Slashback: Grammy, Sirius, Levies

Slashback this evening with another round of clarifications and additional links regarding recent Slashdot stories. Steve Job's Grammy acceptance speech, details on the proposed higher levy on CD-Rs in Canada, more on the claimed clash between satellite radio and 802.11 devices, and more.

After the bowling ball, the mouse. jonny writes: "Most people here know the story of the Mac and the growth of the GUI. Most of you probably don't know the whole story though, namely you probably don't know the story of the mouse, important as it is... Interesting too."

Additional reading material for the math-inclined. Bruce Schneier dropped a note with some good reading material for anyone interested in the recent Slashdot posts on factoring and SNMP. "I've written essays on the Bernstein factoring paper and SNMP SNMP vulnerability."

Americans shouldn't be too smug about this stuff. An Anonymous Coward writes, in response to the proposed increase in levies on various recordable media in Canada: "An excellent FAQ including information on how manufacturers, importers, and consumers can avoid the levies on CDRs and CDRWs"

It's not all sweetness and light. Lord Omlette writes: "Ok, I know ya'll ran the story on Apple winning a grammy. But! The acceptance speech got cut for time reasons & stuff, so Dr. Dobb's Journal put a transcript of the speech online for posterity & stuff. I didn't see it in the previous Slashdot story or the Apple press release, so I thought you might be interested."

Uncle, uncle, make him give me his toy! Sabalon writes "NetStumbler is running an article about Intersil and Motorola's response to Sirius and XM's appeal to the FCC to restrict the 2.4Ghz band. Intersil points out some interesting points, such as why the frequencies directly surrounding those that Sirius uses is not an issue, and Motorola believes the source of the interference is not 2.4Ghz, but probably engine and ignition noise."

How to save some very expensive seconds. In case a 23-second kernel compile is too long to bear, perhaps you just need to upgrade a bit. An Anonymous Coward writes: "Linux Weekly News reports that a kernel was compiled in 7.5 seconds on a Power4 with 6 GB of RAM."

Finally, it has come to this. Another reader points out: "Be, Inc., the company that developed and marketed the loved Be operating system, has announced sale of the be.com domain.

This would be a great time for someone to sweep it up. ;) *cough*OpenBeOS*cough*"

Canadians should be smug!

[joebp]

Americans shouldn't be too smug about this stuff [...] proposed increase in levies on various recordable media in Canada

Canada: Proposed increase in levies on recordable media/assorted storage [slashdot.org].
USA: SSSCA [eff.org].

Given the either/or choice, I'd rather pay stupid fees on media.

So, as I say: Canadians should be smug!

who cares if it's 7.5 seconds

[Anonymous Coward]

I doesn't really matter how short is the compile time for the kernel unless they give you the actual .config that they use so that we could know what components come in with the kernel, or even the modules that were needed to compile to run a system. It could be possible that this kernel compile only gave bare-bones, minimum configuration just to get single user mode with a command prompt, not network drivers, or whatever whiz-bang kernel feature.

Copying - levy - more copying - higher levy...

[mttlg]

I see bad things happening with this levy. The higher it gets, the more people will be driven to copy. "Well, I already paid a lot of money for copying music when I backed up my 80GB hard drive, so I might as well copy a few hundred CDs to make up for it." As more people are aware of their right to copy and have an increased desire to make use of it, sales will go down, and there will be proposals for higher rates. Just take a look at the tables on the FAQ page: the rate for CD-Rs was 5.2 cents in 1999-2000, 21 cents in 2000-2001, and is proposed to increase to 59 cents in 2003. Additionally, the scope has broadened from tapes and CDs to DVDs, flash cards, and hard drive based portable audio players. It's almost as if the levy is designed to encourage copying so a higher levy can be proposed...