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Slashback: Membership, Quarkiness, Audioggogy

Slashback this fine tax-day evening (you did remember, right?) brings you updates on Gentoo Linux, Mike Myer's brush with the Humor Police, Microsoft's spin on the waning Hailstorm, and more. Read on for the details.

A tornado's worth of spin control. telstar writes "The Code Report is reporting that last week's story from the New York Times concerning the death of Hailstorm was not entirely accurate. A Microsoft spokesperson has stated that Microsoft is shifting from a model in which MSN was the sole operator to a model where the operation of these services is available to multiple operators."

Onan Meets Midas. daoine writes: "Reversing the outcome of an earlier argument, boston.com is reporting that MGM and New Line Cinema have reached an agreement that permits New Line to continue with the Goldmember name. It also stipulates that further satirical names must be approved by MGM."

Does dishes, saves gas, freshens your breath, cleans your pets ... Apparently, Gentoo Linux is contagious. JigSaw writes: "OSNews features an interesting review of Gentoo Linux 1.0 and they call it 'the fastest loading, fastest-operating Linux distribution to date.' Gentoo may be the fastest Linux for a workstation today, but according to the review, it still has some problems, most notably, annoying bugs. However, it still manages to score a glowing 8.2 out of 10 overall."

Reader sckevyn also points to the Gentoo PowerPC page for those equipped different.

First steps always seem small. camusflage writes "Yahoo has a story from ZDNet about TheKompany's recent release of tkcPlayer for the Zaurus, which is being billed as the first portable Ogg Vorbis player. A player for a format not many people are using on a platform even fewer people are using. Admirable, but not likely to be a commercial success."

Honey, your quark is showing. ngrier writes "As a quick follow-up to the story posted here a few days ago regarding the potential quark star, the NASA APOD today is a picture of the aforementioned star."

46 of 181 comments (clear)

  1. Oops... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    this fine tax-day evening (you did remember, right?)

    Oh shit...

    1. Re:Oops... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      My wife will be driving west to the next timezone while I do our taxes in the car. That should buy us one extra hour. Anyone else doing this, or are we completely crazy?

    2. Re:Oops... by Jeffery+McGrew · · Score: 3, Informative

      If you did forget, and you've got all your w-2 and such on hand, then just go to www.turbotax.com - here: http://www.quicken.com/taxes/products/#web_product s

      It lets you fill out your taxes via an interactive online form that asks all the right questions and then 'E-files' a finished form for a small fee without having to leave your computer or find an all-night post office.

      I have nothing to do with Quicken, i just used the service and it's great.

      get crackin, geeks!

    3. Re:Oops... by spoonist · · Score: 2, Funny

      Geez... I had SO much fun this morning filling out my Schedule D with the details of my huge amounts of Enron stock.

    4. Re:Oops... by emag · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Why not give me the check instead? Since you seem to be willing to give someone an interest-free loan, make it someone who can use it and benefit from it. :-)

      --
      "The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule." --H.L. Mencken
    5. Re:Oops... by IvyMike · · Score: 2, Funny

      Will you look at those morons! I payed my taxes over a year ago! --Homer Simpson

    6. Re:Oops... by rark · · Score: 2

      or you could telefile an extension, if you do it by phone it's free (though you're supposed to estimate how much tax you'll owe and pay it, which you can do via credit card for some nominal fee. I think it's a buck. If that's significant digits to the amount you think you owe less the amount you've already paid then you can probably get away with saying you estimated lower, but hey, IANA(T)L)

      Info on irs.gov

  2. APOD [Quark Star] URL by jsled · · Score: 3, Informative
  3. It's only tax day.. by 56ker · · Score: 2, Funny

    in the U.S. - ah no it isn't! *cue wailing and gnashing of teeth*

    1. Re:It's only tax day.. by robkore · · Score: 2, Insightful

      in the U.S. - ah no it isn't! *cue wailing and gnashing of teeth*

      Wow, two of my biggest pet peeves in one post. First of all, Slashdot is an American site. Deal with it, or start a slashdot.(your country code here). And damn, can't you people use the subject line for a subject and not for the first half of your first sentence? At the very least, repeat your pseudo subject in the message body. Moderate me down for being off topic or flamebait or whatever, I don't care.

  4. Re:Feeling sorry for those who forgot it's tax day by greenfly · · Score: 3, Informative

    Eh, even if you forgot it's tax day, you can at least file for an extension which will buy you some more time. So all is not lost.

