HRHsoleil writes "If you're addicted to horoscopes, you going to love these Horoscopes for geeks." Mine was surprisingly accurate, thus proving beyond a shadow of a doubt the power that a gaseous orb a zillion miles away exhibits upon my laptop.

RobotWisdom (Jorn Barger) writes "Imagine if William Gibson wrote a James Bond adventure in which a sexual tigress seduces Bond into a Caribbean political crisis, requiring a nighttime scuba-dive into a sunken treasure-wreck, and then a voodoo ceremony that reads like a nightmare acid trip. Now replace James Bond with an "overeducated hick" atheist literature professor from Minnesota. And target the writing to intelligent adults, rather than adolescents. That should give you an idea of the latest novella from Robert Stone, Bay of Souls: A Novel." The book is compact, and so is the rest of Barger's review (below).

Officially, the theme of this year's Open Source Software Convention (OSCON) 2003 is "Embracing and Extending Proprietary Software," and to that end approximately 1,500 attendees (and companies including Apple, Active State, online book-seller Powells.com and MySQL) are sharing space in three floors of Portland's downtown Marriott, and will until the conference's close on Friday. (Representatives from Microsoft are along for the ride, too. Lunch on Wednesday is Microsoft's treat.) An unoffical theme of ubiquitious connectivity and creative collaborative in much in evidence as well: besides the conference-furnished wireless access points throughout the classroom area, numerous other base stations (like the one I'm connected to right now) have popped up. What do you expect with more than a thousand laptop-toting programmers in one hotel? There's also a "semi-unofficial" wiki (applauded by Tim O'Reilly), an ongoing web log of the conference, and an irc channel filled with conference attendees. Read on for more.

You asked nmap creator Fyodor many excellent questions, and his answers (below) are just as excellent. You'll want to set aside significant time to read and digest this interview, because Fyodor didn't just toss off a few words, but put some real time and energy into his answers.

TeachingMachines writes "NARA, the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, has gone online. NARA's self-described mission is 'to ensure ready access to the essential evidence that documents the rights of American citizens, the actions of Federal officials, and the national experience.' A very relevant site for the times, with transcripts and images of the most politically important documents of the United States. Included are the Constitution, Declaration of Independence, and the Bill of Rights. Check out the list of available documents. The site is pretty large, with some incredible exhibits, and even an image of the original Magna Carta. Definitely worth a look."

tedgyz writes "CDR-Info has an article describing the first working prototype of a blue-violet laser optical disk drive. The drive boasts 30GB of storage, dubbed Ultra Density Optical (UDO). The article has technical details and images of the drive and media." We've been hearing about the advantages of blue light for seemingly years now. It's cool to see a product prepare for market that actually uses it.

Colin Stanners writes "SCO has held a TeleConference and put up a page with information on their lawsuit against IBM. The key phrase (from their complaint) is: 'It is not possible for Linux to rapidly reach UNIX performance standards for complete enterprise functionality without the misappropriation of UNIX code, methods or concepts to achieve such performance, and coordination by a larger developer, such as IBM.' Their page also includes a Q&A, presentation, and exhibits, although these are mostly licensing agreements and not code." Bruce Perens had an interesting comment on the situation, more than one group is trying to organize a boycott, and Newsforge has a story based on SCO's press conference this morning. Newsforge and Slashdot are both part of OSDN.

ganns.com writes "Reasoning, which sells automated software inspection services, scrutinized part of the code of Linux and five other operating systems, comparing the number and rate of programming defects. Specifically, Reasoning examined the TCP/IP stack and found fewer errors in Linux. 'The open-source implementation of TCP/IP in the Linux kernel clearly exhibits a higher code quality than commercial implementations in general-purpose operating systems,' the company said in a report released last week. Reasoning also compared the code with that used in two special-purpose networking products and found it superior to one of them."

prostoalex writes "Arthur Lavine was working for Chase Manhattan bank as a principal photographer. Computer Museum runs an exhibit of Arthur Lavine's photographs of old computer and data processing equipment. Fifteen black-and-white photos from the era where computers were still heading for 1.5 ton benchmark."

Many people have noted that there has been a reaction (see also this AP story) to the story posted a few days ago about the GPL in government. (More links: Wired, Newsforge.) This is good, I guess: Congress should consider carefully how the government licenses the code it funds, because it's an important public policy question: it shouldn't be decided by a backroom push from business lobbyists (the lead Representative listed, Adam Smith, represents a district fairly close to but not including Microsoft headquarters). There are certain things that bother me about this whole story though, and I'm going to try to trace the trajectory of it below.

