[Slashdot-mailer] Slashdot Daily Report (11/21/2000)
David Jacoby
jacoby@ecn.purdue.edu
Tue, 21 Nov 2000 11:00:03 -0500 (EST)
Slashdot Daily Report ( http://slashdot.org/ )
News for Nerds. Stuff That Matters.
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Gnutella's Challenge
A articles article from the "bandwidth-is-only-the-beginning" department
sent by CmdrTaco
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/11/20/1413204
Gnutella News sent in an excerpt from a clip2 DSS
report about gnutella's evolution and condition.
"the network has neither smoothly scaled nor
catastrophically collapsed since average traffic
grew to regularly exceed dial-up modem bandwidth
in August 2000. Instead, the network persists in a
fragmented state comprised of numerous
continuously evolving responsive segments, the
largest of which typically contains hundreds of
hosts. We estimate at present that unique Gnutella
users per day number no less than 10,000 and may
range as high as 30,000. We suggest that further
technical innovation and wide adoption of this
innovation are necessary for the Gnutella network
to scale beyond its present state."" Read this if
you're interested in p2p[?].
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Playstation 2 Basic?
A articles article from the "wouldn't-that-be-sweet" department
sent by CmdrTaco
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/11/20/1429212
onion2k writes: "Looks like us UK dwellers are
getting something for the Playstation 2 that no
one else in the world is (apart from an inflated
price and a long delay). PSX2extreme are reporting
that the UK Playstation 2 will ship with a version
of YABasic, a programming language for the little
black box. Few details at the moment, except that
rather than Sony being nice its a tax dodge.
Still, bonus." I know CowboyNeal is still waiting
for his PS2. Gotta admit, I'm curious what you
could do with BASIC on a PS2.
--------------------
Linux Color Calibration?
A askslashdot article from the "hue-red-light-green-saturation-blue" department
sent by Cliff
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/11/20/0852214
eweaver asks: "Windows has built-in color
matching modules like ICM and sRBG, and 3rd-party
solutions like Colorific and ColorBlind, but what
is the Linux/XFree86 equivalent? Caldera Graphics
seems to have some sort of solution, but I don't
think it's universal, it seems to work only in
their programs. What can I do so that the colors I
see in all my Linux graphics apps (mainly GIMP and
Blender) are accurate (adjusted for gamma, white
point, lighting, etc.)?"
--------------------
French Judge Demands Yahoo Censor Auctions
A articles article from the "you-gotta-be-kidding-me" department
sent by CmdrTaco
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/11/20/1657238
davejhiggins writes: "In this ruling a French
judge has upheld an earlier ruling ordering Yahoo!
to ban French users from buying Nazi memorabilia
from its auction site. Even though the content is
not accessible from www.yahoo.fr/ the ruling
insists that even "the visualization in France of
these objects" on the www.yahoo.com auction site
constitutes a breach of French law and orders
Yahoo to bar all French IPs from accessing it
despite Yahoo's assertions that this would not
guarantee that nobody in France would be able to
see it." This kind of stuff annoys the hell out of
me.
--------------------
UCITA Hits A Few Speedbumps
A yro article from the "do-you-know-how-fast-you-were-going-sir?" department
sent by michael
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/11/20/1554227
mmt writes: "The Los Angeles Times has an
interesting article on the past, present and
future of the UCITA." Slashdot has covered the
Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act
before. It's interesting to see that some of the
brighter purchasing agents have already
encountered and rejected attempts to use UCITA in
out-of-state contracts. Have you or your company
run into a situation where a software company
wanted you to buy software under UCITA's rules?
--------------------
It's All About the Pentium (4)
A articles article from the "more-then-you-can-shake-a-stick-at" department
sent by CmdrTaco
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/11/20/178221
Submissions about the P4 flow in like the tides,
so here's a batch of them. Rooster sent us the Hot
Hardware take. TBM sent us Ace's extensive
comparison of the P4 and K7. Piete submitted a
fairly negative review of the chip (between the
RDRAM thing, the motherboard thing, and the fact
that the chip just isn't much faster for normal
use, that's not surprising). Slashdot Minion sent
in Hard OCP and Sharky Extreme's respective
reviews (including 200fps Quake).
