Slashback: P2P, OS X, Blinkenlights

Slashback tonight with more updates, responses and corrections on scalability in P2P networks, TV shows which may not actually be cancelled, tentative wireless service in the Mile High City, and what exactly OS X is. Read on below for these and more.

The difference between theory and practice ... Paul Harrison writes: "I see your theoretical discussion of a scalable gnutella, and raise you a working, open source implementaion! Details in this linux.conf.au talk."

I was in Berkeley at a party, and then things got hazy. In response to the recent story on fixing the UNIX configuration mess, jbloggs writes: "OS X is not on top of NetBSD, but rather is a BSD compatibility layer on top of a Mach kernel. Its closest BSD-lite would be FreeBSD, which is used as a reference platform."

The problem with unstated motivations. Reader app writes "Tim O'Reilly responds to the BountyQuest piece on Salon and featued here. Tim makes some interesting points and clarifications -- especially where he refers to theodp as a crank."

You can't watch, and neither can they. UberOogie writes: "Who didn't see this coming? The MPA shut down Movie 88 today. What should be noted by everyone is that they took no legal action: they just went to the ISP, HiNet, and got them to shut off the pipe. (Movie88 was legal through a loophole in Tiawan copyright law.) So much for process, even in Tiawan. Movie 88 vows to find another provider."

I hope they use the time to reconsider. Cynical_Dude writes: "David Cohen, one of the producers of Futurama, was interviewed on Cinescape. He says that Futurama is not really cancelled, but will run for another year or so ... at least that's how many episodes they've got more or less ready now. FOX hasn't ordered any additional episodes, but Cohen asks fans to "write those letters [...] in physical form, not email" to the FOX executives."

And in other TV News, Glitch Tybalt writes: "Working for Hot Topic has its benefits. We recieved an e-mail saying that Invader Zim will not be cancelled after all. It seems that it was getting no ratings whatsoever, because they kept changing the time slot for it. Once they had decided to cancell it, they left it in one slot to finish playing the remaining episodes out. Then, since everyone could figure out when it was on, it got great reviews. (plus, the Schweet Schwag has started selling like crazy)the Invader Zim petition must have been pretty convincing as well. I guess one of them stopped to read it before wiping his ass. Maybe there's hope for a megaconglomo like Nikelodeon after all..."

Won't someone start making money with unmetered wireless? tabbser writes: "According to Aerie networks, the folks that bought bankrupt Ricochet (www.richochet.com) tests are being conducted in Denver, CO with the support of the City and county of Denver's Office of information technology. Ricochet will test and evaluate the network as part of an initial step to reactivating the service. The full story can be found on Ricochet's web site news room at http://www.ricochet.com. Go Aerie!" Aerie announced this a while ago, but in these uncertain times it's nice to see it actually happening.

Ashes to ashes, little blinking lights likewise. spike666 writes: "Blinkenlights.de is coming to an end! The Blinkenlights project by the Chaos Computer Club will be ending its run February 23, 2002. It was exposed to /. back here They are having a big party, and we're all invited. One last chance for Taco to embarrass Kathleen ..."

Futurama? How about Family Guy?!?

[Ryu2]

In case you didn't know, FOX is planning to pull the plug in it. Futurama is pretty good, but nothing compares to Family Guy!

http://www.damnyouall.net/savefamilyguy/ [damnyouall.net]

Re:Futurama? How about Family Guy?!?

[svferris]

What I want to know is why we haven't seen Family Guy on DVD here in the U.S.? The U.K. has a Season 1 DVD [amazon.co.uk], as well as a Futurama DVD [amazon.co.uk]. They even have an announcement for the Simpsons, Season 2 DVD [amazon.co.uk].

Looks like I'm going to have to invest in a region-free DVD player.

OS X

[Stenpas]

Since OS X is one of the topics of slashback, it might be worth mentioning that a new update to MacOS X was released. 10.1.3. Here's what it offers:

1.CD Disc Recording Peripherals: Expanded support for QPS, EZQuest, LaCie, Yamaha, MCE Technologies and Sony devices
2.Image Capture and iPhoto: Improved support for several digital camera models from Canon, Kodak and Sony
3.DVD Playback on external VGA displays on PowerBook G4
4.PowerBook video mirroring will be on by default when connecting to a new display
5.Improvements for iTunes when the full screen visualizer is used
6.Login authentication support for LDAP and Active Directory services
7.OpenSSH version 3.0.2p1
8.WebDAV support for Digest authentication
9.Mail includes support for SSL encryption

Get it via Software Update. If you're a bit hesistant, might want to wait for what xlr8yourmac.com [xlr8yourmac.com] says. And MacsOnly [macsonly.com] does a variety of speed tests for every version released. I'm sure they'll put up new benchmarks shortly.

google cache of p2p site for "circle"

[Anonymous Coward]

The Google cache of The Circle: one ring, no rulers [google.com] for scalable cooperative file system and P2P networking.

Re:Futurama? How about Family Guy?!?

[Dr_LHA]

What I want to know is why we haven't seen Family Guy on DVD here in the U.S.? The U.K. has a Season 1 DVD, as well as a Futurama DVD. They even have an announcement for the Simpsons, Season 2 DVD.

