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Slashback: Apache, DRM, Limbo

Slashback tonight has an important correction about the role of the Apache Foundation (none) vis a vis yesterday's ".NET for Apache" post. Also, another view of the recent DRM (stacked) roundtable in Washington, a review of Red Hat's new beta, and more. Anyone who has successfully downloaded the new Mandrake beta want to comment on that?

Those guys did not ride in with us. Sascha Schumann of the Apache Software Foundation wrote to correct the story presented in Monday's post (".Net for Apache"), writing "this is _not_ a joint Apache Software Foundation/Microsoft stunt. It has not been approved or endorsed by the Apache Software Foundation, nor does it require any of those acts -- it is a deal between two private companies, Covalent and Microsoft."

Fly on wall video, anyone? kikensei writes: "DSL Reports has a story summarizing last week's DRM round table that was stacked with corporate panel members. You can read it here. It presents a much more apt framework for discussion than the overly sensitive, passive account from Al3x that defined our discussion last week."

Dancing in limbo, limbo, limbo. Earlier this month, we mentioned Red Hat's new beta, called Limbo. wiredog writes "From eWeek, a review of RedHat 8.0 beta. With gcc 3.1,the latest versions of GNOME, Mozilla and OpenOffice, and Apache 2.0"

The force is strong in these metallic boxes. Verizon Guy writes "CNet is reporting that Industrial Light and Magic, the group responsible for rendering the special effects in the Star Wars films, is moving away from their proprietary SGI/IRIX/RISC based systems and is instead moving to Dells running Linux. This will give them 100% performance at 20% of the cost."

Here's a link to our post with the recent Linux Journal article on same; look for more on this soon.

Wear name tags, please. mpawlo writes "Slashdot meetup day is only a week away. Some 4 500 people have already signed up to meet all over the world on Thursday July 25, 2002, 7 pm. We need more fellow Swedes to meet in Stockholm and I guess the same goes for other cities."

22 of 175 comments (clear)

  1. The lone meeters by cheezycrust · · Score: 4, Funny

    According to the top meetup list, more than 200 meetings are with 5 or less people. I wonder how many of them will actually take place. The 70 meetups with only one member will be really cool... at least there's no risk the other guests are boring.

    --
    Teenagers these days don't have as much sex as they want each other to think they do.
    1. Re:The lone meeters by CoolVibe · · Score: 4, Funny
      The 70 meetups with only one member will be really cool... at least there's no risk the other guests are boring.

      Nobody will disagree with you either.

  2. I feel sorry for them... by Eric_Cartman_South_P · · Score: 3, Funny

    Some 4 500 people have already signed up to meet...

    4,500 people! I feel sorry for the three girls that are gonna show up. Behave yourselfz, gentlemen! Keep your 1337n335 where it belongs!

  3. why require email address by Hollins · · Score: 4, Funny

    In order to learn the secret location of a geek get together in your area, you must submit your email address.

    The site promises that I won't be spammed, but I have found repeatedly that many companies don't share my definition of spam. More often than not, when a company promises not to use my email address for spam, what they mean is that they won't sell my address (for now). However, they don't consider sending me a weekly newsletter consisting soley of product ads to be spam.

    1. Re:why require email address by Eric_Cartman_South_P · · Score: 4, Funny

      Really? Send me your e-mail and I'll make sure it all stops.

      ;)

    2. Re:why require email address by Hollins · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I have about six such addresses. I create a new one each time the old on gets overwhelmed with spam. I'm sick of dealing with it, so I simply don't participate. I think others are, also. Hopefully folks will realize this to be the case stop trying to require registration.

      The real-world analogues to these types of promotions don't use similar tactics, because they know doing so is silly. When I'm offered a free sample at the grocery, I'm not asked for my phone number.

    3. Re:why require email address by Sloppy · · Score: 3, Informative

      The reason it asks for your email address is that it uses it. A few days ago it mailed people who had signed up, to let 'em know if there were enough people signed up, and to get people to RSVP, if the meeting was on.

      --
      As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
  4. Re:What is Sladhback? by brunes69 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Yeah I suppose a newbie might not understand it first off. Slashback revisits stories posten recently with some interesting (and sometimes vital) additional info or clarifications. They usually do around one or two slashbacks a week. These are the articles where replys to the editorial team like "Thats not true!!" or "You should have also had a link to this..." go.

  5. Re:What is Slashback? by cheezycrust · · Score: 4, Informative

    It's a sort of errata. Corrections and updates to articles posted earlier in Slashdot are published here.

    --
    Teenagers these days don't have as much sex as they want each other to think they do.
  6. Commenting on Mandrake by great+throwdini · · Score: 3, Funny

    Anyone who has successfully downloaded the new Mandrake beta want to comment on that?

    What? We're no longer permitted to respond in-band? Or can the Mandrake Beta now claim to be /.'s quickest Slashback topic? In other words: huh?

  7. Manhattan ( <= 42nd) meetup @ Bowlmor Lanes by realgone · · Score: 4, Funny
    It's usually a good hour's wait to get a lane for even four people at Bowlmor. I can only imagine what will happen when 51 happy geeks (myself included) show up en masse this Thursday evening.

    I pretty much figure we'll see the first ever recorded Slashdotting of a bowling alley!

  8. Did they waited to see how others did ? by philipx · · Score: 5, Interesting
    ILM switching is another sign of the popularity Linux gains in the graphics market too. But what I found interesting was the way the changed happened.

