Slashdot Mirror

BlackNat writes "The 1.1 patch for CivCTP is available for immediate download. It fixes a whole host of bugs, including glibc 2.1 compatibility. There's also a beta patch for PPC. " I think this patch fixes a lot of the unit navigation bugs that tended to plague me. Now if I could only figure out how an archer managed to shoot down my stealth bomber...

Arrgh sent us a link to a new Transmeta Patent filed for what they describe as "Method and apparatus for correcting errors in computer systems". That doesn't help much. Now back to trying to figure out why connecting my cable to my VCR makes my whole stereo humm. Why can't audio/video be as easy as Linu- oh, wait...

Figured I'd step on Cliff's toes and ask my own question. I live in an area with poor cable service and have pretty much accepted that if I want the Sci Fi channel and all the other cool channels, I'm going to need to get a Dish. Net access would be nice, but its not going to be a deciding factor. Ideally I wouldn't need cable- I don't care about local channels but I need the networks too (FOX for the X-Files and Futurama especially). So here it comes: Which Dish? I see many networks with many features, but which one is best? I want lots of channels, but I'm not rich. But I'd like my surround system to sound really good (course first I probably better get a center channel and some good rear speakers *grin*).

Bocephus writes "CNET news.com reports in this story that the RIAA, despite its Secure Digital Music Initiative project, will allow MP3 to continue to exist so that portables like the Rio or Nomad may play MP3s. However, MP3s ripped from new CDs will be unusable if downloaded from the Net. " Yeah, essentially the RIAA is saying that current players can still play ones, even the existing illegal ones, once specs from the recording industry has been made. I wonder how long it's going to take them to figure out that they lost.

Mycroft-X writes "Here is a link to a Salon story about the sacrifices fans are making for their Star Wars habit. " Figured I better post something besides to poll question to talk about this little movie thing. No, I still haven't seen it. Damn conferences.

Wonko42 writes "There's an article somewhere over here that talks about the Spam Recycling Center, an effort to prosecute illegal and fraudulent spammers. If you send your spam to them, they'll give you $5 credit at CDNow.com. Couldn't be a better deal, if you ask me. The results of this will be sent to CAUCE, the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email, which will study the emails and figure out what evil things spammers are doing most and then send all the data to the Federal Trade Commission. "

Mike Schiraldi writes "2600 published some letters they have acquired which were originally sent to the FBI by companies whose systems Kevin Mitnick had compromised. In a nutshell, the FBI asks, "How much damage did he do?" and they say, "Well, it cost us $10,000,000 to develop this application, and he got a copy of the source code, so he did $10,000,000 worth of damage." Now the government is furious, and is trying to hold Mitnick's lawyer in contempt of court! But the information that was leaked is supposedly public information. " Yeah-compare contrast the two letters. OK-maybe government intelligence is a misnomer.

Colin@sinisterfluid.com writes "The most-hyped line of movie-themed merchandise in history -- for the still unreleased ``Star Wars: Episode I -- The Phantom Menace'' -- finally went on sale just after midnight Sunday on a studio-imposed schedule,and fans and retailers weren't wasting a minute. Toys R Us stores around the country decided to open their doors at 12:01 a.m. Monday for an all-night selling marathon of toys based on the movie. Wal-Mart and K-mart called in extra staff for their 24-hour stores to handle the post-midnight crowds. Many stores planned to limit the number of items a customer could buy to prevent immediate sell-outs. Fans had been waiting for months to get a glimpse of the vast array of goods -- from action figures to wigs to body lotion to snack food -- tied to the movie, which opens May 19. But LucasFilm Ltd. had signed strict licensing deals that prevented manufacturers from releasing virtually any information about their products ahead of time. As a result, people had been speculating for months, especially on the Internet, about what the toys and other merchandise would be. To see the famed toys for yourself, surf to Toys 'R' Us or E-Toys "

Things have been a bit crazy: server troubles, spent some quality time in the ER after the gf got in accident (she's fine), and unusually stressful 'biz stuff (note:in utopia everyone pays their bills ontime instead of leaving us with a nearly empty checking account, a massive looming bandwidth bill, and all these unpaid invoices? I seem to be balding at an accelerated rate :) As for the images on port 81 of flotsam, I'm sorry about that- those of you behind firewalls will be glad to know that the new server will be in soon and hopefully the dust can settle. Allright, some quickies already: Toddius Maximus wrote in to tell us that Performance Computing has started a bi-monthly Linux Section Anthony Fuentes sent us an Interview with John Carmack webslacker sent us a nice little article on Pixar if you're curious what Steve Jobs' other company is up to. Wouldn't be quickies without Star Wars: James McP sent us linkage to a wired story about a Star Wars fan site featuring toy based mini movies, webslacker noted the new 12" Star Wars figures, and Dave Lowe sent us Star Wars Parody Music More cool movie stuff: patowic noted that Bruce Cambell (of Army of Darkness/Evil Dead fame) has his own web page, which features a sound bite archive And some Slashdot media sightings: Duke of URL noted that the recent Katz/Littleton stories got a mention on Suck. RKemp noted that The Economist noticed too. nene noted that an article about Slashdot appeared in Der Standard (although, with a name like that, its no surprise that it ain't English :)