  5. Re:Attention Timothy poster of article by 56ker · · Score: 2

    Is this the right link?

  6. Errr, what happened to the law? by NanoGator · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "It also stipulates that further satirical names must be approved by MGM."

    Since when do they need permission to use a parodized name? I thought that parody law not only allowed one to use a similar name ('Goldmember' is not THAT similar...), but also their original artwork could be closely mimicked.

    Anybody remember reading about that guy who put up an 'aolsucks.com' site? AOL attempted to sue him because he used their artwork to parodize him. His lawyer said he was well within his rights because it was a pardoy/criticism of the company.

    Question: Wouldn't the same logic be applied as it was for this guy, or is there a variable I'm not considering?

    --
    "Derp de derp."
    1. Re:Errr, what happened to the law? by outlier · · Score: 5, Informative

      Keep in mind that this is not a decision that involved the legal system. The original decision was made by the MPAA, which both studios are members of. Essentially, the industry is policing itself, and both groups agreed to be bound by those decisions.

      They could sue each other if they wanted, but they've settled in this way.

    2. Re:Errr, what happened to the law? by outlier · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Sort of... MGM and New Line joined a club (MPAA). One of the rules of the club is that you can sort out disagreements within the club.

      MGM convinced the club to rule against New Line. However, MGM also said that wouldn't have a problem with New Line if New Line would do MGM some favors.

      At any point, New Line could've said "Screw you, these are our rights. You're not the boss of me." and refused to abide by the MPAAs initial ruling. At that point, MGM could have sued New Line (And probably lost), wasting valuable $$, raising anamosity within the industry, and possibly establishing a(nother) precedent that could come back and bite New Line on the ass when someone else tried to use a New Line-like title for their film. Instead, New Line (probably) agreed to show some MGM trailers before the film, and MGM agreed to let them use the title.

      On one hand we have an industry group making the Wrong Decision (TM) initially in supporting MGM's petition against New Line. That's bad.

      But on the other hand, we have an industry group policing itself -- not relying on the legal system to resolve disputes. That's not that bad.

    3. Re:Errr, what happened to the law? by Servo5678 · · Score: 5, Funny
      Sort of... MGM and New Line joined a club (MPAA). One of the rules of the club is that you can sort out disagreements within the club.
      First rule of Film Club: Do not talk about Film Club.
    4. Re:Errr, what happened to the law? by RedWizzard · · Score: 2
      My understanding (and this is all rumor - I have no supporting evidence) is that MGM and New Line restarted talks over "Goldmember" after New Line got MPAA approval for four other titles:
      • "Live and Let Shag",
      • "You Only Shag Thrice",
      • "License to Shag", and my personal favourite:
      • "Never Say Member Again".
      It's also possible that the success of Fellowship of the Ring has made MGM much more receptive to the proposed trailer swap deal.
    5. Re:Errr, what happened to the law? by meggito · · Score: 2

      Or, you have one media group sueing hte other right as their movie is coming out, and forcing them to accept their agreement, or that movie will not be coming out as Goldmember. The choice was settle with something reasonable, delay the movie, or go in and change a shitload of good material. Yes, its good that they can come to an understanding, no, its bad that MGM used timing to FORCE them into an agreement.

  7. .NET by Supa+Mentat · · Score: 2, Interesting

    When I first read about .NET and MS's philosophy with it (i.e. what hailstorm was supposed to be and what it's acceptance would accomplish) it terrified me. Now hailstorm is dead as we knew it and the threat it posed is (seemingly) gone. My question is: now that Hailstorm is not a factor, are there still any risks for the internet and software communities(both open and closed) assossiated with taking up the .NET framework (barring the fact that it _is_ MS we're talking about here, obviously they've screwed people before)? I think that the idea behind the framework of .NET and what it's effects on the way things are coded (from a purely programming point of view) could be very interesting and improve software; I am also very suspiscious of any big "ideas" coming out of MS. Any thoughts?

    --
    "A witty saying proves nothing." - Voltaire
    1. Re:.NET by BurritoWarrior · · Score: 3, Insightful

      From the article:
      "Don't confuse an expansion of the operator strategy with any kind of de-commitment from the idea of user-centric web services that help create a more personalized, more consistent experience across the different technologies in an individual's life."

      Let me paraphrase the MicroSpeak:
      "We are still committed to the idea of controlling all aspects of people's lives beyond the PC. Once we get widespread adoption of .net technologies with the many varied devices out there, we will introduce subtle incompatibilities into the .net product line so that competing companies' products will break or function less efficiently.