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Using A Microscope As A Hard Drive
A articles article from the "all-the-great-ideas-sound-weird-at-first" department
sent by timothy
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/11/20/1650201
An unnamed correspondent writes: "Nature reports
that IBM Zurich is developing a practical method
for braille hard disks that may eventually be able
to pack 60Gbits per square inch, or about four
times current disk technologies. I wonder how many
moving parts there are with 1024 read heads."
Well, they're not really braille; perhaps the
analogy to clay tablets made in the article is
closer.
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Wave Driven Generators
A articles article from the "wouldn't-that-be-nifty" department
sent by CmdrTaco
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/11/20/226223
nickovs writes "The BBC report that the worlds
first commercial power station powered by ocean
waves has gone on line. Built by WaveGen, who have
issued this press release, the system uses the
swell from waves reaching the shore to force air
through a Wells Turbine which has the neat
property that it turns the same direction
irrespective of which way the air flows through
it. According to WaveGen "It has been estimated
that if less than 0.1% of the renewable energy
available within the oceans could be converted
into electricity it would satisfy the present
world demand for energy more than five times
over". Now wouldn't that be nice?" Nice trick.
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Silicon Valley as a Religion
A articles article from the "something-to-think-about" department
sent by CmdrTaco
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/11/20/2220218
NineNine writes "CNet just posted this story
likening Silicon Valley both to a religion and to
the Middle Ages. " Personally I find the valley to
be a catch 22: the food is great, but the culture
leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Case in point: the
slides before the movie are all want ads for tech
jobs for pre-IPO companies. Dozens of them.
Everything revolves around it. I'm not having a
hard time at all staying in the middle of michigan
(despite all the snow we got today!)
--------------------
Slashback: Fiction, Reprint, Browsing
A articles article from the "hello-barnes-and-noble-girl" department
sent by timothy
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/11/17/1529202
Not that programmers or writers are ever a little
bit competitive all by themselves, it seems that
they have to be motivated with the carrot of fame
(or some sort of perverse derivative) and prizes
-- check the results of the two contests below and
perhaps hone your ideas for next year's versions.
Also, the dirt below on how to get Netscape quick
(oxymoron?) and a new, old Neal Stephenson book
(OK, that one was an oxymoron ...) Play with
directories to find the X-rated version. Remember
the Interactive Fiction Contest mentioned here a
while ago? Andrew Plotkin writes with some
results: "After six weeks of judging, the results
of this year's text adventure competition are in.
The top three places go to "Kaged",
"Metamorphoses", and "Being Andrew Plotkin". But
personally I'd be happy to recommend any of the
top ten entries.... and not just because my entry
(which was not called "Being Andrew Plotkin"!)
came in tenth. Heh. Many of the lower-down placers
are worth a look, too -- this is one of the best
competition rosters we've ever had." And speaking
of contests ... chongo writes: "The International
Obfuscated C Code Contest, the oldest Internet
based contest, is not ready to go on the cart as
some may had feared. With the addition of Simon
Cooper as the 4th IOCCC judge and my early
vacation return the IOCCC is moving forward again.
--------------------
Web Site For Debian Newbies
A articles article from the "new-stuff-for-debianites" department
sent by Hemos
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/11/20/205229
lemox writes: "DebianHELP is a slash-style site
that seeks to allay some of the problems new users
face with Debian. There's not much there now, as
they seemed to have launched only a few days ago,
but it seems like it has a lot of potential. They
need Debian-specific write-ups on many problems
faced by new users, so here is your chance to make
a contribution."
--------------------
Statistics On The Degrees People Earn
A articles article from the "maximize-gain" department
sent by Hemos
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/11/20/2016200
Xzzy writes: "Over on NASA's space science page,
they recently posted a link to a PDF file with a
bunch of numbers from the National Center for
Education Statistics, focusing on geekly-type
jobs. Interesting numbers noted were ones pointing
out that over the past ten or so years, degrees
earned in electrical engineering have steadily
declined.. while degrees focused on fitness
studies and recreation have sharply increased."
--------------------
A Hole In the Net, Down Under
A articles article from the "you-can-never-get-enough-fiber" department
sent by timothy
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/11/20/235216
cjm_in_oz writes: "Since 4pm yesterday,
Australia's leading ISP has lost 60% of its
bandwidth due to either an earthquake, or as is
more likely, a ship's anchor. Read more here ."
