Slashdot Mirror

wildag writes "I've recently come into a battle with a guy who owns this site. You might notice the 'similarities' between his web site and Linux.com. I'm going to doubt that Linux.com bought the interface from him. The acutal battle comes from a statment that is on his message board (posted by the admin - Leo). He says 'The layout of any website is "public domain" which is freely available to the public' (that is avaliable here: http://hobbes.resne t.tamu.edu/forums/showthread.php?threadid=25). What do you guys think? (BTW, Linux.com has been notified and he didn't ask permission)." There are countless websites that are direct ripoffs of others, but few as blatant as this one. My policy with Slashdot has always pretty much been take what you want, but give us credit for what ya lift. I've seen this done many times to many sites and it always bums me out: making a well designed website is hard work, and imitation is the sincerest form of flattery... but isn't saying thanks and crediting your source part of it too? (For those who don't know, Slashdot is owned by VA Linux now, which also owns Linux.com. This doesn't really have anything to do with this story, but I figured I'd mention it). I post this not to point fingers or cause a fight, but to open a discussion about this. Just because you can take something, should you? When are you stealing? Is is hypocritical to demand open source, but not be willing to share your design? And should "Sharing" mean "You can take it, and claim it as your own, and not give the original creator any credit?" Its an issue that spans genres: Web Pages? Source Code? Samples in Music? Fair Use?

msnomer writes: "The Cato Institute is going to publish a report this week disputing the claim that there are 70,000 Microsoft applications, according to a NY Times article. The author, economist Richard B. MacKenzie, says that the "70,000 figure might actually represent the number of applications that have been written during the entire history of the personal computer industry." The figure, however absurd, pits Microsoft marketing against the legal department, since the purported number of applications--a number not disputed by Microsoft, by the way--is a key factor in the decision to break up the company. Anyone else astonished that Microsoft marketing may have exaggerated a bit?"

Alternatively, is anyone astonished that a number so arbitrary (in either direction) is considered a serious point of evidence? Not that there's a great way to weight the importance of programs in isolation from each other, but [random shareware X, even if business related] doesn't match the importance of, say, a major word processor in the real world. Isn't the flexibility that a given OS offers to create new programs, and the rate of change in the number of available programs, more important than the existing number anyhow?

Updated 20:05 by timothy: PJ Doland, Webmaster of the Cato Institute writes: "The article on Microsoft that you mention is now online at http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-380es.html. I'm a slashdot addict. When I saw your link to the Institute's site, I convinced the higher-ups to let me post the report early for your readers. The full report is in PDF."

Maktoo writes: "Just checked out the latest Netcraft survey and it has a very interesting new feature breaking out the differences between "Total Web sites hosted" and total *active* Web sites. The pie charts are about 3/4 the way down the page. They show that in total sites, Linux and MS have 35% and 21% marketshare respectively... but when it comes to actual active sites, that gap shrinks to 29.9% and 28.3% respectively. Netcraft have figured out a way to try to eliminate the millions of place holder pages out there that aren't actually serving content, thus not really Web sites. Apache's marketshare also shrinks a little, but it's still an impressive 59%. It's an interesting read."

Geeks in space is on an indefinite hiatus while we sort out the (ahem) issues surrounding continuing production while we are located in 3 cities and 2 time zones. Since Hemos's wedding and move to boston, and Nate's move to california to continue work on Everything 2, that leaves CowboyNeal and I all by ourselves. When we figure out a good way to continue the show, we will. If you have solutions, let us know. Perhaps now is the time to start streaming and switch to a live broadcast with an IRC simulcast. But we're still thinkin'

mduell writes: "Saw these three on the Technology front page at MSNBC.com. First off, This story on how GNOME Foundation takes aim at Microsoft. Secondly, this story about what Michael Dell thinks of Linux. Lastly, this story about Linux on mobile devices." Some other links that have been submitted: a reader submits pictures from the Expo, a Linux PDA is announced, and Michael Dell tries to figure out why he's selling overpriced Linux systems.

Sneezer asks: "I work for the department at my university which provides network connectivity for students living in the residence halls. We are currently wrestling with revising our Acceptable Use Policy. We occasionally get complaints from other sysadmins complaining that one of our IPs has port scanned one of their servers. In trying to decide what our policy should be in dealing with residents who play with port scanners, we have come to wonder why so many admins get so uptight about being scanned. Also, could we or should we be held accountable for an intrusion if we were informed that the intruder had been conducting port scans before, but we hadn't intervened?" I feel port-scanning is similar to looking at a house. Looking is OK as long as you don't try to break-in. But as in all things, there is a fine line...the trick is figuring out when it's been crossed.

darekana writes: "I know you've heard the quote: 'Every new medium will be used for sex.' Well, every new medium also appears to be used for advertising. Gnutella vs. Flatplanet.net who will win? From the 'ShareZilla' developers' mouths: 'When the fine folks at Gnutella find a way to filter ShareZilla, we will figure out how to get around their new filters. A subscription to ShareZilla entitles you to that new version of our software at no additional charge.' Beyond the $74.95 (US) initial charge that is."