Rick the Red asks: "It seems that 3/4 of the Ask Slashdot articles are met with "Ask Google" answers. So, where do you go for answers (besides Google)? Advice (besides Dear Abby)? Opinions (besides ePinions)? If you want to know how to network one of those 4-in-1 printers, how do you find someone who's tried it? If you need help with some discontinued merchandise, who do you ask? If your pet project hits a snag, what do you do? Come on, all you "Ask Google" critics, fess up -- where do you think people should turn instead of Ask Slashdot?"

belphegor writes "Technology Research News is running an article describing research linking the similarties between Earthquakes and Internet traffic. By pinging hosts across the network, researchers 'were able to measure frequent changes in Internet congestion...results showed that the Internet, like the earth's network of faults, exhibits criticality -- a condition of sudden and drastic change. "Sudden drastic congestion leads to a large value of the round trip time of the ping signal, which is identified with a main shock," said Abe. The researchers referred to these sudden, drastic traffic changes as Internetquakes.' They also saw 'aftershocks' that can be mathematically described in a similar manner to the seismic ones more familiar to many Californians."

Michael Jennings writes: "Here is a review of the Game On exhibition that is on at the Barbican centre in London, and which will tour Japan and the US in 2003." Here are two previous mentions of the exhibit. Below are Michael's detailed impressions of the exhibit.

dipfan writes "Anyone passing through London (England) in the next few months should check out Game On - the history, culture and future of video games, an exhibition at the prestigious Barbican gallery, which opens on May 16. The exhibition publicity says: "Game On will trace the 40 year history of computer games from Space War, which was made way back in 1962, right up to the latest, as yet unreleased games from the likes of Nintendo, Sony, Sega and XBox." Cool. Exhibits include the first home games console (the Magnavox Odyssey from 1972), special sections on the influence of anime and manga, and lots of playable games, from Pong onwards, and a whole lot of other interesting stuff. The Barbican cinema is running a games-related film festival to go with the exhibition: Tron, The Matrix, etc. Even if you can't make it to London, the exhibition is going to tour the US and Japan."

Here's the great irony: There's more censorship -- all kinds, everywhere, involving more media and culture -- than ever before. But it's doomed to fail. As the Net and Web become more commercial, and as parents, government, schools, politicians, churches and corporations have belatedly grown interested in controlling networked computing and the speech and intellectual property therein, battles over censorship and content -- from school blocking filters to music wars to efforts to curb sexual imagery -- have raged throughout cyberspace. That's why Chicago artist Antonio Muntadas' website "The File Room" may be one of the most significant sites ever created on the Web. Despite relentless efforts to curb art, speech, software, writing, thinking and the free flow of ideas, censorship as a contemporary idea is virtually impossible. The Net killed it, and now the Web is becoming a living, global archive of ideas people want to kill.

Judebert writes "While some may argue that any modern processor without a heat sink already exhibits this behavior, UCSD chemists have discovered that properly doped computer chips are actually explosive. Standard techniques are used, and they function just like normal computer chips. Better yet, they burn clean, making them ideal for chemical analysis. The article sites other uses, such as micromachine propulsion and military explosives, but I imagine this woudl make for the ultimate in copy protection, as well: "Unauthorized copy detected. This system will self-destruct in 10... 9..." Science Daily also has a copy."

How great is Stephen Satchell's chance of being named to a court-ordered Microsoft oversight committee, assuming such a thing actually gets set up? And how much influence will a Slashdot interview have on the people who make those appointments? Probably not much, but Satch sure did a thorough job of answering your questions about how he'd behave if selected, and why he feels he's qualified.

For tonight's Slashback, eaders have submitted updates and corrections tonight on several recent stories, from the global raid on illegally copied software to ever-more software for your TI-89 to the confusing names (and ownership status) of Mexican banks. Read on for the details.

The first direct legal challenge to the DMCA was filed at 9 a.m. EDT today by EFF-sponsored attorneys at the United States District Court in Trenton, New Jersey on behalf of Princeton Professor Edward W. Felten and others who helped crack a series of digital watermarking schemes as part of an SDMI Challenge sponsored by the RIAA. Named defendents include the RIAA, SDMI, Verance Corporation (producer of one of the cracked watermarked schemes) and U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft.

jsled contributed the below review of the fascinating Telecosm, a bound to stretch some perceptions of the world and the place that communication bandwidth plays in how we live in it. Telecosm explores the implications of information transfer as an abundant resource and no longer the bottleneck it once was, and raises the question of What's Next.