      Since users have already committed too much time and effort (much like word .doc's), they will then be forced to dump their for the competing MS one. This is how we will leverage our way out from just making the servers to trying to make every single device you use a Microsoft one."

      If I am wrong, I will eat my shoes.

    2. Re:.NET by Bodrius · · Score: 2

      Hmmm... shoes.

      --
      Freedom is the freedom to say 2+2=4, everything else follows...
    3. Re:.NET by ebyrob · · Score: 2

      Passport:
      It's a principal thing with me. When I go out and solicit some service on the web, I get to make a decision whether I want to step through a company's hoops in order to do business with them. In many cases I've found other vendors because I didn't like the hoops offered. In the MSDN case, I have the choice of finding another job, or jumping through the hoops. It's even worse, when I consider the hoops are likely to get a lot worse in the near term.

      No solid interface:
      It's not the individual pieces that are a problem. It is general trends. In this case, we see Microsoft creating a virtual machine (not unlike Java) and basing as much future development on it as possible. However, different than Java, Microsoft will be using their win32 libraries behind the scenes to get much of the work done.

      From what I've seen of Microsoft efforts in the past, I'd have to guess they aren't going to do a very good job of creating a good isolated "sandbox" to run untrusted or semitrusted code in. How can they if the "sandbox" is running win32 calls under the hood? So, the goal is to have code that can run anywhere and on any machine, or across several machines, but security (and reliability to some degree) is essentially left up to application developers. This leaves the field wide open for malicious (or just plain foolish) applications to cause all sorts of grief.

      I'm not all that familiar with the C# and .NET implementation. Then again, how familiar is anyone, considering the source is closed. I look at the track record of the past. Tons of exploits in VBScript, very few in JavaScript, especially non-MS variants. Many macro and other exploits and bugs in the Office suite. In fact, Office (through outlook) is the largest carrier of computer viruses today.

      I'm not saying it can't be done, or that Microsoft can't do it. But if Microsoft comes up with a secure reliable development environment with more features and integration than ever before, you'll be able to bowl me over with a toothpick.

  8. Surprise, Surprise by GeekLife.com · · Score: 4, Informative

    MGM pulled the same shenanigans with The Spy Who Shagged Me. Threaten to sue (even though you'd almost certainly lose under parody protection), and force some trailers to be shown before the film.

    Yawn, I hope they put all of that in the agreement this time, so we don't have to hear about it in future installments.

  9. NY Times was wrong on hailstorm, move on by Ars-Fartsica · · Score: 4, Insightful
    People I know who are close to this product were puzzled the day these reports came out.

    They're moving to a federated model, meaning MS will not be the only one providing the services.

    Nothing to add - the original article was just wrong.

    1. Re:NY Times was wrong on hailstorm, move on by _Sprocket_ · · Score: 3, Insightful


      They're moving to a federated model, meaning MS will not be the only one providing the services.


      ...which means the same stellar history of secure code, but with more people to blame for individual incidents!


      More or less the same business model present in the current IT Industry.

  10. Gentooizing Debian? by reaper20 · · Score: 2

    I'm pretty comfortable with Debian, and I am putting trying Gentoo on my to-do list, but I was wondering if anyone knows if there is some interest in bringing some of the source-based distro goodness to Debian.

    'apt-build install kde3' or something, mmmm ....

    1. Re:Gentooizing Debian? by greenfly · · Score: 2

      Generally if you want to build a deb from source, the one-liner is apt-get --compile source

    2. Re:Gentooizing Debian? by devnullify · · Score: 2, Informative

      I'm now running Gentoo (installed it this weekend). Was running Debian 2.2r5. Gentoo is markedly faster, and definitely more up to date (how long was it gonna take Debian to release KDE3 packages, even in unstable). I'm now running an entirely source based, KDE3 workstation, and it only took about 24 hours to compile everything *laugh*. If you've got time, and are comfortable with a command line, Gentoo seems to be a very nice distro so far. The portage utility is superb, though most of the setup of the machine is done by hand (read: know what you're doing first), it's well worth it. The only beef I had was that it doesn't use the SysV /etc/init.d/rc.d for startup, so VMWare was kinda a pain to get working. Overall, a very well done distro, but it does have some issues, and you really do need to know your way around to get it going. A word of advice, make sure /var has lots of space, as portage uses /var/tmp for compiling. I made the mistake of not making a seperate partition for /var, and making / only 300MB. Bombed about halfway through compiling XFree, and I had to start from scratch again. If you must make /var small, use the PORTAGE_TMPDIR variable to specify where you want it to compile in, otherwise you'll run into problems. Bleeding edge is nice, but I'd still consider Debian my distro of choice for anything other than my home machine which I don't really care about. Too much potential for problems. Good Luck

    3. Re:Gentooizing Debian? by JSD · · Score: 2, Informative

      What's wrong with:
      apt-get --build source <some-package>?

