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How exactly did George Lucas develop the script for the first Star Wars? Why were the prequels so uneven when the originals were so good? Did he really have a masterplan for six, nine, or even twelve episodes, and why did the official Lucasfilm position keep changing? And just how big an influence were the films of Akira Kurosawa on the whole saga? Michael Kaminski's The Secret History of Star Wars, Third Edition is a free, thoroughly unauthorised, e-book that brings together a huge amount of literary detective work to sort fact from legend and reveal how the story really evolved. Download it or have your nerd credentials revoked.
http://www.secrethistoryofstarwars.com/

Santi Onta writes "Today Lenovo retired the last NON-widescreen laptop they offered (the T61 14.1) from the market, and Lenovo is just an example (Apple, Sony, HP, etc. are the same). I understand the motivation behind all the laptop manufacturers to move to widescreen: they can still advertise that they offer 14.1 or 15.4 screens, but the screen area is smaller, and thus they save more money. Some people might like widescreens (they are useful for some tasks), but any developer knows that vertical space matters! Less vertical space = less lines of code in the screen = more scrolling = less productivity. How can laptop manufacturers still claim that they look after their customers when the move to widescreens is clearly a selfish one? I just wish they offered non-widescreen laptops, even if it were for a plus (that I'd be more than happy to pay)." I've always preferred the widescreen aspect ratio -- vertical matters, but having two nice wide columns always mattered more to me. Until this reader's submission, I hadn't realized that it was such a contested issue. Does this matter?

An anonymous reader writes "The editor of the Open Document Format standard has written a letter (PDF) that strongly supports recognizing Microsoft's OOXML file format as a standard, arguing that if it fails, ODF will suffer. 'As the editor of OpenDocument, I want to promote OpenDocument, extol its features, urge the widest use of it as possible, none of which is accomplished by the anti-OpenXML position in ISO,' Patrick Durusau wrote. 'The bottom line is that OpenDocument, among others, will lose if OpenXML loses... Passage of OpenXML in ISO is going to benefit OpenDocument as much as anyone else.'"

palmsolo (aka Matthew Miller) writes "I was lucky enough to get a chance to evaluate an early beta of the REDFLY device and just posted some initial impressions at ZDNet. As a person who commutes on the train 2 hours every day and usually always has a Windows Mobile device in tow, this is actually a perfect device for me; real productivity is possible with text entry and enjoy surfing on a larger display. However, at $500 can this device really compete in the Asus EeePC market or will it die like the Palm Foleo?"

Ian Lamont writes "A security researcher calling himself porkythepig has published attack code that can supposedly brick most HP and Compaq laptops. The exploit uses an ActiveX control in HP's Software Update. It would 'let an attacker corrupt Windows' kernel files, making the laptop unbootable, or with a little more effort, allow hacks that would result in a PC hijack or malware infection.' The same researcher last week outlined a batch of additional vulnerabilities in HP and Compaq laptops, for which HP later issued patches."

ci4 writes to tell us that NetBSD 4.0 has been released and has been dedicated to the memory of Jun-Ichiro "itojun" Hagino. "Itojun was a member of the KAME project, which provided IPv6 and IPsec support; he was also a member of the NetBSD core team (the technical management for the project), and one of the Security Officers. Due to Itojun's efforts, NetBSD was the first open source operating system with a production ready IPv6 networking stack, which was included in the base system before many people knew what IPv6 was. We are grateful to have known and worked with Itojun, and we know that he will be missed. This release is therefore dedicated, with thanks, to his memory."

Xen / NetBSD

Recently, it seems that the pace of discovery is accelerating, especially that which is related to the neat new systems and programs available to computer users.

I had been reading about Xen for a'while, but a port for the system wasn't working it's way into the FreeBSD tree very quickly. Finally, I booted a copy of NetBSD 3.0.2, and (since Xen packages are available for NetBSD) loaded the requisite pieces and parts to give Xen a try.

As I have been apt to say frequently lately, it's simply "A m a z i n g"!

Xen can be used to run an internet vps host provider, (virtual private server), and I have begun to see a few hosting companies who are touting it as the virtualization system that they use. You don't get completely virtualized resource management out of it, but for straightforward virtualization projects, it's great.

A good use for it is found when running multiple instance databases. While SMP has been around for awhile, taking full advantage of it hasn't. With Xen, for each database that I wish to use, I can launch a new kernel and associated process using whichever processor I select on my multi-processor machine. This seriously trumps an option that uses some OS system's load balancing capability. Here is a link to my desktop snapshot with two instances running:

Link to my Xen/NetBSD desktop snapshot

The big iron operators might rightfully say that this sort of virtualization scenario is relatively old hat for them. While this is true, the current rage is consuming, for the first time on this scale, computer operators who use PC-borne operating systems. For instance, while Unix might be considered to be big-iron borne, most current derivatives (e.g. BSDs, Linux) are really PC-borne, and it is the crowd that uses these operating systems that has become excited about the possibilities of virtualization.

Anonymous Coward writes "An LSU researcher and a Mexican colleague have made a groundbreaking discovery about one of the world's most important crops, corn. New research indicated that the Cultivation of Corn was not as Long Ago as Initially Thought"