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This link has been coming in all day, so I figured I just had no choice but to share it. The SVLUG will be celebrating the Win98 launch in their Own Special Way. Specifically, by building a rocket using Win98 CDs as fins, and launching it. There be strange folks out there ladies gentleman. Wish I could make it. Oh, and the web page clearly states that they will not be detonating the rocket during flight, or launching it sideways. Too bad.

Nate wrote in to tell us that PC Magazine has put up their quarterly top 100 links online, and Slashdot is officially on the list. I've sorta stopped mentioning Slashdot's awards here, but I figured that this one was worth the time.

We've got an easy one today. Jeremy Lepel writes " A friend and I have recently updated our kernels from 2.0.33 to 2.0.34. I had ppa support included in the kernel in 2.0.33 and he had it as a module. With the recent upgrade we've both included PPA v1.46 into the new kernel, but neither of us have been able to get the damn thing to work. I noticed during the boot process that it probes two of the parallel ports and then the scsi reports no paritions found. I've set my parallel port to match the 0x278 which is being probed on startup but this didn't change anything. I read in the README.ppa about a "lilo/loadlin command line" where you set "ppa=0x278,0" but I can't figure this out, either. Any help would be appreciated!" I've actually always wondered how you can set those parameters by merely using a boot disk with a kernel image on it. rdev works for root devices, but what about boot parameters?

Another sort of related topic that I'm curious if anyone has plans for. How about a nice graphical viewer for lilo.conf? Everyone I've seen is far to technical for a newbie. I feel the hardest parts about a newbie Linux install is hard disk partitioning and Lilo. Disk Druid and similiar apps are taking the pain out of the former, but what about the latter?

Recently I've had at least a dozen people comment about case design and modern computers. SGIs look cool, and the NetWinders, MicroServers, and even yesterday's Rock thing are interesting case design. Now I realize that a lot of people don't give two shakes what their case looks like (as long as it is big *grin*) but a lot of other folks seem to desire exotic and strange new case designs. Do people know where we could get cases? Is there a demand? Could the prices be reasonable? I realize that this is a really strange topic, but I've had an amazing amount of mail related to it lately so I figured I'd let you guys have at it.

Dave Doolin wrote in to send us a link to the ABC News Answer Geek. I think this is a bit old, but I figured I'd run it because it just seems nice that a more mainstream news source is trying to clarify the age old [H|Cr]acker ambiguity. I hope for a future where we can refer to ourselves as "Hackers" in public without getting dirty stares from cluless folks *grin*.

Chris de la Rosa sent us this link to one of the web site scrambler thingees- this one does Redneck, Jive and Elmer Fudd. I enjoyed the Vally Girl converter, the page reverser, and several other variations on this theme so I figured I share these with ya. Jello sent us a link to the fastest Web Server ever. Nasa has a web server in the shuttle, and at 5 miles per second, it certainly is the fastest web server Dan Upper wrote in with EyeControl.com. They are developing devices to use your eyeball to control your mouse. Currently overpriced and targetted at the handicapped. Mass production hopefully will bring them to the masses in the not so distant future. ever. Despite ISDNish bandwidth *grin*.

Michael Dillon writes "Allow me to introduce a new advocacy site This site modestly aims to show several cases where Linux can do a smart, efficient job within an entreprise...I want to show to IT managers and other corporate decision-makers that Linux can help them run their business more cost-efficiently. The arguments are real business application. As far as possible, i support these examples with numerical figures (size of business, number of servers) and an explanation about why and how Linux was chosen. If you have interesting examples of applications of Linux for business, please let me know about them. You do not have to give the company's name if you do not wish to (yes it is usual!) - i will respect strictly your request to remain anonymous. "

This isn't exactly new, but Yahoo reported it today so I figured I'd share this with those of you who haven't heard about the Counterfeit Pentiums that have their clocks tampered with. Apparently its a bigger problem than most of us thought... thanks to Niall Kavanagh for sending us a link.

Mike Trinastich sent us something to bring a smile to your face (unless you happened to go to this school). The Story is about a kid who tried to flood someone with like 10,000 email messages, and caused his school's systems to go bannanas. Kinda makes ya wonder what spammers are are doing to ISPs when they send a lot of email and not just this dinky 5 figure stuff.

Jason Boyles sent us A Link to ComputerWorld Hong Kong where you can read about Linux's use over there. It's a fairly positive piece- although it is a week old I figured I'd still run it. It touches on a lot of the key issues in a way that you don't see very often. Not an essential read for the hardcore, but it may be the sort of article you can forward to the PHB (Pointy Haired Boss) if you've been discussing the possibility of using Linux somewhere in the office.

An anonymous reader sent us a link to Mac OS Rumors where you can read a comment that Mach will actually be the muscle underneath most PowerMac products in the next 12 months. The scariest comment is about an experimental MkLinux kernel that runs Rhapsody DR2 and MMKLinux DR3 simultaneously. I always figured my next box would be an Alpha, but those G3s are looking better every day.

Lars Larsen writes "Novell has released the results of a study that shows that spam costs British and Irish businesses more than US$8 billion annually. They claim their email software will solve the spam problem but the really amusing part is that Novell's mail servers are open relays. You can read more about it here. "

Tim writes "Apparently the guys who make South Park just got a ton of money to continue making the show through 2000, and to make a South Park Movie. Read about it at wired " I know a lot of you hate SP, but most readers seem to dig it, so I figured I'd mention the Y2k thing. That, and I'm sick of studying.

