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Liquid-X writes "It looks like the Hilton Group is interested in the project of building a space station/hotel made from discarded space shuttle fuel tanks. Arthut C Clarke wants to be one of the first in there." It also appears the British Airways wants to be involved-the cost they estimate is marginal compared to International Space Station - Hilton figures 6 - 12 billion. Cool-anyone think they want banner ads? *grin*

Microsoft's Ed Muth (him again) is claiming that Linux offers little value since it has fewer off-the-shelf apps, and no long term development road map. Moreover it suffers from a lack of integration between the OS and the apps, which is needed so that users can drag barcharts between Excel and Word. (Heard of Corba? No I guess not). Indeed Ed claims Linux usage figures are inflated. Finally, it must be obvious that good programmers won't code for free so they can't be good -- just like Van Gogh could not have been a good artist. If nothing else, Ed's good at rhetoric -- "Let's say, for discussion, they are equally scalable" implies nicely that NT is obviously more scalable. But his outburst is somewhat odd given that Microsoft's trial is not over, and the SIIA is recomending it be broken up. Thanks Alex Prestin for this link.

Anonymous Coward writes "Slink's release has been delayed one week due to a problem with dpkg. Dpkg can fail when the locale is set to a non-default setting. Here's the news release. " Those nice guys over at Debian are actually right next to us in Boothland. Anyway, they're saying that they just want to be sure about upgrading, and working with folks with laptops. Alright, all of you who keep e-mailing me-I know this was annouced before. But I figured we'd do something for the Debian guys, and assure everyone it's not a big deal, and the reasons.

Joshua Gross writes "Looks like the big winner of last year's Taco Bell/Star Wars contest is cashing in his chips. For those with high 5-figure+ amounts to spend on a sport-ute, check out this Star Wars Hummer. My favorite part is the central tire inflation system, though the license plate (JEDI ONE) is cool as well. " That is just to cool. I think I would be embarassed to drive it though.

We mention this occasionally, and its listed anywhere this sort of thing would be mentioned, but I figure now is as good a time as any to rerun a link to the Linux Counter. As you might have guessed, this site aims to count the total number of Linux installations on the planet. Go fill out the forms. It'll take a minute, but those numbers are essential to convincing the PHBs. Thanks to Mattias Sörlin for sending in the URL. (and yes I know, there are a dozen similiar efforts)

mrlament wishes to know about the following: "I've been a long time Linux user, but I keep finding myself having to switch over to my Windows box in order to view videos. I've tried xanim, and have yet had it properly handle a single video, aside from the real player, I cannot seem to find a single decent player for MOVs, AVIs and MPGs. Does anyone know of any, or are there just not any out there?" I posted this up here because I get a lot of this from people outside of Ask Slashdot, so I figure there are people out there that want this information. Hit the link for more. In all honesty, I don't think Linux is going to get very far beyond Indeo Video 3.2 support since IV4, IV5 and the I263 codecs are VERY proprietary and (so I've heard) it costs a lot of money just to become a developer. I would love support for AVIs under more than just Windows, but it's been a couple of years since IV4 was released and I just haven't seen support for it materialize anywhere else (if I'm wrong, someone PLEASE correct me!).

I'm surprised that there ISN'T more visible QuickTime support, but that's Apple's bailiwick. Intel and Apple have also begun to crosslicense technology as Apple now gets Intel Video 4.4 support for QuickTime. Of course as far as I can tell, QuickTime is still only available for Macs, 95/98 and NT.

MPG video files are more crossplatform than any of the others. I expect this format is supported under more platforms than any other, however I don't have any information on a LINUX player. If someone has a helpful link, please post it.

As an aside, MainConcept has one of the best movie players I have seen and supports a wide range of formats. It's been the mainstay viewer under OS/2 for a while, and it looks like they've taken an interest in Linux as they are attempting to port their Video Editor over.

Update: 02/13 01:16 by C : I've started a discussion, and someone has already answered my question regarding IV4 and IV5 on Linux. It appears that the only people who can offer support on these codecs is Intel themselves. With their support of Linux in recent times, who knows, this might actually happen. A cordial letter writing campaign might be in order to see if we can get them to port these codecs sooner rather than later?

Several folks wrote in to tell us that 3dfx has announced the Voodoo3 boards. The 2D/3D combo card can do 8 million triangles per second but has no 32-bit rendering. To bad 3d support under Linux still sucks. Quake would be smooth. I figure between Mesa and xig that should change this year. Standard 3d will make modern games much easier on Linux. I think Diablo 2 is coming soon... that would be a swell port.