Most of the entire continent's bandwidth, you see,
courses through a particular manhole ... sheesh.
This sure sounds like an argument for more and
more fiber, along different courses.
--------------------
Canada May Name High-Speed Access "Essential"
A articles article from the "no-smiling-on-script-kiddies" department
sent by timothy
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/11/21/0752214
BurpingWeezer writes: "Whoa. Here's something
that caught my eye. The CRTC (Canadian
Radio-television and Telecommunications
Commission) is considering designating high-speed
Internet services provided in Canada an essential
service. Now before you blow your top that CRTC
designation would only set "minimum standards for
" ... "service because it is deemed essential to
the quality of life in Canada." On the other hand
look at what the designation has done for phone
service. (Now you can blow your top.) The focus is
on the needs of business customers but with
residential users in mind. I guess there are
enough complaints against Rogers@Home and Bell
Sympatico that the CRTC is thinking of flexing its
regulatory muscles. Before our American cousins to
the south start on government intervention
remember that it's because of the CRTC that no
high-speed Internet company in Canada is able to
charge residential customer more than CAD$50 per
month. (I'm told that dirt cheap compared to the
U.S.) Many Canadians will welcome this."
--------------------
Honda Creates Walking Robot
A articles article from the "now-to-simulate-knees" department
sent by Hemos
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/11/21/130212
ilyah writes: "The ever-crafty Honda engineers
have apparently created a robot that can
accurately walk on two legs (i.e. just like
humans). Take a look at The Honda Japan site -- a
Japanese site that has some pictures and videos
worth looking at (hint: videos are under linked
marked "04"). It's pretty awesome watching that
thing walk around." If I remember correctly,
they've been working on this for quite some time -
like 15 - 20 years, but this is apparently one of
the breakthrough steps, pun intended.
--------------------
Plugin Availability For Non-x86 Browsers?
A askslashdot article from the "the-web-is-not-only-wintel-and-mac" department
sent by Cliff
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/11/20/1912209
Foredecker writes: "Many, many Internet
appliances are being built with non-x86 processors
such as Mips, ARM and PowerPC. Supposedly, one of
the barriers to using such processors in Internet
appliances is the notion that x86 has, by far, the
advantage that many popular browser plug-ins are
only available for x86. If they are available for
non-x86 systems, then they are either available
late (x86 first) or their are inferior to their
x86 brethren. Is this a problem? Is it true? If it
is true, is this going to make it harder for
non-x86 based Internet appliances to win
acceptance in the market?" Earlier this year, we
talked about how the Web is now flooded with
non-HTML content. Now I don't mind enhancing one's
Web experience, but it would be nice if the folks
who make these plug-ins realize that the Web is
not only for those folks running Wintel or
Macintosh systems. When will plug-in makers
realize that there is a larger market out there
who may also be interested in their product?
--------------------
FreeBSD 4.2 Is Out
A bsd article from the "come-and-get-it" department
sent by Hemos
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/11/21/1314255
Quite a number of people have e-mailed in the
last bit about the release of FreeBSD 4.2. This is
the release - you should try it out today, because
CowboyNeal sez so, and he's currently updating it
on his Vaio.
--------------------
Whistler To Refuse To Run All Unsigned Code
A articles article from the "turn-on-red-alerts" department
sent by Hemos
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/11/21/136230
Carnage4Life writes: "This ZDNet article
describes how Microsoft's next generation consumer
OS, condenamed Whistler, will begin a tradition
started by Windows 2000 where programs that have
not been digitally signed by Microsoft certified
signature are flagged. Currently Windows 2000
merely issues a warning when an
uncertified/unsigned device driver is used, the
Microsoft vision is to expand this to include all
executable programs. On the surface, this may seem
like a good idea until one realizes that this
means that it is conceivable that all executables
that expect to run on Windows will have to be
Microsoft certified or risk being flagged or even
worse refused to run on future Microsoft OSes. As
the ZDNet article speculates, this will put even
more power over Windows software developers in the
hands of Microsoft. " This story has been turning
up a bit over the last few days - while I'm not
one to buy into conspiracy theories, this whole
thing seems like a plan that originally had good
intentions, but the potentials for foul play are
pretty easy to think up.
--------------------
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?