The same reason you can buy Enterprise on VHS and whole seasons of DS9, B5, Voyager, Buffy etc. The UK market is different from the US. For one thing they don't have syndication. In the US it's thought that allowing TV shows to be sold in on VHS or DVD would hurt syndication ratings.

Also in the UK the sale of VHS episodes is high because it usually takes a few months for the TV shows to be shown on regular TV over there. For example I first saw ST:TNG on VHS about a year before I saw it on TV (in the UK).

Investigating O'Reilly charge of crank - smear?

[Seth Finkelstein]

My ears always perk up when a journalist with the ability to be heard dismisses a critic by slinging mud at them. I have a lot of sympathy for the underdogs in that situation, in part because of What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org) [sethf.com]

And I've learned some great things by being willing to listen to the target.

TheoDP briefly laid out his complaint in his own words in a Usenet Posting [google.com]

At the very least, this makes me dubious about the claim by O'Reilly that TheoDP wouldn't explain the relevance of his material.

Hmm, let's compare, O'Reilly claims, regarding TheoDP:

He sent in hundreds of pages of material without any explanation of why he believed any particular part of it invalidated the patent, and all of those who looked at it couldn't see the remotest relevance. Requests for clarification about just what in this material represented prior art were met with avoidance and hostility. His continued harrassment of both me and BountyQuest has convinced me that he's some kind of a crank.

Now let's look at a news report published at the time [archive.org] : (I've added emphasis below)

The story gets weirder still. Another contestant in the Amazon sweepstakes has stepped forward, complaining that his entry was one of four BountyQuest cited as a ``Terrific Submission'' but that, unlike the other three, he didn't get any money.

Ted Conway, a freelance programmer in Chicago, submitted details of a system used by IBM in the 1970s to order and ship printed reports. ``The parallels to Amazon's system are very similar,'' Conway tells me. (He notes that Bezos worked at IBM's San Jose research labs in college and likely would have used the IBM system.)

BountyQuest didn't agree and offered Conway a T-shirt as a consolation prize. Conway now accuses BountyQuest of pulling a whitewash to protect Amazon's legal case.

In a Q&A posted today on SiliconValley.com (www.siliconvalley.com/opinion/gmsv/), an online partner of the Mercury News, O'Reilly says Conway's submission isn't relevant to the Amazon patent. But he admits he's not clear how BountyQuest officials researched and judged the entries. Cella declined to answer any questions about the contest.

Matthew Powers, managing partner of the Silicon Valley office of Weil, Gotshal & Manges, says it's unlikely the site would try to cover for Amazon.

The Menlo Park patent attorney says the publicity ``would be so valuable for BountyQuest that there's no way in the world they would not have accepted a submission that killed the patent

How interesting. I assume TheoDP is Ted Conway.

Pending further evidence. I'm inclined to side with TheoDP. It looks like the power of journalism again. Throw the mud, make the smear, virtually no-one will ever check the evidence, and the target can't fight back. Yes, my experiences [sethf.com] do color my view here.

Re:Liar, liar, pants on fire!

[mstrjon32]

Actually, its possible to not install the BSD Compatibility layer at all when you install OS X. Anyone whose ever installed it would know that. Crazy PC users who have never had the privilage of using a mac...

OS X is a descendant of NeXTstep from NeXT computer, which Apple bought a few years ago with the hopes of using their software as a foundation for their new OS. On top of that, Apple only bought NeXT because they couldn't cut a deal with BeOS for their system.

NeXTstep was one of the most advanced operating systems for its time. Unfortunately, like most Steve Jobs products, NeXT computers were overpriced and ahead of their time. Yet, 10 years later, it has resurfaced as OS X.

Hey only another 5 until I can get a Newton!

Talking to the Zim guys

[Brat Food]

Well, in talking to the guys responsible for the creative side of Zim, it seems that the biggest thing going against it is the age group that likes it the most. Apparently, Nick doesnt give a poop about anyone over 11. This is a crying shame. All us gen-x'ers grew up on You can do that on television, turcky TV, all the way up to ren and stimpy.... Nick should get rid of crap-at-night, and pander to the generation of people who have name recognition and affinity to the network since its inception. Zim, ren and stimpy, think "adult-swim". Its a shame nick has seemingly lost the collective brain cell running the show there. The other thing i gleened is that Zim is a Viacom property, and the creators have no control over it whatsoever (the show was created at the behest of nick, coming to Jhonen apparently). Chances of ever seeing a new zim episode? Pretty close to 0. Put that one in the f***ed up by viacom marketing trashbin.

And BTW, when they say the ratings were poor, keep in mind a few things:

1. People over 11 dont count apparently in Nick ratings
2. It was on at the END of regular nick programming
3. It had no consistant time slot (i STILL managed to find it whenever it was on)

I personally loved it, and if you want to see more, go buy the comics by the guys who created and wrote zim. Off the top of my head:

Johnny the homicidal maniac
Squee
Lenore
Filler Bunny

Characters like Happy noodel boy are priceless =)
GIVE ME MENTOS! I DEMAND TO BE FRESH! DO YOU DENY ME FRESHMAKER???!!

Re:OS X

[Anonymous Coward]

No you don't.

10.2 is not out yet.

Look at me, I'm replying to trolls...