    I have a friend who has a friend who etc. works for ILM. They had planned this thing for a loooong time and they had assigned three (small) teams to this swithover project.
    One of the teams was to investigate the actual power of Linux in this domain and the offer of the marked. Techies .
    Second team was to look over the market see about savings, opportunities, investors, stuff like that. Financial $tuff
    The existence of the third team will probably never be acknowledged, but their task was to look into what their competitors who switched to Linux (see preview slashdot's announces of switchovers) were doing, how were they doing it, what impact on their revenues had, etc. I'd say spies. They've done a pretty good job.

    Of course, this is highly fictional and has no relation to any living person or existing company ;) .

    --
    __________
    Don't belong. Never join. Think for yourself. Peace!
    1. Re:Did they waited to see how others did ? by geekoid · · Score: 4, Funny

      not that the spies had a hard job.

      Go to competitors company
      wait until some techies get out of there cars
      say "There is no way Linux is any good at "
      Listen to the 30 minute lecture on why its been good for the company.

      --
      The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
  9. Peer-to-peer risk by eagl · · Score: 5, Funny

    The meet FAQ specifically states that nobody "runs" the meets. They are instead pure peer-to-peer gatherings.

    If someone were to bring a floppy disk or CD with an MP3 file on it, or even a sheet of music with lyrics, wouldn't that technically violate the DMCA resulting in the RIAA attempting to prosecute the whole meet structure? As an organized peer-to-peer structure, it MUST have no other purpose than to violate copyrights, right?

    I've got my good buddy Fritz on the line. Maybe he'll funnel some of that good sweet Disney or RIAA Christmas money my way. I'll wash his campaign limo so it's all legal as payment for a service of course... You peer-to-peer criminals have only one thing in mind, and you're the biggest threat to individual expression and creativity the universe has ever seen!

    *wakes up in cold sweat, hits "decline" RSVP link*

  10. Not Again by krmt · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Possibly offtopic, but I don't remember Arthur Clarke's story having any mention of destroying Italy...
    Or, for that matter, any humans seeking revenge, or even live aliens present on the ship (unless you count plant and animal life).

    I'm getting that "they're going to rape and pillage it like Starship Troopers" feeling. What a waste.
    --

    "I may not have morals, but I have standards."

  11. The Quiet Majority by s20451 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Check out the top cities for Slashdot Meetup Day. First on the list is Toronto. Vancouver (13) and Montreal (Tied-14) are in the top 20; taken together they outscore the combination of San Francisco and San Jose. Outside of Canada, London (England) is second on the list (the top American city is Washington, at third). The Aussies are putting in a strong showing with three in the top 20: Melbourne (6), Sydney (7), and Brisbane (11); Perth weighs in at 32nd. "Majority" is too strong a word to use, but ... are us non-Americans taking over Slashdot?

    --
    Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
    1. Re:The Quiet Majority by Monkeyman334 · · Score: 5, Funny

      Your statistics mean nothing. The ACs are arguing that Americans just aren't interested in the meetup, but that's so subjective that it's not worth arguing, and I don't even think it's true. Anyway, the reason your stats are useless is because they don't take per capita into accont. The population of Seattle is 500,000 people, 500,000/100meetup people, it's about 1 in 5000. The population of Toronto is about 2.5 million people. Does Toronto have 5 times as many people as Seattle on the meetup? Not even close. I in 17,000. So no, Candians aren't taking anything over, they're just bad at math.

    2. Re:The Quiet Majority by lpontiac · · Score: 3, Funny
      The Aussies are putting in a strong showing with three in the top 20: Melbourne (6), Sydney (7), and Brisbane (11); Perth weighs in at 32nd

      I think I can explain some of this. Perth is fairly boring :P

  12. My Slashdot Meeting Invitation by johnthorensen · · Score: 3, Funny
    You have been formally invited to a

    SLASHDOT GET TOGETHER

    Please bring the following items:
    1. Trollbot
    2. Know-it-all Attitude
    3. Socialist Mindset
    4. Secret piggy-bank where you keep that big karma horde
    5. "I love/hate Linus" Flag
    6. e-Book version of the Bible, preprocessed to replace "God" and "Lord" with "Richard Stallman" and "Eric Raymond", respectively.
    7. Outrageously Customized Computer Case (Laboratory Eyeshades optional)
    8. Anti-Editorial-Censorship SLASH backdoor
    9. Photoshopped picture of you and a beautiful woman (woman stolen, of course from OMM's coverage of QuakeCon)
    10. Editors: Your favorite foot (for insertion into your collective mouth)
    Come one come all!!!
  13. Then C-Net casually mentions: by Brian+Stretch · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Along with replacing its workstations, ILM also has installed a 1,000-processor render farm based on Advanced Micro Devices' Athlon processors and a server cluster built with Compaq Alpha processors.

    So Intel chips get the headline but Athlon MP rackmounts do the serious computation. I bet if ILM had found a top-tier vendor with a decent Athlon business (vs. consumer) desktop configuration they'd have Athlon XP's on their desktops too. Or Athlon MP dual CPU workstations, which cost about the same as a high-end uniprocessor P4. Having fought with some thoroughly screwed up Dell Optiplexes recently, the support geeks at ILM have my sympathies.

    (Not that the whole business vs. consumer thing really matters, until you try to convince purchasing of that point...)

  14. Re:Wear name tags? by PDHoss · · Score: 5, Funny
    Only if they provide tags I will. If they have these corny "Hello, I am " stickers/tags, I will blatantly refuse...

    If you don't choose to wear a name tag, then some one will force you to wear a sticker that reads "Anonymous Coward."

    PDHoss

    --
    ======================================
    Writers get in shape by pumping irony.
  15. Re:Seattle by Fnord · · Score: 5, Funny

    We seattle slashdotters tend not to gather. It makes it easier for that mob on the eastside to hunt us.