Anonymous Coward writes "I must remain anonymous for fear of job security, however... Sprint is a client of ours and we have been given a contract to sign that includes (among other things) a bit that goes like this: Supplier warrants that no GNU, FSF, or copylefted software shall be used in the production of services for Sprint. I'm still trying to figure out if this means that I have to uninstall gawk, apache, sendmail, BIND, etc., from my (non-linux) UNIX systems.... Afraid I can't include a link to the exact contract verbage, but it's 100% factual, I just read the contract myself. "

I also received an email from an EE claiming that Synopsys had informed him that they would be porting their tools to Linux. This would be an important step since Linux is ideal for large simulation/synthesis farms: cheap hardware and stable OS that can be left in a computer room. In related news, Green Mountain Computing Systems has released their VHDL compiler for Linux, with a demo available for download. It is slightly faster than the NT version, with better memory performance.

palpatine writes "In this comparative review, five major Linux distributions are compared, including Caldera OpenLinux 1.3, Debian GNU/Linux 2.0, Red Hat Linux 5.2, Slackware Linux 3.6, and S.u.S.E. Linux 5.3." They also mention several of the lesser known distributions at the end. No surprise that RH5.2 takes the editors choice, although on the whole, it seems like a fair analysis. Figure now is a good time to rerun the distro poll too. Break out the asbestos.

This Anonymous Coward asks a question related to an older question on Video Converencing with a twist: "What software is written to capture from the Quickcam using the video4linux interface? I can only find bttv which is for video in a window I believe. I am looking for something like xfqcam but which uses the video4linux interface. Quickcam detection seems to really suck under linux especialy with the user level programs (xfqcam) and I figured the video4linux interface might work better. " Can anyone help out with some answers?

A name that all the book reviewers know SEGV has sent in a review of Scott Meyers' CD work Effective C++ CD. This is a stray from our normal book reviews, but figured people would appreciate seeing Scott Meyers' newest effort. Effective C++ CD author Scott Meyers pages publisher Addison Wesley rating 10 reviewer SEGV ISBN 0-201-60615-1 summary More than the sum of its hardcopy contents, this electronic resource earns a place on the programmer's bookshelf.

What to Expect?

I wasn't sure exactly what to expect. Subtitled "85 Specific Ways to Improve Your Programs and Designs," I knew this CD was an electronic version of Scott Meyers' already-published books, which I had previously reviewed for Slashdot:

• Effective C++ Second Edition
• More Effective C++

So I knew a priori that the content was excellent, but how would it be packaged and presented? Would it be Windows-only, forcing me to use it only at work as I run Linux at home? Would it be awkward to read onscreen? Would it be easily searchable? Could I annotate and print portions of it?

A Pleasant Surprise

I was pleasantly surprised when the package contained only a CDROM with these instructions printed on it:

To start, open INDEX.HTM
System requirements: Netscape Navigator 4.0+ (on Unix, Mac, or Win32) or Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0+ (on Win32 only).

So far so good! I had no problems using the CD with Communicator 4.5 on NT 4.0, and Communicator 4.04 on Debian GNU/Linux 2.0. Pretty much any modern browser with Java and JavaScript support should work. If you experience browser problems, the publisher provides helpful advice.

Initial Impressions

The CD has a nice look and feel to it. A navigation area is always present, acting as a control and providing a colour indication of where you are in the CD.

The text is decent to read and is true HTML, not merely raw text. It seems Meyers is conscious of the fact that an electronic version must add value to complement a printed version, otherwise it is not useful for its target audience.

Overall, I'd say this offering is a well though out and put together product, and not just a cheap knock-off.

Content

The CD (which itself has a printing number) contains the latest printings of the two books. It also boasts five magazine articles chosen by Meyers to augment the material in the books:

• "Exception Handling: A False Sense of Security" by Tom Cargill, from C++ Report Nov-Dec 1994.
• "Coping With Exceptions" by Jack W. Reeves, from C++ Report Mar 1996.
• "Exception-Safe Generic Containers" by Herb Sutter, from C++ Report Sep 1997, Nov-Dec 1997.
• "Counting Objects in C++" by Scott Meyers, from C/C++ Users Journal Apr 1998.
• "A First Look at C++ Program Analyzers" by Scott Meyers and Martin Klaus, from Dr. Dobb's Journal Feb 1997.