Ok, two things today. First is that I've actually finally almost finished designing the Slashdot T-Shirts. They are basically the logo you see next to this story, and will available soon. If you are definately going to be buying a shirt, I'd like you to email BEP so we can figure out how many of these buggers to print. We're open to suggestions (mugs, hats, stickers etc) so feel free to express interest in these sorts of items as well.

The second note is a bit trickier- it pertains to credit on articles on Slashdot. A lot of egos have been bruised, and I just want to explain things so nobody else gets angry. Hit the link below to read more.

Ok, here's the deal. At least once a day, usually more, I get a message from an unhappy reader who saw a story that they submitted, but it was posted with someone else's name on it. Let me list reasons that this might have happened:

• Often a dozen people submit an article within minutes of each other. I usually don't give credit when this happens just because it seems like splitting hairs. This is often the case on things like new Linux Kernel releases, or when something major floats accross a mailing list and half the list forwards it to me. I designate these by saying 'lots of people sent this' or something similiar.
• You sent it in, but didn't put a good subject on the submission. If you subject is 'Damn it...' I may not read it for several hours. Make those subjects clear, because if I see a submission 'Hey Cool!' and another one that says 'Gimp 1.0 released', guess which one I'm going to read first. I get hundreds of these things each day, make my life a litle easier. I have 50 submissions right now waiting to be read as soon as I finish writing this little blurb. If I only posted stories when I was caught up, I'd post much fewer stories!
• It is very possible that somebody else sent it in before you, and even though an article got posted 24 hours after you sent it in, somebody else may have submitted it before you.
• The most common scenario involves one of the other authors (typically Hemos, Sengan or Justin) who find an article and post it on their own, despite the fact that someone has already submitted it to me. Those guys don't see the big list of submissions- really I only do, so if they find it and post it, they won't credit you. This happens at least every couple days, and I'm sorry that you don't get to see your name on Slashdot, but there is nothing I can do. If more than one person maintained the big list of submissions, it would be very very tricky, so for now this system allows me to post most of the news, but when I'm unavailable, the other guys can post cool stuff to. This means that you get stories faster, and hopefully more regularly, but sometimes you may not see your name. I guess all I can say is maybe next time.

Anyway, in summary, I post maybe 3% of the total number of submissions we get, so it's not even close to a guarantee- I apologize to the people who occasionally email and complain, but please remember that I'm doing my best, and doing I hope I'm doing a good job. I figure if I have 300 submissions, and I post 10, that means I have 290 people who didn't get their name posted on Slashdot. If only 1 person complains, that's a pretty good success rate *grin*. All I can do is my best, and I'll keep doing that.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

Peter Amstutz writes "Picked this up from OSNews and figured Slashdot's forum could have some fun with it. It's basically the editor of a major windows magazine complaining about how windows is overfeatured, bloated, and unstable, and that for Microsoft to maintain it's dominance in the market that Windows has to be "streamlined" and for many features to be moved out into third party applications. Hmm... Maybe he should try Linux..."

The Washington Post is running an interesting article in today's newspaper. The article talks about several high school students who have 5-figure salaries. Some of these students don't go to high school, and one who makes US$50,000/year didn't even finish high school. Very interesting in light of the recent "tech labor shortage". Admittedly, the D.C Metro area is like the sequel to Silicon Valley, but still...(I'm accepting job offers, for what it's worth!)

Several people have suggested this, but I figured I'd give it a whirl today. I was browsing CDnow last night looking to buy some CDs and realized that I'm broke and need some new tunes. And I since Slashdot isn't exactly paying the bills, maybe it could at least provide me some new music. If you follow This Link to CDNow, and buy some stuff, I get a 5% store credit! I know you guys listen to a ton of music, and CDNow is a cool site, so if you appreciate slashdot, say thanks buy buying your next couple of CDs through that link. It won't buy me beer, but it'll give me something to listen to while I drink it!

Allright allright, I wasn't going to post this since I don't really care, but after ~20 of you submitted it, I figured it was worth mentioning. Microsoft has released another Internet Explorer 4 for Solaris. Other Unices will follow, but my guess is Linux won't be one of them any time soon. The last version caused the UltraSparcs at school to feel like a Sparc1- hope that this version is a bit smoother at least, never heard that machine swap like that before.

We have several MS Related Links that I figured I would just clump together quick a second before lunch. First Paul Mickus sent us this one where you can read about the other side to the MS story. Next up is this section at CNN. Jon Webb sent us the link, which is a special section devoted to all the "problems" microsoft has been having lately. Nothing new, but interesting to see it all bunched together. Finally, a bit unrelated, but Jay Kominek told us that a Linux Binary of NetShow is now available. I might have mentioned that before, but it probably is worth mentioning again.

Jay T. Millar sent us this little bit of news: I know this is game console related, but seeing the article about the Sega/MS deal and being an ex-Atarian (400/800, 520ST, TT, Falcon) I figured I'd put my .02 in. In any case, former Atari employees responsible for the design and programming of the ill-fated Jaguar 64-bit game console have started a new console company called VMLabs. Among these is Jeff Minter of Tempest 2000, Atari, and Commodore fame. They have new custom hardware designed, and a development kit based off a heavily modified gcc at the ready. They displayed the current development unit (Project X) at CES behind closed doors, with a more informative rollout supposed to happen at the E3 show later this year. Regardless, this new company is the only real remnant of the once grand Atari Corporation, whose passing in '96 went almost completely unnoticed by the entire computer and gaming industry. Sad.