Shishigami writes "Apple has released the latest Star Wars trailer at a higher resolution - 640 pixels wide. They probably figured it was the best way to get people to download Quicktime 4.0. My favorite is the requirement for playback - a 300mhz G3, or a 400mhz Pentium II. " I bet my 400mhz P2 won't play the trailer.

Urgoll asks : "Is there any software/hardware availlable for Linux (preferably) or Windows to control your home environment? I'm takling about being able to control the home temperature , various lights, water heater, etc from your PC, and hopefully with a dial-in interface, so that you can control your house when away from home... Imagine... Coming back from a vacation, and calling your house form the airport to raise the temperature, so you won't freeze when going to bed!" Most people in the know would say *X10!*, but I figured that this was cool enough to run for the folks who AREN'T and wish to do something like this.

Rodger Crawford writes "Apparently Al Gore has a history of latching on to high-tech buzzword. So much so, that 3 years ago, MIT student played a friendly game of 'Buzzword Bingo' during Gore's graduation speech. " I figured we might as well go with the trend and just continue ripping on the yutz. I've never been so excited to vote against someone before *grin*.

tyler (asks) asks: "I asked many people, but nobody had an answer for me, so I figured i'd ask the most knowledgable people on the web: Does anyone know where i can get an assembly development environment for the PowerPC?"

Enucite writes "ZDNet has an article entitled "Gore's 'open source' blasphemy". It talks about the Gore 2000 website, then goes on to talk about the response on Slashdot" I wish articles referring to Slashdot comments would link the comment so that their readers could read the whole thread and not just the 2 sentances the story writer felt like sharing. And I wish they could figure out who "Anonymous Coward" really is. Ah well, nice to see we made some waves, but the offending passage still apears on the web site.

maw writes "It has come to my attention that Larry Wall is also Weird Al! Go figure...:) " That explains a lot of things.

preed-man writes "I don't know what's up in Mountain View, but it's not good: AOL has laid off about 430 Netscape employees; in addition to this, a "key Mozilla.org figure" has resigned as well. It's a somber time in Mountain View. " CT : Sorry about the lag in story postings. Reformatted and reinstalled, but I now have a nice shiny new Debian box.

Jonathan Locke asks: "this "Ask Slashdot" question about comparative CPU power led me to wonder if there isn't some attempt somewhere to do the same thing for connectivity/communications. Obviously, we've come a long, long way since the days of semaphores, smoke signals and telegraphs. But how far have we come? What does the bandwidth curve look like? (I assume the Internet would represent a seriously non-linear change, but maybe not). What are the theoretical limits on communications (# of nodes and speed of access)? Does it even make sense to compare such qualitatively different technologies as semaphores and OC48 lines?" Good question! I figure average bandwidth curve over the last 10 years would be an interesting thing to see.

Accidental Angel writes "As reported in InfoWorld, Tony Occleshaw, IBM's software strategist for Europe, Middle East, and Africa said at CeBIT today that "No one runs large, million-hits-per-day Web sites on Linux." " Well, we served 640,000 pages on Wed on this Linux box. And the server load is only 2.00-3.00. I figure this box can handle around a million. The adfu server (also Linux) did around a million hits total that day, if you combine banner ads + layer HTML).

President John F. Kennedy wrote in to say that Propaganda 5 is out. Another outstanding series of background images. RPoet wrote in to say that The Gimp had a 1.1.3 developer release come out. Bill the Cat sent us another strange eBay Auction Item. Les VanBrunt sent me a picture from LWCE that should be destroyed. netweasel sent us a link to Jesus Action Figures! Collect All 12 Apostles! Jesus! With Super Healing Grip! I bet Boba Fett would win. Bowie J. Poag wrote in to say that CopyLeft now has Themes.org shirts for sale. unitron sent us a link to Phone Spell which converts ph#s to words. I found some cute ones for mine- wish my area code didn't have a 1 in it. Lastly, another reminder to go to the User Account page and edit your preferences. Slashdot article filtering should be working. More coming tomorrow, assuming this stuff works as advertised.

Elbie asks: "I just received a digital camera as a gift, but the only software that comes with it is for these two OSes which look pretty alien to me. How can I get those pictures out of my camera (Canon PowerShot A5) from my Linux box ? Is there any Linux software out there, and if not how to figure out what protocol is used (it uses a standard serial cable to communicate with the PC)"