The first three are highly recommended for anyone dealing with exceptions. And of course, since any function may throw an exception, that means anyone writing C++! The object counting article elaborates on an idea from Effective C++ Item 14, illustrating some subtle language issues along the way. The final article outlines the state of the art in commercial static C++ analysis tools in September 1996.

Hyperlinks

The CD has links everywhere. Let me repeat: everywhere. In addition to hyperlinking existing references, Meyers added many cross references to the books and articles to further solidify the material.

Links to the internet at large are redirected through Addison Wesley Longman's online site so that they may stay current. And every single paragraph on the CD is anchored and hyperlinked, to facilitate electronic referencing and bookmarking.

Search Facilities

The CD provides two alternatives to your browser's "find in page" search facility. The first is a comprehensive merged index of the two books. The second is a search applet, modified from the Design Patterns CD search applet. It displays the resulting hits, with their enclosing paragraph for context if you select it. I found it easy to scan through hits until I found an interesting paragraph, then to jump to that document.

Although the search applet is aware of the entire CD, it appears that it can search only for one keyword. I'd really prefer more sophisticated search string options, such as multiple keywords, boolean operations, and perhaps even full regular expressions.

Configuration Facilities

For a set of web pages, the CD is impressively configurable. You can choose between five navigation area sizes, and five image sizes. You can view the books by item, by chapter, or in their entirety. And of course you can change text size in your browser.

Performance and Licensing

To implement the configurability options, there are actually five copies of each image and three copies of each book on the CD. Still, the total data size is a mere 16MB, which easily fits on a hard drive for greater performance and frees a CDROM drive for other use. This is also important because, given technology, actually altering the HTML files is really the only viable way of annotating the CD.

The CD comes with a single user license. You must contact the publisher for additional network license options. The short story is: you can make the CD available on a non-internet-accessible server to as many users as you have licenses, and you can purchase additional network licenses more cheaply the more you buy.

Summary

I've been using the CD both at work and at home for a couple of weeks, and I continue to find it a valuable resource. It easily subs in for my absent printed books, although of course I can't use it without a computer. The articles are useful, and the index and search applet allow me to quickly find what I am looking for.

Really, I have only three complaints:

• the search applet is somewhat limited
• there could be more magazine articles
• Scott's author photo is starting to look less like Eddie Van Halen and more like Gene Simmons

However, I don't think any of those detracts from the CD enough to reduce its 10/10 rating. In the worst case, since the CD is composed of text HTML files, you could apply other search utilities (eg, grep) to it.

The CD's online site has a demo, which I recommend trying if you want to get a feel for the CD before you purchase it. In addition to the general look and feel, navigation area, and search applet, it includes all of the magazine articles and a few of the books' items.

I'm happy with the CD, and recommend it as a professional resource.

To pick this up and help Slashdot, head over to Computer Literacy.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction
Effective C++ Second Edition
More Effective C++
Magazine Articles
Search the CD

Grenamier writes "Stephen Adler analysed his httpd logs after he published some papers and had mentions made of them on Slashdot, freshmeat.org and linuxtoday.org. The results showed a pretty dramatic demonstration of the Slashdot Effect. " Where's the part where servers melt? Anyway, this amused me so I figured I'd share.

Michael sent in the big news that Yahoo is Buying GeoCities. The deal was for 4.52 Billion Bucks- with that kind of cash maybe they can make the server not lagged to last thursday and figure out a less intrusive advertising system? Maybe not, but we can wish.

An anonymous coward pleads: "HELP! I've got a 10BaseT 10Mb RPTI Network card that is a PNP card, unfortunatly my Older 586 Bios doesn't support PNP and therefor I can not access it. The only reason I know this card is an RPTI card is because I had to use the FCC ID tag to figure out who made it. Anybody have any english documentation or card bios configuration programs?" C :Actually, where does one go to lookup the FCC ID tag to figure out what a card is? That also would be useful to us geeks with anonymous NICs who like to put them to practical use!

No, I ain't quoting Kyle's mom. I now have a wah wah pedal. Now, despite knowing only at maximum one scale and 3 power chords, I am fully capable of sounding like a drunk/stoned/insane/arthritic relative of one of Jimi Hendrix's close friends. It's so unhealthy for me that it is positively insane. I figure I just need that backwards strat and them I'm all set- then I could be a sober/insane/arthritic relative of one of Jimi Hendrix's close friends. Rock 'n Roll!

