[Slashdot-mailer] Slashdot Daily Report (11/14/2000)
David Jacoby
jacoby@ecn.purdue.edu
Tue, 14 Nov 2000 11:00:03 -0500 (EST)
Slashdot Daily Report ( http://slashdot.org/ )
News for Nerds. Stuff That Matters.
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Simulating Cloth in CG
A articles article from the "wouldn't-it-be-nice" department
sent by CmdrTaco
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/11/13/1356230
monty writes: "Creating realistic clothing in
games may not seem that difficult, but according
to one of Intel's research programmers it turns
out it is very difficult indeed. Intel senior
technical marketing manager Dean Macri gave a
presentation at the recent AGDC outlining the
problems with simulating cloth, and some possible
solutions. There is an online presentation
(including downloadable source code and a fully
configurable executable of the demonstration
simulation) at The math is a bit intense, but the
implications are that realistic cloth simulation
remains out of reach for today's processors."
Monty found it on
<HREF="http://www.bigkid.com.au">BigKid, but I
couldn't ;)
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The Evolution Of Wired Life
A books article from the "eventually-it-evolves-insulation" department
sent by timothy
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/10/06/1452224
The ever illuminating Cliff Lampe returns, this
time with a book and topic which continue to hover
in the background. What sort of a life has
information taken on in our brave new world? It
sounds like a balanced account with a wide-ranging
approach. [TABLE NOT SHOWN]
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Nanotechnology And The Law of Accelerating Returns
A articles article from the "what-does-it-all-mean" department
sent by Hemos
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/11/13/1426240
digitect writes: "The article More More More at
Reason is a good overview of the increasing rate
of acceleration for technology. It includes
references to nanotube technology, nanobots and
estimations of gross computing power in the near
and far future. Frankly, I doubt we will ever
develop computers with the sophisticated power of
even a mouse brain, although many may protest that
we already have exceeded their gross power. I
believe that things like perception and reasoning
are beyond the scope of raw power. But it's a fun
read anyway."
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Inprise's Kylix To Be Opened? & Gnome Alliance
A articles article from the "cool-beans" department
sent by Hemos
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/11/13/1454245
captaindelphi writes "ZDNet has an interesting
article on Kylix that can be found here. While it
is short on the details it makes for some
interesting news! "Inprise Corp. will announce, at
Comdex in Las Vegas this week, plans to release
the source code of its Kylix Linux rapid
application development tool to the GNOME
Foundation" " That's an interesting twist -
releasing the code to the Gnome Foundation - but
the addition of a lot of Gnome support to Kylix
will stir things up as well.
--------------------
Analysis: Reforming Political Technology
A features article from the "-an-18th-century-system-totters" department
sent by JonKatz
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/11/09/2042224
--------------------
NVidia Announces Mobile GeForce 2 Chip
A articles article from the "more-speed-coming-at-you" department
sent by Hemos
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/11/13/1648227
AFCArchvile writes: "NVidia might be giving ATI,
the current dominator in the laptop graphics chip
sector, a run for its money. This Yahoo article
tells about how the release was announced in
Vegas, and PlanetHardware has a preview of the
chip (a low-power derivative of the GeForce 2 MX),
with some technical specs as well. The GeForce2Go,
as it has been labeled, performs over half as well
as a GeForce 2 GTS (572 Mtexel/s) while consuming
much less power (0.8 watts typical, 2.4 watts
maximum)."
--------------------
European Cybercrime Treaty 1.1
A yro article from the "development-branch" department
sent by jamie
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/11/13/1828213
(eternal_software) writes: "Reuters is reporting
that the world's first cybercrime treaty is being
redrafted after Internet lobby groups assailed it
as a threat to human rights that could have 'a
chilling effect on the free flow of information
and ideas.'" The Council of Europe has added new
passages to clarify, according to Reuters, "that
'cracking' computer systems to test security is
legal and that ISPs would only be asked to store
specific data related to a suspected crime."
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TMBG Needs a New Dial-A-Song Machine
A articles article from the "hello.-hello?-hello." department
sent by jamie
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/11/13/1641233
Ashileedo writes "Thought this was interesting.
They Might Be Giants is down to their last
Dial-A-Song machine, a Record-A-Call 675 circa
1983. For those who don't know, They Might Be
Giants has a phone number you can call and listen
to various recordings they've done" ...which is an
American institution, in continual operation since
the 1980s. (718) 387-6962. "They're open to
computer-based answering machines that can handle
multiple files easily. Read more about it at
theymightbegiants.com." They appeal to "the more
technically minded fold out there -- if you know
of any over the counter kick ass computer based
answering machines that can handle multiple files
easily, we're all ears!"
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Interviews With The Creators of Vyper and Stackless
A articles article from the "may-I-see-your-brain-sir?" department
sent by timothy
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/11/13/2022211
Frank writes: "What most programmers probably
think of when they talk about 'Python' is the
specific implementation sometimes called 'CPython'
(because it is implemented in C). However, Python
as a language specification has been implemented
several times in parallel with the evolution of
Guido van Rossum's reference implementation. This
article consists of annotated interviews with the
creators of two of the non-standard Pythons --
Stackless and Vyper." A pair of interviews to make
your head spin with talk of Literate Programming
and the odd but neat concept of "continuations."
