museumpeace writes "When /. discussed a story about microbes that could break down water as a hydrogen source, many commentors went off on a tangent joking about runaway germs eating the oceans. Now, prof Joe Kirschvink and students at CalTech propose that indeed, the worst iceage ever, which nearly ended life on earth 2.3 billion years ago, was the result of algae evolving the ability to break down water and flooding the atmosphere with oxygen. The absence of oxygen consuming organisms at that time is said to have lead to destruction of atmospheric methane which had hitherto warmed the earth. The professor concludes: 'We haven't had a Snowball in the past 630 million years, and because the sun is warmer now it may be harder to get into the right condition. But if it ever happens, all life on Earth would likely be destroyed.'"

Slashback is back after a long absence being devoured by gnomes. Read on below for updates on past Slashdot stories about the continuing Washington election brouhaha, the FBI's latest hunt for server logs, Photoshoppified GIMP, and more.

Escape Tangent writes "The full theatrical trailer for The Matrix: Revolutions was posted just moments ago at thematrix.com. Choose your poison, then oogle at the eyecandy. Here are links to the high, medium, and low resolutions. Sorry folks, Quicktime 6 only." This trailer is much longer than the earlier TV spots, but they're still available.

The Seattle Times reported a while ago that Microsoft is pushing for Washington State Senate Bill 5734 which will overturn most of Washington State's laws that specify monetary penalties for companies who send out spam. This will completely exempt ISPs from current Washington spam laws, which Microsoft just happens to be. It seems that they are jumping the gun a bit. They are having a company named Digital Impact (save that address for you spam filters) send the email for them. Thankfully I live in Seattle so maybe I can collect an easy $500 before Microsoft guts the current law.

We ran the "Call for questions" Monday, January 13, under the headline, Discuss BIOS and Palladium Issues With an AMIBIOS Rep. Note that Brian Richardson, AMI sales engineer, is a real engineer, not just a salesperson, and is also a staunch Slashdot reader who knows we have low tolerance for PR whitewashes around here. Brian's answers are real, not laundered, and he responded not only to the 10 questions we sent him but also to some he felt deserved answers even though they weren't moderated all the way up. Please note that in much of this interview he is speaking as "Brian Richardson, individual," and that his opinions do not necessarily reflect those of AMI's management. With that said, be prepared to learn a lot about the BIOS business, and how TCPA and Palladium relate (and don't relate) to it.

haplo21112 writes "I am working on coding a web front end to choose music from the collections stored on my web servers hard drive, and then stream this music to machine connected to my stereo. Like many people I would think, my music collection is mixed between .ogg/.mp3 formats since I started ripping before .ogg(which I now use) was available. The problem I have run up against is I can find no utility for streaming, that supports both formats, specifically both in a mixed playlist. Mod_MP3 came close, but it turns out that it can handle only one at a time either all .mp3's or all .oggs, the playlist can't be mixed. I looked into the Icecast streaming utilities, but they seem to be mp3 bound at least till the icecast 2.0 release. Has anyone run into this same problem of mixed media, did you come up with a solution that didn't require redoing half your collection in the other format." Ah, if only the problem was that simple...

krow writes: "Embedded.com is running an article where the author is making some assumptions of Linux's use in the embedded markets based on the opinion of one consultant and the fact that Lineo had to lay off some people this year. It's still interesting reading though for some insight into a different world for Linux and there is a nice reference in the comments to the interview of Victor Yodaiken of RTLinux fame by by Kevin Fu on the ACM site."

Here we go, answer to Your Questions from Wil Wheaton. Share and Enjoy! A big thanks to Wil for taking the time to answer so many of our questions.

ryarger writes "Woo Hoo! After a seeming eternity of wait, there is finally an implementation of stored procedures for MySQL. It uses Perl as the stored proc language, too!" Also note that this piece of work was done by OSDNs own Krow. Very cool work I must say.

Slashback tonight with more book reviews, more on the Human vs. Machine Duel in the Desert, more on the Star Wars sequel name -- just generally more.