Bruce Hollebone writes "Last week, chemists at the University of Rochester reported they had figured out how to get optical plastics to self-assemble (Abstract from Science ,requires login. non-technical summary from ABC News). This material could be an important step towards better photonics, including an optical computer. This is real nano-tech, with precise molecular control. The molecular structure of the plastic was engineered to be a precise shape from the human scale right down to the atomic level. The point here is that this was done with boring old chemicals in test tubes rather than the exotic "nano-machines", proposed by the Drexlerites, shrouded in their mists of vapour. "

baadpuppy asks: "Ok, so I bought this nifty (and cheap) keyboard that has 'Internet multi-media' features: silly little buttons that do things like BACK in your browser, and scrolling, and controlling your CD and volume, etc. It was only 19.95 and had a $10.00 rebate, so I figured 'what the heck, it's only 10 bux wasted if I can't use them'. I read keyboard howto, and got the keys recognized by the Linux kernel, and everything is groovy for console apps. However, I spend 99.99999% of my time in X, not at the console, so I want to make these keys work in X. I have the list of scan codes (the kernel was kind enough to list them when it didn't recognize them). What has to be done to make X understand them? baadpuppy continues...
"I looked at the "XKB" extensions, and if there's any good documentation there, it's well hidden. I've downloaded the source code for the X server, and spent more than 5 hours perusing that code trying to figure out exactly where I might go about adding these keys!"

Steve Blood, the pivotal figure for the bazaar has sent over an update about some pretty major changes to the actual. I've posted that below-but some of the good news is that the pricing will be changing dramatically: 175$ for all conference sessions and tutorials, and 100$ for students. That's good news for everyone's pocket book. The Bazaar is going through a major transition which has been brought on by a number of factors which you can read about (if you have any desire to know more about what we've had to deal with) in a ranty, somewhat bitter, open letter I wrote, but decided not to do anything with.

To summarize what's happening: the Bazaar was conceived as a nonprofit conference and expo for free software that would benefit development groups. As it turned out, the dates which we chose specifically to not conflict with LINC Expo or Linux Expo, ended up being very close to IDG's LinuxWorld Expo -- another new show which wasn't announced until after our show was confirmed. Although this was unfortunate we didn't think it was the end of the world.

From the beginning we took a noncompetitive approach with IDG: the Bazaar was, after all, a different show in a different place. Hackers, developers, speakers and attendees liked that approach and we've had tons of support from all over the world.

However, that same approach got us no where with exhibitors and sponsors, i.e. the companies we need to support us so that we can afford to put this show on. Everyone has shut us down, given us the run-around and altogether sent the Bazaar to the brink of its life, except for a few, very excellent companies who believe in the spirit of our show (VA, Patmos, Linux HW).

Anyway, last week I appealed to a couple of leaders in the Linux business community for some help and they told me that competing with IDG was basically hopeless and wished me luck.

Well, our luck was running out, so I contacted a company that was interested in partnering up with us. It wasn't what I wanted to do with the Bazaar, but this company likes our mission and is willing to keep it as a nonprofit event with developers at the center. And they are a major company with the media and capital resources to make things happen.

So please bear with us as we go through some restructuring. If you have any suggestions -- except about the pricing which will change drastically, probably $175 for all the conference sessions and tutorials, $100 for students -- or questions please contact me or the staff.

-steve blood

CSD writes "As I was surfing for news bits this morning I noticed that the guys over at Ars Technica have an in-depth review of the new SGI NT box. Apparantly they got hold of a 320 model. I figured this was OK content for this site as well, since people are clammoring to know about Linux support, and from some of the hardware mentioned in this review, it leaves room for doubt about Linux working on it w/o some major tweaks. " If SGI is smart, they've got an army of hackers making sure these 'tweaks' are ready as soon after this bugger is announced. Update: 01/05 11:50 by CT : afniv writes "In an interview with SGI CEO Rick Belluzzo regarding the launch of the new "NT workstation", he discusses the new direction of SGI and the fact that he "can't go on a customer visit without somebody asking about Linux." "

Fwonkas writes "Not sure if this has been posted yet (holiday distractions and stuff), but there's more bad MP3 news. Capitol has forced the Beastie Boys and Billy Idol to remove MP3s that they posted on the web. " They join Public Enemy now with that distinction. The artists see where the future is. How long before the record industry figures it out? Update: 12/27 07:37 by H :A week ago Friday (the 18th) the Wall Street Journal had an interesting article on the Beasties and MP3s. Check it out for more info-although that article was prior to this report. Afraid I can't find an online, non-pay required version. Anyone know where one is? I deleted this article. It was totally a copyright infringment and obviously shouldn't have been posted. Hemos will be slapped with salami until he begs for forgiveness *grin*