[Slashdot-mailer] Slashdot Daily Report (11/5/2000)
David Jacoby
jacoby@ecn.purdue.edu
Sun, 5 Nov 2000 11:00:02 -0500 (EST)
Slashdot Daily Report ( http://slashdot.org/ )
News for Nerds. Stuff That Matters.
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Voter Records Exposed
A yro article from the "not-ready-for-prime-time-players" department
sent by jamie
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/11/04/1248206
The current edition of Lauren Weinstein's PRIVACY
Forum has a cautionary tale about online voter
registration in one Texas county. It seems your
username is your first and last name, and your
password is your year of birth. Not many bits of
security there. Guess that information and you can
learn any Denton County voter's home address and
some trivia -- but at least not their credit card
numbers ... yet. michael: A silly privacy
overreaction, IMHO. I believe voter records are
public in every state and county in the U.S., and
they are routinely used by police, journalists,
political bulk mailers, etc. If the objection is
that they're now "on the Web", that seems like a
silly hair-splitting, since for a few dollars you
can get the records for an entire county on CD-ROM
anyway. Behind the scenes, the voter registration
records of the entire country are used by the
major political parties to coordinate mailings -
this information is not and has never been
private.
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MS To Virginia Beach: Prove You Own Your Software
A articles article from the "not-unique-to-virginia-beach" department
sent by timothy
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/11/04/1437226
Corey Winesett writes: "Virginia Beach, the
largest city in VA, has been ordered by Microsoft
to audit its software and produce documentation.
The city has 5900 employees, 3500 computers and is
'99%' Microsoft dependent. The city says that this
could cost thousands of dollars and called the
letter 'jolting.' Here is a link to the story."
From the article, one of the great arguments for
software that doesn't need a file cabinet of
certificates: "Microsoft, like most software
companies, includes contracts with its merchandise
explaining that the company reserves the right to
ask consumers at any time for proof of purchase
and an inventory of what is being used. The rule
applies not only to governments and privately
owned companies but to individuals." Aren't you
glad you use Open Source?
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Sega to develop Dreamcast PCI Card
A articles article from the "now-that-would-be-sweet" department
sent by CmdrTaco
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/11/04/1734227
Fervent writes "Sega plans on developing a PCI
card to put in your box that will play Dreamcast
games." The bit is pretty much a total rumor with
no evidence at all, but it sure would be nifty.
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When Will IBM Release OpenAFS?
A askslashdot article from the "will-IBM-make-good-on-that-promise" department
sent by Cliff
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/11/03/0047253
sighup asks: "My company is in the need of a
distributed file system for WAN use. I've looked
around. CODA and InterMezzo aren't there yet. NFS
is not going to work well in our instance. So, I
went looking at AFS (having used it in college). I
found that IBM had announced that they were
opensourcing AFS. We were willing to pay for it,
but this is soooo much better. The original
announcement said that IBM would be releasing the
source code in September. September has come and
gone and October is almost gone. They've posted
the docs, but nothing else. I've even mailed
DeveloperWorks and got no response. So, when's
OpenAFS -actually- going to be out?"
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The Next Generation of XAnim
A articles article from the "oms-is-almost-ready-too" department
sent by CmdrTaco
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/11/04/1730224
You don't hear much about xanim anymore, but it's
certainly an old stand by (FAQ: Yes, you can use
it to play cinepak encoded movies if you have a
few closed source modules). But are you curious
about what's happening with old faithful? rsk
noted that the next generation xanim featurelist
is online. It's not ready yet, but it's nice to
see an update.
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Space Object May Be Killer - In 2030
A articles article from the "time-to-dramatically-propose" department
sent by timothy
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/11/04/2216210
Somewhere in the chorus, Bandwidth_ writes: "Time
to start stockpiling those beans and working on
your Y2K shelter again. Astronomers have confirmed
that object 2000 SG344 has a 500-to-1 chance of
hitting earth in the year 2030, a much higher
probability of impact than any object before it.
Scientists aren't certain what it is, but it's
most likely a tiny asteroid or it could be a
leftover Apollo rocket booster. It is not a major
threat, damage would be contained to a localized
area in the 1 to 3 megaton range if a collision
were to ever happen." As jamie points out, this
probably ought not worry you unduly, but it is the
first nonzero-rated object on the Torino scale.
N2UX points to an MSNBC article on the object
which points out that the threat has now been
downgraded to a more comforting level.
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XFree 4.0 Moves into Woody
A articles article from the "let-the-games-begin" department
sent by CmdrTaco
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/11/04/2240215
sammy!! writes "Debian unstable now has XFree86
4.0, so use apt-get or dselect and start
downloading the new packages!" There are still a
ton of issues with it, but I've been using the
XF86 debs for several months on my desktop, with
no significant problems.
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What's the Best Linux Distribution for Clustering?
A askslashdot article from the "the-right-distro-for-the-right-task" department
sent by Cliff
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/11/02/2242242
syn1 asks: "There has been a proliferation of
Linux distros over the last couple years. Many are
specialized for specific tasks or needs. In terms
of Beowulf Clusters, there are a growing number of
distros specialized for these clusters. Although
the old favorite among specialized Beowulf distros
is Extreme Linux, other distros such as Syclid
Linux and Scali Linux are catching up in terms of
user share. Additionally, more people are using
conventional distros (Red Hat, Debian, Mandrake,
SuSE, etc..) and adding Beowulf support. I am just
wondering what fellow Slashdotters think about
these various distros when it comes to Beowulf
Clusters and which ones they think are best."
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The info is Rob Malda's
The code is mine
MOTD: -----------------------------------
I am no longer associated with Purdue, except for being a former
student, former employee, and active member of the Linux Users Group.
As such, I'll either be moving this service to another server or
killing it entirely. Your input is requested as to what you'd like.
Then again, when was the last time I changed the MOTD? And when was
last time it was read?