An Anonymous Coward writes: "Helix Code has just released the first preview of its admin tools. Just now there are only three utils. They are glade front-end using perl back-end." Nifty way to attack the problem. I tend to prefer handling things like this the old fashioned way, but this kinda stuff is critical for the newbies. I mean, who wants to know what file you edit in /etc to change your DNS server, or what the syntax is to mount a remote NFS partition? (Ok, I want to know, but for those just joining us, it's probably not the happiest learning curve figuring this stuff out.)

RickMuller writes: "There is a Caltech Press Release here that talks about a new 3D video compression algorithm by Caltech's Peter Schroeder and Bell Labs' Wim Sweldens that they claim is 12 times smaller than MPEG4 and 6 times smaller than the previously best published algorithm. The algorithm uses wavelets for the data compression. Potential applications in real estate (digital walk-throughs of houses) are cited in the article. Anyone figure out a way to wire this stuff up to Q3 Arena yet? The results were presented in a talk at SIGGRAPH 2000 in New Orleans."

Well, we held or deleted the first few hundred submissions, because we were hoping the situation would clear up and we could figure out what was going on. But it hasn't cleared up, so we're posting it and hopefully there are some readers out there who know what's going on and can shed some light. It seems that the anti-spammers at MAPS and ORBS have gone from a cold war into a shooting one, with MAPS listing ORBS on their blackhole list. ORBS accuses MAPS of doing it for financial gain, MAPS accuses ORBS of attacking systems, Alan Cox gets peeved about spam, kuro5hin.org has the obligatory "Slashdot is censoring the story!" postings but has at least one seemingly clueful post, and the U.S. House passed an anti-spam bill yesterday - coincidence, or devious conspiracy?

sew2902 writes "If you didn't know, the aforementioned Tenchi Muyou series is going to be on the Cartoon Network. Theres an article over at Media Junkies that talks about it, including the fact that it will be censored." Tenchi is among my favorite anime series, but they'll definitely have to edit it for TV since there is the occasional nude scene. The article itself talks about Cartoon Networks increased anime content. I've been hoping they'd create a Toonami channel to counterpart their Boomerang channel: I figure somewhat censored anime is better then none at all. Oh, and the next episode of Cowboy Bebop is now out: my copy should arrive today or tomorrow: I'm stoked about this one.

L.Conover asks: "I figured this would be a question best hashed out by Slashdotters - I frequently use www.Mailcity.com, a free e-mail portal sponsored by Lycos. Now, each time I receive an e-mail containing a link, an automated script inserts the string 'http://proxy-mail.mailcity.lycos.com/bin/redirector2.cgi' into the link. The only reason I can think of for forcing people to use a proxy server is to collect data on where people are linking to from Mailcity. I've e-mailed their customer support folk to find out how that data collection is being used, but gotten no reply. Lycos doesn't mention any such data collection in its privacy policy, and there's no way to 'opt out' of their proxy server intrusion without cutting and pasting URLs manually. (Which I often do, because I often receive 'secure' URLs in email that include autologins.) Lycos has a partnership with DoubleClick, so I find this data collection to be more than a little shady. Anyone care to shed some light on this - and do other 'free' e-mail portals indulge in similar proxy-practices with e-mailed URLs?"

notacracker asks: "A friend and I are trying to learn about network security. I figure it would be more fun if we set up a two machine local area network, and practiced breaking in and detecting break-ins. But where to start ? It's easy enough to find a cookbook (eg O'Reilly) on security, but where is the equivalent to an O'Reilly book on cracking and actively defending a system? It sounds like someone has been toying with this idea over at ZDNet as well. You might want to check out their free-for-all hackfest on OpenHack.com (thanks to Tarsi for the link).

Signal 11 asks: "I've been reviewing different filesystem-level encryption schemes and so far, I have found only one solution - applying a kernel patch and using the loopback device. The problem is in generating large amounts of random data to seed the initial filesystem - it takes about 16 hours to create 20GB of pseudo-random data from /dev/urandom. Is there a faster (and equally secure) way to generate large amounts of random data?" Any clues? I'd figure a kernel patch to turbocharge /dev/urandom (while not losing too much security) might be another route to take.

