Slashdot Mirror

NoData writes "The AP is reporting that David Byrne, visionary musician and frontman for 80s New Wave art band 'Talking Heads,' has turned Powerpoint into a visual art medium in a (satiric) DVD/Book combo. Says Byrne in the article: 'The genius of it is that it was designed for any idiot to use.'" Shades of Edward Tufte ("PowerPoint Makes You Dumb"), as the article points out. The book is published by high-end German publisher Steidl.

Thanks to GameSpy for their feature on the history and continued shaping of MMO communities. The article discusses lessons learned from Ultima Online's "growing pains" over conflict resolution ("There was a group known as the Dread Lords who went around attacking other players, decimating the population of entire towns and forcing the developers to change the rules for PvP, which ultimately minimized its role in the game"), and points out that "...subverting developer intentions is a significant part of an MMO, whether for good or ill", referencing The Sims Online Mafia as an example. When should 'authorities' step in, if ever, in massively multiplayer games?

dumpster_dave writes "Scientific American is running an article, Baffling the Bots on techniques to outsmart and subvert spam bots and their chat-room cousins via CAPTCHA. You have probable seen this in the form of images containing text as gate-keepers to various on-line services. The latest evolution is using non-words and distorting the text such that even the best AI systems cannot decipher them, yet humans can not help but do so [cf., Gestalt Psychology]."

khog writes: "The Sunday New York Times had a front-page article entitled, "Exploration of World Wide Web Tilts From Eclectic to Mundane." The article says that "[t]he Web was supposed to subvert corporate domination of culture by giving a global soapbox -- or printing press, or television station -- to anyone with a computer and a modem" and takes off from there. Was the Web ever "supposed to be" anything, much less a subversion of "corporate domination of culture?" Isn't the reduction of idle surfing and the increase of a "more direct, predetermined approach to the Web" just a "reflection" of an educated user base that knows what it wants?"

bethorphil asks: "I'm a web developer at a company that concentrates on Coldfusion and Javascript for our applications. I've managed to subvert my workstation to the point where I'm using Linux 80% of the time, yet I'm still stuck with windows for certain aspects of development which are too time consuming without a nice IDE. I need FTP and RDS support integrated into the editor, and it would be nice if javascript debugging were available too. I haven't had much luck running ColdFusion Studio or Dreamweaver through WINE, and VMWare is too expensive. Several of my coworkers have expressed an interest in this too, so I'm pretty sure that a week after I find the right setup, the whole development team will blow away their windows partitions and join the rebel forces... :-) Does anyone have any suggestions?"

AxsDeny writes "The motion picture industry's effort to ban computer code that subverts its DVD encryption scheme has suffered a setback in California, with the state's high court issuing an order that could see many of the defendants dropped from the closely watched case." Basically they may have to drop non Californians from the case, which happens to be almost all of them.

keytoe asks: "With all the recent discussion around here about spam relaying, black hole lists, spam police and so on I've decided to start taking part. According to the Securing and Testing page on ORBS, running sendmail with FEATURE(relay_local_from) enabled is Bad(tm) and the sendmail folk agree. How could one go about setting up selective relaying from remote dialup users without first knowing where they're coming from? Listing 'aol.com' and 'uswest.net' in '/etc/mail/relay-domains' simply subverts the original goal. I'm aware that authenticated SMTP will move toward this goal, but that needs to be supported on the client side - and it's not there yet for all platforms. Additionally, I've seen suggestions to use a POP-before-SMTP hack, but I'm not using the sendmail POP server. In short, I'm seeking a transparent (to the users) replacement for FEATURE(relay_local_from) that actually -will- pass the ORBS test and keep the nasty people out. Am I screwed?"

This is a few weeks old, but it's a really good article. Markar writes: "Lawrence Lessig states in a article on WideOpenNews states that rights and privacy on line can best be preserved through Open Source protocols and software. Lessig warns that corporations and government are already using software and protocols that subvert individual rights and privacy on line, and warns that protocols must be kept open to keep government and industry from building regulations into Internet software. Lessig discusses the possibility and implications of Digital ID uses in CyberSpace. "

Ellen Spertus writes "The latest issue of the Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (CPSR) newsletter on Gender in the Internet Age is well worth reading for people interested in the dearth of female techies. From the editors' introduction: The purpose of this newsletter is to explore how the Internet and other computing advances subvert or reinforce gender roles. Will current trends in computing lead to greater opportunities for both women and men, or will it cement them in their current roles? Will women be creators of software and virtual communities, or will they be disempowered users? How will men's and women's interactions online be different from their interactions in 'real life'? What changes will propagate from the online to the real world?"

TimToady writes "Many otherwise intelligent people seem to think that Perl just sort of happened by accident. But Linux Magazine has just now put their October issue online, and it includes an article entitled Uncultured Perl: Perl's Creator Shares his Thoughts on a Subversive Lifecycle. It's basically the secret history of how Perl infested the world, intentionally subverting everything in its path including the NSA, Unix, and the GPL. " Reading Larry Wall stuff has to rank as one of my favorite reading experiences.

sidhi sent us a link to a CNN article where you can read that Jerry Falwell has declared that one of the Teletubbies is gay. You can read a bit on CNN about it. I'm amazed he managed to deduce that much from the show. I watched a whole episode and couldn't get that much out of it. But what is apparent that these teletubbies are dangerous. Between kids hugging their TVs and being crushed, to this blatant attempt to subvert our children's minds. I think the only thing more threatening then murderous homosexual teletubbies is Jerry Falwell.

karl ward writes "A Columbia student has written a very clear and insightful piece on the role of open source in 1) subverting the microsoft monopoly, and 2) bringing the downfall of global industrial capitalism. Check it out here. "

hobbit typed in an article from the British Sunday newspaper The Observer Review today, because there was no URL. Unfortunately we can't reprint the whole article for legal reasons, but its last paragraphs are amusing given the DOJ remedy article we ran today. Update The URL for this article has been found, thanks to Pingouin. A quote: "Instead of trying to subvert Linux, what Gates should do is release the NT code and let the collective IQ of the Net fix it for him. He won't do it, of course, which is why his company has just peaked. If you have Microsoft shares, prepare to sell them now."