Brian Aker (AKA Krow) sends word that the mod_layout Apache mod has arrived after a long beta period at version 3.0. From the project's page: "By allowing you to cache static components and build sites in pieces, it gives you the tools for creating large custom portal sites. If you are looking for more information you can look at its faq."

gh0ul asks: "I've come across a large and seemingly unspoken problem when it comes to webhosting: a multi-user shell service in which any of the hundreds of users can view any file for my website, including my SQL passwords and PHP scripts. I've tried many times talking to the admins but have run out of luck trying to find a way to have my scripts run as they should without anyone being able to just view the source at will or view the passwords for my MySQL databases. Apache runs as nobody, therefore the files have to be readable by nobody, I've heard about wrappers, but the admins refuse to install them.. So how would a normal user go about securing his web files and passwords for this purpose on a heavily populated machine?" When dealing with adminstrators who aren't willing to handle even the basics of web security for their customers, consider moving somewhere else. In the meantime, for Perl users concerned about leaving passwords in scripts, consider using DBIx::Password. I would be interested in knowing of alternatives for DBIx::Password in other languages, as well. It's a useful idea especially if your scripts find themselves in hostile environments.

dam_ned writes: "O'reilly has put a nice introduction to mod_mp3 online. Mod_mp3 is an apache module that offers shoutcast/icecast like mp3 and Ogg Vorbis streaming, and allows for playlists via frontends like ampache. The project is only a few months old, but it's quite stable, and has far more features than shoutcast/icecast." Heh. You might recognize Brian Aker, aka "krow", from his work on Slash.

From the list of odd things you can do with your Apache web server, how about an Apache module to turn your Apache webserver into your basic RIAA hating, but every college student loving, MP3 streaming server? Supports Icecast/Shoutcast protocols. It's an early beta, but it does work.

krow writes: "Mike Daisey, an X Amazon employees has put up some really humorous stuff about the company on his website. A trailer to a film, information about a play that is being done in Seattle and more is there. This is pretty funny to anyone who has worked in the web industry for the last few years. Serves them right, hiring all of those college grads, and then laying them off."

krow asks: "So every flight I get on I wonder, could I partially recharge my laptop off of the headphone outlet? What about using alligator clips to the recharger for the airphone? Anyone else have some creative ideas? How much juice do you think you could pull before tripping a breaker?" Well, this was a fun question for once. I've always wondered the same thing but figured the current/voltage would be insufficient for anything more than a trickle charge, if even that. Anyone have any clues? Or better yet ... anyone have alligator clips for those wacky Airphones?

krow writes: "According to a BugTraq administrative note, they are no longer able to publish Microsoft Bulletins. They are copyrighting their bug reports so that others can not publish them." Bugtraq will continue to publish the vulnerabilities/bugs, but only the URLs; readers will have to click to read them. Says a SecurityFocus employee: "As the copyright holders of the work they have told me in no uncertain terms that I do not have their permission to redistribute a text version of their web page bulletins...doing so would be considered an act of copyright violation."

One krow (and a flock of others) wrote with this news: "According to this article, AltaVista is ceasing to provide e-mail (stranding a million users who use the service). So what does it say that a company the size of AltaVista calls it quits with a service like e-mail?" One thing is sure: old e-mail addresses, like old physical addresses, are a pain to reconcile with everyone who wants to send you (flowers / letters / bills). Update 0819 US EST by Roblimo: As a number of readers have pointed out, Altavista is terminating its free (ad-supported) ISP service, not its email service. If you have an Altavista email account, relax. We regret the error.

I've taken some time to read the Kevin J. Anderson/Brian Herbert written Dune: House Harkonnen, which is the second in the prequel series. Find out what I think about the potential blasphemy of Dune prequels *grin*.

Recently you asked Indrema founder John Gildred about the Linux-based console system his company plans to introduce. Here's what he has to say about its hackability, strategy, developers and more -- thanks for the in-depth answers, John.