Slashback: Offshore, Oratory, Goals

More updates and links below on HavenCo, robots that kick balls, and what can already be said to be one of the millenium's most anticipated movies thus far. Oh, and some nice auditory/textual backup to the recent story about RMS vs. Goliath.

Not asking, not telling. jeffthompson writes: "The Havenco web site says it is now fully operational and open for business." A lot of people seemed convinced that Havenco wouldn't even be around by this time, but sticking around is the best revenge. I'd like to go aboard one day, promise I'll wear a blindfold and not look at anything ...

GNU, Linux, GNU/Linux, Freedom and the American Way. bkuhn writes: "Now, both the electronic audio and transcript of RMS' NYU talk are available."

The audio is in Ogg format, and the transcription is in blessed plaintext. Thanks!

Sign #37 of the coming apocalypse: Speaking of Mundie, software Freedom (and free-ness), Simone Paddock of O'Reilly writes with news that might raise a few eyebrows:

"Microsoft Senior Vice President Craig Mundie set off a compelling debate recently when he discussed Microsoft's Shared Source Philosophy, which blends the sharing of source code with the preservation of intellectual property rights.

Tim O'Reilly invited him to attend the upcoming O'Reilly Open Source Convention (July 23-27, 2001 in San Diego). Mundie not only agreed to attend, he agreed to speak.

Mundie will discuss ways in which shared source differs from open source, and how the Shared Source Philosophy supports a strong software business case for commercial software use."

Michael Tiemann (CTO of Red Hat) will speak after Mundie, and a panel of IP law and software experts (including Tim O'Reilly) will discuss the issues raised. Sounds worth being in San Diego for. If you're interested, there's more information online.

In the Tolkein, not the endocrinological or Snow White sense. SomeoneYouDontKnow writes: "This is a follow-up on the recently-released LOTR trailer. It's now available for download. Two versions are available to suit your bandwidth and patience. Unfortunately, it's still only available in Real format, but I guess we can't have everything."

Semi-alive and kicking. IEEE Spectrum Associate Editor Stephen Cass writes:

IEEE Spectrum , the house magazine of the IEEE is launching an online forum devoted to the noble sport of robosoccer . Robosoccer is different from things like Battle Bots or Robot Wars in that the robots play in teams and the whole thing is completely autonomous once started. There are a number of competitions, the biggest of which is the annual Robocup tournament, which will be held in Seattle this year. Robosoccer is a great reasearch tool for exploring A.I., automous agent behaviour, computer vision, simulation and mechanical and electrical design. It attracts participants ranging from high school students to academic researchers.

Our website (which incidentally runs slashcode) will also be a clearing house for us to award sponsorship money for teams building robosoccer robots as well as a place to exchange information.

Hard to get enough of Robots playing soccer, and prize money means you can buy more marshmallows to roast at your victory bonfire.

Comments

10 things I hate about you

[joq]

Now if someone would only use robots for something as useful as teaching Dubya to speak correctly we'd benefit.

Anyways I'd love to see the following 10 robots to be created within the next few years.

TrollBot -- monitors the ip addresses of /. trolls then sends pissed off bots to their houses to teach em all a lesson

FairUseBot -- monitors bogus patent claims then visits the companies with bogus lawsuits and teaches them a lesson

VCBot -- cons more VC companies into dumping money as they did in the mid - late 90's.

ScriptKiddieBot -- monitors h4x0rs then reveals their entire life's information including SS, Addresses, etc, so webmasters can find the luzers and beat them

SourcePurgeBot -- monitors Source Forge for incomplete programs people started and never finished, tracks the (l)user and teaches them a lesson

JerrySpringerBot -- monitors the TV show and teaches all of those retards a lesson

RIAABot -- greps the Internet for the word Napster and threatens to sue everyone forcing a showdown between RIAABot and FairUseBot which can be televised

EmbedBot -- searches every single web page on the ner with embedded midi audio files in the source then tracks them and smacks em all silly

ScientologyBot -- continously posts on every forum around the world maintaining the lie that Scientology is not a cult, and John Travolta is a good actor. This bot also gets into showdowns with FairUseBot, but is the funniest bot to watch

Slashbot -- visits a site prior to being posted on /. and makes a mirror of an article to reduce the /. effect

video formats (OT)

[iso]

...it's still only available in Real format...

this comes up just every time a video link is presented on slashdot. i've seen complaints about videos in Windows Media format, Quicktime and Real Video. what i'd like to know is, what format would the slashbots like to see their video in? i know personally as an OS X user i'd like to see videos in Quicktime (and Windows Media is most convenient when i'm using Windows), but are there any decent video formats available to Linux? formats that get reasonable compression rates like the new Windows Media or the newest Sorenson CODECs? if not is there anything that can be done about this apart from continuing to petition Sorenson, Microsoft and the others?

- j

Microsoft

[YIAAL]

"Microsoft Senior Vice President Craig Mundie set off a compelling debate recently when he discussed Microsoft's Shared Source Philosophy, which blends the sharing of source code with the preservation of intellectual property rights." It works this way: You share YOUR source code. We preserve OUR intellectual property rights.

Re:Dropping the Ideology

[gilroy]

Blockquoth the poster:

When people start shouting that Free Software is about "freedom", then I start getting worried. Free Software is a model that is useful. Drop the ideology and focus on what you are trying to accomplish.

What if the ideology is what you're trying to accomplish?

Strong Free Software types maintain that the issue is freedom ... that the software model is itself a statement about human priorities. I don't subscribe to all of their philosophy, myself, but I think I understand where they're coming from. And I'm glad there is still someone out there saying, "Making money is only one human priority and, moreso, it is not the most important one." In the end, that's what's both so frustrating and so exhilirating about the Free Software movement: It's about something... something more than hoarding and sleeping and feeding and knowing not a thing.