--------------------
Quickies, Coast to Coast
A articles article from the "then-why-you-singing-it-zorak" department
sent by CmdrTaco
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/11/13/1851239
Let's start this off with some violence!
BigBlockMopar answered the age-old question: what
happens when a tank runs over a hard drive.
NeoCode sent the The Illustrated Guide To Breaking
Your Computer, and finally, matticus discovered
The Overclockerz Store is selling burnt-up
athlons/durons made into keychains. Now that we've
got that out of our system, lets get some
schoolin' by learning about the facts of life:
spankweasel sent in the invisible condom. Now
math: Jonathan Hayward sent us A four-dimensional
maze. And some history: John Willemin sent us a
nostalgia inducing Microsoft Ad from the days of
yore. After a hard day of education, why not
travel home on your lawn mower powered hoverboard
at a cool 15mph? (thanks LenZ) Then we can play
some dot-com monopoly (thanks to gmag3) and see
what's on TV. MTO sent us Trailers for the Dune
miniseries, and David Hume sent an abc article
about Vinyl Video which attempts to generate
images from your records. Finally, we better check
the weather channel to find out what the weather
is gonna be like ... on Mars (thanks noctis).
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Unmanned (But Armed) Aircraft Experiments in 2001
A articles article from the "more-efficient-ways-of-killing-other-beings" department
sent by sengan
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/11/13/2036201
John Warden, architect of the Gulf war air
campaign, believes that by 2025 90% of combat
aircraft will be unmanned. Next spring, the first
armed aircraft without pilot, the X-45A UCAV will
make its maiden flight. Replacing the pilot by a
ground controller cuts the price of each unit by
two-thirds, and makes it easier to transport. The
Economist has more, and states 'the decision to
fire weapons should be made by a human, to reduce
the risk of "friendly fire."' This is not logical:
Since the planes can be networked and thus know
each other's relative positions, preventing
friendly fire is a much simpler problem than the
visual recognition required to determine what to
shoot at, unless you don't mind hitting
non-military targets. I wonder what Asimov would
think.
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101 Giant Galaxy Clusters Discovered
A science article from the "great-galaxy-clusters-batman!" department
sent by timothy
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/11/14/0419230
Porfiry says: "Astronomers behind the Massive
Cluster Survey (MACS) have uncovered 101 giant
galaxy clusters, many of them so distant and thus
forming so early in the history of time that they
challenge our current understanding of how quickly
the Universe evolved into its current hierarchical
structure of stars, galaxies and clusters. Galaxy
clusters are the largest gravitationally bound
structures in the Universe, typically containing a
few hundred to thousands of galaxies, each of
which in turn contains many billions of stars."
--------------------
What are the Advantages/Disavantages to Flex Time?
A askslashdot article from the "your-answers-to-common-questions" department
sent by Cliff
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/11/11/1831233
achurch asks: "I work for a fairly large Japanese
software company which runs most of its divisions
on a fixed time schedule (i.e. 9:00am-5:30pm plus
overtime). I happen to be in the one division that
has a flex-time system, but I've been hearing
rumors of late that the company is considering
getting rid of that and putting us back on shift,
too. My gut reaction to that is 'you do that, I
quit,' but I'd like to put together a viable
argument for maintaining/expanding flex here. So
I'd like to get some opinions on why flex time is
a Good Thing: What has flex done for you/your
company? Why do you (or don't you) prefer flex to
a fixed schedule? Reasons that appeal to
management types would be especially helpful." I'm
sure this question is one that is on quite a few
minds out there. Have strong feelings about this
either way, then please share them here.
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Firewall On A PCI card
A articles article from the "oooh-this-wall-is-toasty!" department
sent by timothy
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/11/13/2237200
robags writes: "The people at Merilus have
grabbed a PCI card, embedded Linux, added some
Ethernet ports and come up with the FireCard. The
OS on the host system can crash out, without
affecting your firewall. 'Once installed, the
FireCard provides firewalling, routing, bandwidth
management, virtual private networking, redundant
failover, intrusion detection and much more.'"
This sounds like a smart product, especially for
telecommuters; I sure hope it's not a pointless
hoax or vaporware.
--------------------
3D Computer Network Maps
A articles article from the "i-can-see-my-node-from-here" department
sent by CmdrTaco
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/11/14/1324214
beebware writes: "According to this article on
C|Net, Tim Bray (co-inventor of XML) has launched
Antarcti.ca which renders computer networks in 2
and 3D maps. It's currently running a demo off the
ODP data. But will it take off? Will users really
like 'country-maps' opposed to listings?
(Incidentally Tim used to be vice-president of
production at Yahoo! so I think we can tell what
his money's on.)"
--------------------
PCI FireWall Card
A articles article from the "allright-thats-pretty-nifty" department
sent by CmdrTaco
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/11/14/1333247
djRazorback writes "I saw on Insane Hardware that
a company called Merilus Technologies have
released their "FireCard", which is a hardware
based FireWall with inbuilt ethernet and modem,
and it runs on a Transmeta Crusoe processor with
an ALi Chipset! It has embedded Linux along with
the Gateway Guardian software which runs via the
Code Morphing software that the Crusoe uses.
What's a FireCard with out a cool PCB? Red does it
appropriately I think :)" it can run entirely
independant of the host machine, sucking only
electricity... it'll still route packets after you
crash. This is a cute idea even without the crusoe
chip.
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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?