      It will act just like 'apt-get install <some-package>' except that now it downloads the source and builds it.

      --
      seth
    4. Re:Gentooizing Debian? by Jerf · · Score: 2

      Gentoo automatically configures the source download, and uses your preferred optimizations. IIRC, Debian does not; that requires manual intervention, which is the whole point of Gentoo.

  11. Re: Slashback by rmohr02 · · Score: 5, Funny

    HOMER: Would you look at those morons... I paid my taxes over a year ago!

    LISA: You have to do your taxes every year, dad.

    Homer: Ahh! Marge! How many kids do we have? Oh, no time to count, I'll just estimate! Uh...nine!

    Marge: Homer, you know we don't h--

    Homer: Shut up, shut up! If I don't hear you it's not illegal! OK, I need some deductions, deductions... ah!! Business gifts!

    [Homer grabs the boat painting from above the couch and hands it to Marge.]

    Here you go, keep using nuclear power!

    Marge: Homer! I painted that for you!

    Homer: OK, Marge, if anyone asks, you require twenty four hour nursing care, Lisa's a clergyman, Maggie is seven people, and Bart was wounded in Vietnam!

    Bart: Cool!

  12. It's not tax day where I live by srichman · · Score: 2
    Not for me.

    (The relevant part of the page is under "News & Updates" on the left.)

  13. Portable(ish) flac by srichman · · Score: 3, Interesting
    ...which is being billed as the first portable Ogg Vorbis player.
    Yeah, but these guys had flac support two months ago.
  14. Re:Membership? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Membership... as in GoldMEMBER

  15. Re:Gentoo Linux by devnullify · · Score: 2, Informative

    One of the first steps is configuring the flags your C or C++ compiler will get when it compiles the packages. Adding the -march=i686 flag to every source file compiled makes the compiler use Intel's extended instruction set or more recent CPUs. Most binary distrobutions are compiled for vanilla i386 hardware, and will run on 486s and older Pentiums that don't have MMX/SSE enhancments. Yes, it doesn't make all that much of a difference, but it does allow you to squeeze a little more out of the system, and in some cases leads to smaller binaries. The other factor, as you mentioned, is that unlike RH, MDK and the like, it doesn't install loads of services that eat up your resources that you never use. The very last point, is that aside from LFS, it's probably the only distro I'm aware of where you *don't* have an install program do everything for you, so it's all done Your Way. Yeah compiling takes a loooonnng time, but it's an interesting experience, and I find it to be more stable and faster than a comparable Debian install, of course for many, the 24hr+ compile time to set up a decent X workstation may make it out of the question.

  16. Interstellar ping by Lupus+Rufus · · Score: 2, Interesting
    This supposed quark star is 450 light years away, and ultracompact, which according to NASA's site would allow light to orbit. So here's an idea: Concoct a message for future human societies (probably not too different from the messages now designed for extraterrestrial civilizations), and send it in a wad towards RX J185635-375, so that it might get there, orbit a few times, then come shooting back to earth 900 years from now to be picked up by whatever remnants of our civilization are still around.

    Of course, the chances of this working are a million to one, and the arrival date might be off by a few hundred years, but if it did work I think it would be an great archeological find for the 4th millenium or so.

    btw, anyone else read Interstellar Pig back in the day? William Sleator is a GOD.

    --

    Aren't you dead?

    1. Re:Interstellar ping by The_dev0 · · Score: 2, Funny

      Did both you guys misspell Shatner on purpose?

      --
      Never fight naked, unless you're in prison...
  17. neat movies by Alien54 · · Score: 2
    One of the links on the Nasa page goes to some neat animations on orbitiung black holes, nuetron stars, etc.

    http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/htmltest/rjn_bht.html

    good stuff

    watch out for the time dialation.

    --
    "It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
  18. Re:Gentoo is cool, if it works.. by socratic+method · · Score: 3, Informative

    This has been fixed today. It was apparently a problem with the portage database. Re-run "emerge rsync" and your problem should be solved.

    sm

  19. Tiny visible star, huge X-ray star by ChrisCampbell47 · · Score: 3, Informative
    That image of the quark star (arrow pointing to something tiny / invisible) is misleading.

