridiculous flash app where you can control dancers. This will put you in the mood to enjoy the most retro homepage ever, sent in by mvw Got some money to burn? Check out the Spinal Tap Guitar which features among other things, chrome exhaust pipes and a tachometer that (of course) goes to 11. If you're not a musician, maybe you'd be interested in Randy Rathbun's link to personalized action figures: I could send in my mugshot and be immortalized in plastic, standing forever atop my monitors with Darth, Goku, and Trinity! Or maybe you wanna buy a Dalek? If you're on more of a budget, Jay Novak sent us a great t-shirt from copyleft considering all the layoffs around the net companies. With all of these great things to waste cash on, you might need some cash: geekguy sent in a funny list of ways to cash in on Doom without wasting time making a game (like for example, Doom breakfast serial! Free BFG inside!) Just get id to license ya! For you do-it-yourselfers, mr100percent submitted what might be the most impressive automotive MP3 player ever. The Pathintosh is a beautifully integrated Mac complete w/ steering wheel controls, and a custom bezel. And finally, the eycandy. First up is davco9200's link to Daily Astronomy Astropix which is actually pretty sweet: today is Mars Dunes. Second and last of all, the pr0n: Jeff K sent in Unix-Sex which features sysadmins getting it on w/ Sun Hardware. Thats why we don't let them work 3rd shift.

Mike Bouma writes: "The Phoenix Developer Consortium is an developer organisation which is unhappy with the currently available computing solutions. John Chandler has written an article about a small start-up company which has been one of many developers to tap into the organisation for resource contacts and advice. "It allowed them to extend their resources and survive the perils of being a small company in a large world." If you are a similar minded developer and want to join and help others or yourself to take your Ideas2Reality contact Greenboy and include the following information (signing a NDA will be required). Among the members are important figures involved in the development of OSes like the Amiga DE, MorphOS and QNX RtP."

Delphis writes "CNN has an article regarding domain names world wide 'Francis Gurry, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) assistant director-general, told a news conference the effort was aimed at preventing people using different country codes, or ccTLDs, to corner sites, often of prominent figures or businesses. ' .. Could be interesting to see a reform of the current DNS system. How many people will be the winners and losers of this though I wonder?"

nick_patt writes "It looks like the zany scientists in Los Alamos have been up to no good again. According to this article, they claim to have figured out the mystery of some simple knots. Anyways, the thing I'd like to know is how close the computer simultations and mathematical models (mentioned in the third paragraph) came to the observed behavior." An interesting approach to science - macro experiments to gain insight into micro behavior.

Purdyman asks: "Paul Tatara (who also happens to be a kick-ass movie reviewer) has an interesting piece on human cloning at goodauthority. He thinks we need start asking ourselves right now just what human cloning would actually mean, both to humanity ("The dangers of pushing this particular button simply aren't as obvious as they are with the destructive energy of a nuclear bomb.") and for the clones ("Will clones themselves ache from the sense that they may not be 'complete,' that they're inexorably removed from their so-called peers?"). This is certainly the time to figure out what we're in for, because once that particular genie, so to speak, is out of the bottle, it may never go back in. So, leaving aside the technological questions, what does human cloning really mean? Will this be mankind's greatest boon or a horrible bane?"

An unnamed assailant writes: "I want to do a real nerdy project: My VCR has a plug in the back for a LAN-C/Control-L cable which connects to a serial port on a computer as well as a LAN-C connection on a camcorder. The VCR also came with some simple software to control a VCR and a camera through the cable. This was obviously before nonlinear editing was as common as it is now. Anyway, I want to see if there's any way to figure out what the codes are that the protocol uses so I can talk to the VCR using perl. Any suggestions?" Now this would be a great project, even (or especially?) without the whiz-bang eyecandy of B2K. There are a lot of middle- and high-schools with LAN-C equipped VCRs (most of which probably never get used that way), and it would be nice to be able to control them this way.

An assortment of Napster news. Napster put out a press release, mirrored below, talking about their plans for the subscription Napster service to include strong copy protection - so you can pay Napster in subscription fees, storage space and bandwidth for files you can't use, and you can transmit them to other people who can't use them either. What a great business plan! The RIAA submitted their proposal for the injunction against Napster - it isn't pretty. Napster may have to block all 2.5 million of the RIAA's songs, as soon as the RIAA can figure out all their names. And Lessig sounds the battle cry for peer to peer - nothing you haven't heard before, but perhaps inspiring nonetheless.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Napster Announces Key Building Block of New Business Model Bertelsmann Subsidiary Digital World Services Will Work with Napster to Enable Secure Management of Transferred Files

Redwood City, CA and New York, NY (February 16, 2001) -- Napster today announced progress on the development of a key aspect of the technology necessary to implement a new, membership-based business model supported by the recording industry. The solution, which enables secure administration of transferred files within a peer to peer structure, has been in the works for several months and will be implemented by Digital World Services (DWS), a Bertelsmann subsidiary with extensive experience in innovative digital rights management solutions.

"Today's announcement underscores one key fact: the real questions about Napster's future are economic, not technical or legal. Our alliance with Bertelsmann and the Bertelsmann eCommerce Group was our first important step toward a model that makes payments to artists, songrwriters and other rightsholders. This solution is further evidence of the seriousness of our effort to reach an agreement with the record companies that will keep Napster running, reliable, and enjoyable," said Hank Barry, Napster's Interim CEO.

Barry reiterated that Napster hopes to move to a membership-based service as soon as possible.

The solution the two companies have been working on will maintain the peer to peer structure of Napster, but will allow in the future restrictions to be placed on what can be done with the transferred files, such as limits on the ability to burn music files onto CDs.

"To work with Napster on the design and operation of a key component of its new business model is an extraordinary opportunity for DWS," said Johann Butting, CEO of Digital World Services. "The successful combination of Napster's very compelling user friendliness and popularity with an architecture that addresses the needs of rightsholders will be a very significant step for secure sharing of content over the Internet."

The technology will enable the sharing of MP3 files to which a protection layer will be added as the file is transferred from one Napster user to the other. The Napster client will be enhanced to support this protection. The solution will not use any existing multi-purpose DRM but a new security architecture that is specially tailored to the requirements of file-sharing.

"We are extremely pleased to partner with Digital World Services in bringing together and operating a key aspect of the technology we need to preserve file sharing and build an industry-supported business model. Through this agreement with DWS and the work we have done together to date, the architecture for one important component of our new model is now in place; we are building out this aspect of the system," Hank Barry added.

"We have been working with Digital World Services for several months to design this solution. They really understand the technologies involved and are sensitive to the user experience. We are confident that the new system will allow us to accomplish key goals of the record companies in terms of restricting use, while still maintaining and improving the performance and service levels of the Napster system," said Napster CTO Eddie Kessler.

About Napster Napster is the world's leading person-to-person file sharing community. Napster provides music enthusiasts with an easy-to-use, high quality service for discovering new music and communicating their interests with other members of the Napster community. Napster's software application enables users to locate and share music files through a user-friendly interface, and features instant messaging, chat rooms, and Hot List User Bookmarks. Shawn Fanning, then an eighteen year-old freshman at Boston's Northeastern University, founded Napster in 1999. In October 2000, Bertelsmann AG and Napster announced the formation of a strategic alliance to further develop the Napster person-to-person file sharing service. In January 2001, edel Music and TVT Records joined the alliance. This year, Napster won several Wired Magazine Readers Rave Awards, including Best Music Site, Best Innovative Start-up, and Best Guerilla Marketing.

About Digital World Services Digital World Services provides Digital Rights Management (DRM) solutions and services enabling the convenient use to digital works by making the process transparent for the consumer, retailer and publisher while protecting the owners' copyrights. The company offers clearinghouse services such as rights clearing, financial settlement, and administration of usage information. Digital World Services are experts in the digital delivery of music, content hosting, system integration, project management and distribution platforms. Based in New York City and Hamburg, Germany, Digital World Services is a Bertelsmann subsidiary.

paranormalized writes "Good aricle on Climate Engineering at ChooseClimate.org. It's getting old (Nov 1996), but it makes a lot more sense than the Bacteria to Destroy Greenhouse Gasses article you posted last Thursday afternoon. And since only one other registered user posted a comment eight hours later about Oceanic fertilization with iron dust, I figured the /. crowd needed reminding of the ideas herein."

jordan (one of the founding developers of Napster), writes: "As the rumour mill churns over Napster's future, many folks see Gnutella as the next best hope for the music loving file sharing community. Problem is, Gnutella can't scale . [Note: if that URL doesn't work, try this mirror.] Almost all research on Gnutella up till now has been based on observations of the system in the wild, but this paper discusses the technical merits of that statement through a detailed mathematical analysis of the Gnutella architecture." The kind of numbers that you may not like to read if you figure networks expand to accomodate traffic at a never-ending pace. Update: 02/15 12:24 AM by T : Jordan also points to this mirror for your reading pleasure.

Well, we try to avoid posting stories about Slashdot, but I figured at least a couple of people would want to know that we'll be speaking at the O'Reilly P2P conferences. For those of you registered, we'll be speaking at the collaborative journalism panel along with Dan Gillmor (Hi Dan) and Dave Winer (Hi Dave) and moderated by Katie Hafner from the NYT (can you fix that required login thing?). Anyway, it's on Thursday, Feb. 15, 11:15-12:00, in San Francisco. Come on by if you are attending the conference.

Shadow_Font asks: "So I've been using XFree since RedHat 4.1 or so (I'm using XFree 3.3.6 on FreeBSD 4.2 nowadays). I've been using Macs since the 128K machine in 1984. The biggest reason I don't use X day in and day out for development is the status of fonts on the platform. They're just horrible! What's being done about this? Does anyone care about this? X fonts have been a sore sight and far worse than what I had on my Mac in 1984, and yet here we are 17 years down the pike. Are there any solutions? Until I can figure out a solution, my main development machine will continue to be a Macintosh with its anti-aliased text which really makes reading code for hours on end easier on the eyes." Give it a few more months folks, and X11 fonts will improve. And if the traditional 75 and 100dpi fonts are too repulsive for you, support for TrueType and Postscript Type 1 fonts has been around for quite a while.