K2 dug up a page where people are discussing hacking the Tivo (note to outsiders: Hacking is a good thing!) Essentially, they figured out how to mount the boot partition, and get a shell running off the serial port. It's a long page, and it doesn't start getting really interesting until you're a third of the way into it, but it opens up the door for fun ways of voiding your warranty like adding bigger hard drives... of course my dream is a way to suck MP3s over and use a few gigs of Tivo as a stereo component, but that'd take some doing.

DAldredge sent us linkage to the unmaintained free software project list (if you can't figure this one out based on the name, seek help quickly). A very good idea that I'm pleased to see implemented. There's a lot of orphaned software out there... some of it because it's pretty useless, but others just because people move on. Hopefully a site like this can help us breath life back into the good ones.

Yet another company has been caught surreptitiously uploading information from their customers. This time, it was Mattel, who I would have thought would have already reached their "bad PR" quota this year by suing the people who distributed CPHack. But no; they're spying on the children who use their software too, and Simson Garfinkel raises some very important points. A hint for all the /. readers who are handy with a debugger: you want to get your 15 minutes of fame, just figure out what information the DSSagent program is sending and let us know.

grape jelly asks: "One of my jobs this summer is to help out the chemistry (eek) department figure out how to best introduce and use the newsgroups with the intro courses. A little work has been done by a couple professors here, however, it mostly has been unsuccessful. After surfing the 'Net looking for what people have already done, I have come to the conclusion that most professors either don't use a course newsgroup or haven't really published any of their results. Does anyone out there have any suggestions as to what we could do to solve some of our problems? (Primarily motivating the students to learn to use the course newsgroup, then making sure they use it throughout the semester) Any specific experience from students (or professors, especially) would be very desirable." (Read on...)

While a nice idea, I think educators would be better off using web-based discussion boards for their classes. Discussions can be presented without the limitations of plain text(HTML is useful for something you know), and everyone can use a browser, whereas this isn't necessarily true for newsreaders. However, if educators have a working communications system between themselves and their students and they are using newsgroups to do it, then more power to 'em!

Fireball sent us linkage to a quote (its way down there, can't link it directly) from BluesNews where Apogee's Scott Miller replies to my little tirade yesterday about the apogee license agreement. Basically it says that they would never do such a thing and shrugs it off as mere sensationalism. Of course I never figured Apogee would sue over this:my beef really isn't with Apogee as much as UCITA and what it makes theoretically legal. One can only hope that the courts strike it down, but only after many expensive legal battles I'm sure.

Lately I've become addicted to Anime. Now that I'm seeking something new to watch, I figured I'd throw this out to you guys and see if any of you experts have good suggestions of what I should check out (preferably on DVD). I've also attached quick summaries of a few cool ones to get things started.

What follows is a kinda-in-order summary of the best Anime I've seen lately. Its not complete (I didn't even manage to assemble a complete Top 10) but its a good sampling of my tastes (yours will vary I'm sure ;)

Lain Perhaps the best Anime I've seen thus far. The story of a young girl, a drug culture, the future of the net, etc etc. It'll leave your jaw on the floor. It makes the internet look unreal but somehow believable at the same time.

Perfect Blue A psychological thriller worthy of hitchcock. It starts off slow, but the last half hour is a directorial maspterience. Losely follows a 'Pop Idol's transition from singer to actress, while surrounded by a stalker, celebrity, management, directors, writers, and eventually descends into insanity. Not for kids.

Cowboy Bebop The most badass sci-fi western I've seen. Visually and Aureally astounding. Bounty Hunters, Drugs, Gambling, Girls.

Trigun Another western, but this one is actually sorta in the west. Goofy cowboy guy is actually an invincible mega hero.

Ninja Scroll Another one not for kids... its your basic Ninjas save the world story. A male and female ninja and a crackpot old man do battle with evil clans and demons.

Dragonball Z Sometimes it moves slow, but this is the WWF of Anime. Big creatures fight and get super powers and yell at each other. The charachters are fun, and while the animation isn't up to snuff with most of the other titles I've mentioned here, its just fun, and its on Cartoon Network so its accessible: Just don't take it seriously.

Battle Athletes Another silly adventure. Cheerful girls undergo intense training to become 'Cosmo Beauty' which is sorta like Miss America++. Takes a long time for the plot to become clear, but there are some great charachters here and a lot of hilarious sequences I mean, it starts out wiht little girls racing accross antarctica, towing steam rollers through a mine field. Another fun one, but don't expect the meaning of life or anything.

Battle Angel Cyborgs and their doctors in the future. A cool world where spines are valuable, and a technological 'Heaven' floats above the hell in which the story takes place, dumping its trash atop them. Visually interesting, but the world the charachters inhabit is really the coolest part for me.

Allright, thats what I've seen in the last few months. What do you guys think? What else is out there thats worth seeing? What's your favorite?