    I actually saw the video press release go out on NASA TV last week (woohoo, I get to watch NASA TV at work). They did a fade FROM that picture to another one done in the X-ray spectrum (Chandra) where that virtually invisible star turned into a shining beacon of quark.

  20. Sharp Zaurus by jred · · Score: 2, Insightful

    A player for a format not many people are using on a platform even fewer people are using. Admirable, but not likely to be a commercial success.

    Ok, everyone who keeps saying that they refuse to buy a player that doesn't support Ogg Vorbis needs to step up to the plate. Heck, you get the added bonus of it running on Linux. If *you* don't, who will? Then when it fails, everyone will say it's because the people *want* closed source, proprietary products...

    --

    jred
    I'm not a mechanic but I play one in my garage...
  21. IEEE Reconsiders DMCA Restriction by Captn+Pepe · · Score: 5, Informative

    A note that I think should have gotten into today's Slashback -- the New Scientist is reporting that the IEEE has rescinded its decision to make all paper submitters agree not to violate the DMCA in their articles, amid a storm of protest.

    "The plan is to remove the reference to the DCMA," says Bill Hagen, intellectual property rights manager for the IEEE. "It's controversial to say the least. We've been getting a lot of correspondence, comment and opinion and have been forced to reconsider it."

    This is even better than preserving the status quo, because in this case the hooplah got the problems of the DMCA out in front of the IEEE membership, which is very large and includes some extremely influential people. Score one for the good guys.

    --

    Quantum mechanics: the dreams that stuff is made of.
  22. Re: globalization and websites by (outer-limits) · · Score: 2, Insightful

    You appear to be ignorant of the fact that half the articles on /. refer to non US sites, eg, the register, Toms, Linux Distros, etc.

    --

    Microsoft - Where would you like to go today, Maybe Jail?

  23. New Hailstorm nothing but damage control. by Alsee · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Another case of over eager media looking to see the worst in tech companies. Or maybe just the worst in Microsoft.

    Nope, Hailstorm is dead dead dead. A key feature of Hailstorm was that Microsoft wants to be the "gatekeeper" of the internet. In order collect a toll requires a monopoly. People are NOT going to pay at a toll booth when there's a free street to the same place.

    The "new and improved" version of hailstorm is nothing but a glorified version of a standard username/password database. I doubt many companies are going to buy the software, and even if they do the proffits of selling the software are nothing compared to OWNING the identity of everyone on the net and selling the service.

    The "new and improved" hailstorm is a desperate attempt to keep a colossal failure from sinking .NET with it. Hailstorm was .NET's flag-ship product. Saying "Hailstorm is alive and well" is nothing but a damage control spin.

    -

    --
    - - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
  24. My delusion that lawyers are rational human beings by Alsee · · Score: 5, Interesting

    MGM was negotiating to place an ad for the upcoming Bond adventure "Die Another Day" before the "Austin Powers" film

    That really sums up the value of MGM's case against Goldmember. If they genuinely felt that the name tarnished their James Bond property then why the hell would they want to use it to advertize a Bond film?!

    It also stipulates that further satirical names must be approved by MGM.

    Ok, maybe I'm having delusions that lawyers are actually rational human beings, but you *could* read that to mean MGM realized it was a frivolous lawsuit and to avoid a countersuit they stipulated they would approve any and all satirical names in the future. :)

    -

    --
    - - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
  25. Re:My delusion that lawyers are rational human bei by geekoid · · Score: 2

    yes, its a delusion.
    I'll wager what happened is something like this:

    MGM said, "we want you to advertise a bond file"
    NLC says "mmmmNo"

    MGM brings its 'CASE' to the MPAA.
    MPAA says "You can't do that"
    NLC says "we're protected under the parody law"
    MPAA says "This is about the agreement you have with us, and we're arbitrating and we say NO. If you take it to court, we'll toss you out of the MPAA and sue you for breech of contract"
    NLC "you bastards!"
    MPAA "yes?"
    MGM "you know, we don't want to be an ass, so we'll let you keep the name, if you advertise are next JB film. Oh yeah, here is an approved list of parody names, feel free to use those. If you use something else, we'll go through this again."
    NLC "stupid MPAA"

    Clearly, because MGM acted first and put NLC into a defence position, they won.

    --
    The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect