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Slashback: Membership, Quarkiness, Audioggogy 181

Posted by timothy from the grim-reaper-strikes-at-midnight dept.
Slashback this fine tax-day evening (you did remember, right?) brings you updates on Gentoo Linux, Mike Myer's brush with the Humor Police, Microsoft's spin on the waning Hailstorm, and more. Read on for the details.

A tornado's worth of spin control. telstar writes "The Code Report is reporting that last week's story from the New York Times concerning the death of Hailstorm was not entirely accurate. A Microsoft spokesperson has stated that Microsoft is shifting from a model in which MSN was the sole operator to a model where the operation of these services is available to multiple operators."

Onan Meets Midas. daoine writes: "Reversing the outcome of an earlier argument, boston.com is reporting that MGM and New Line Cinema have reached an agreement that permits New Line to continue with the Goldmember name. It also stipulates that further satirical names must be approved by MGM."

Does dishes, saves gas, freshens your breath, cleans your pets ... Apparently, Gentoo Linux is contagious. JigSaw writes: "OSNews features an interesting review of Gentoo Linux 1.0 and they call it 'the fastest loading, fastest-operating Linux distribution to date.' Gentoo may be the fastest Linux for a workstation today, but according to the review, it still has some problems, most notably, annoying bugs. However, it still manages to score a glowing 8.2 out of 10 overall."

Reader sckevyn also points to the Gentoo PowerPC page for those equipped different.

First steps always seem small. camusflage writes "Yahoo has a story from ZDNet about TheKompany's recent release of tkcPlayer for the Zaurus, which is being billed as the first portable Ogg Vorbis player. A player for a format not many people are using on a platform even fewer people are using. Admirable, but not likely to be a commercial success."

Honey, your quark is showing. ngrier writes "As a quick follow-up to the story posted here a few days ago regarding the potential quark star, the NASA APOD today is a picture of the aforementioned star."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Slashback: Membership, Quarkiness, Audioggogy More

Slashback: Membership, Quarkiness, Audioggogy

Comments Filter:

  • Oops... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 15, 2002 @07:03PM (#3346996)
    this fine tax-day evening (you did remember, right?)

    Oh shit...

    • Re:Oops... (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      My wife will be driving west to the next timezone while I do our taxes in the car. That should buy us one extra hour. Anyone else doing this, or are we completely crazy?
      • You know you can do what I did.
        Take the maximum you can posibly owe write a check and file an extention.
        Refile later and get some money back.
        In the mean time Uncle Sam hold on to your money.
        He's good for it don't worry.

        • Re:Oops... (Score:3, Insightful)

          by emag ( 4640 )
          Why not give me the check instead? Since you seem to be willing to give someone an interest-free loan, make it someone who can use it and benefit from it. :-)
      • or you could telefile an extension, if you do it by phone it's free (though you're supposed to estimate how much tax you'll owe and pay it, which you can do via credit card for some nominal fee. I think it's a buck. If that's significant digits to the amount you think you owe less the amount you've already paid then you can probably get away with saying you estimated lower, but hey, IANA(T)L)

        Info on irs.gov [irs.gov]

    • Not for me. [mass.gov]

      (The relevant part of the page is under "News & Updates" on the left.)

    • Re:Oops... (Score:3, Informative)

      by Jeffery McGrew ( 541937 )
      If you did forget, and you've got all your w-2 and such on hand, then just go to www.turbotax.com - here: http://www.quicken.com/taxes/products/#web_product s

      It lets you fill out your taxes via an interactive online form that asks all the right questions and then 'E-files' a finished form for a small fee without having to leave your computer or find an all-night post office.

      I have nothing to do with Quicken, i just used the service and it's great.

      get crackin, geeks!

    • Re:Oops... (Score:2, Funny)

      by spoonist ( 32012 )
      Geez... I had SO much fun this morning filling out my Schedule D with the details of my huge amounts of Enron stock.

    • Re:Oops... (Score:2, Funny)

      by IvyMike ( 178408 )
      Will you look at those morons! I payed my taxes over a year ago! --Homer Simpson
    • I didn't make enough money last year to have to file a return. Wheee! Thank you, George W!
      • I paid enough taxes yesterday such that if that was someone else's salary last year, they would have to pay taxes on it.

        You lazy sack of shit. I feel your lazy weight on my back. Prolly some lazy socialist who wants high taxes -- for other people -- to drive society along while they sit back on welfare with a free PC and free Internet surfing for pr0n. Hey, you're not that guy who tried to get on social security disability for agoraphobia who wanted to play EverQuest all day long, eh? Eh, comrade?

    • well I just filed an extension so I can do it late at night on August 14 or 15th. :)
    • No worries - I saw tax software for sale - dirt cheap down at the grocery store this evening :).
    • Signed, sealed, delivered, and refunds, by January 31. 1040EZ, and 540EZ (CA). One job, no deductions, nothing special, claimed S 0 on my W-4, claimed S 1 on my forms, both refunded. =)
    • Eh, even if you forgot it's tax day, you can at least file for an extension which will buy you some more time. So all is not lost.
      • If you owe taxes, an extension won't help you too much. You only get an extension on filing the paperwork. If you owe anything, it must still be postmarked by the 15th of April.

      • The company that does both my business and my personal taxes knows to file the first round of extensions automatically. This year I am hoping to break a trend I've had for the last three years... I intend to fill my taxes before October 15th! (You all do know that you can get two extensions, right?)
      • Eh, even if you forgot it's tax day, you can at least file for an extension which will buy you some more time. So all is not lost.

        And a lot of people don't know that the april 15th deadline is only important if YOU'RE paying THEM. If you're getting a nice sum back on your return, It works even up to a year late, and if you don't file, oh well, they keep your money.

      • Eh, even if you forgot it's tax day, you can at least file for an extension which will buy you some more time. So all is not lost.

        I actually just did this... quite painless. Note, however, that if you end up owing taxes, you will at least have to pay interest on them, if you don't pay them now. Kinda weird: "I don't know how much I'll finally need to pay, but here is what I owe." At any rate, for those who need to do so, go here [irs.gov] and grab form 4868.

  • APOD [Quark Star] URL (Score:3, Informative)

    by jsled ( 11433 ) on Monday April 15, 2002 @07:04PM (#3347003) Homepage
    That's: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap020414.html [nasa.gov].
  • in the U.S. - ah no it isn't! *cue wailing and gnashing of teeth*
    • Just curious... who else has taxes due today?
    • in the U.S. - ah no it isn't! *cue wailing and gnashing of teeth*

      Wow, two of my biggest pet peeves in one post. First of all, Slashdot is an American site. Deal with it, or start a slashdot.(your country code here). And damn, can't you people use the subject line for a subject and not for the first half of your first sentence? At the very least, repeat your pseudo subject in the message body. Moderate me down for being off topic or flamebait or whatever, I don't care.
      • Slashdot.org is a global site, and although we are all capable of tolerating a certain level of US-centricness, stupid gringos* like you believe that only "roman citizens" should enjoy its benefits.

        If that were the case, using your own argument, the site would be named slashdot.org.us, wouldnt it?


        * Disclaimer, not all US-citizens are gringos, only the stupid, prejudiced, egotistical jerks that seem to plague the world.

        • And it's the US-bashing jerks(1) like you that prompt us to tell you to start your own slashdot.

          (1) With your "disclaimer", you prove to be just as stupid, prejudiced, and egotistical.

          Cheers!
        • Maybe you should go here [slashdot.org] and read this, actually, I'll cut and paste for the lazy.

          Slashdot seems to be very U.S.-centric. Do you have any plans to be more international in your scope?


          Slashdot is U.S.-centric. We readily admit this, and really don't see it as a problem. Slashdot is run by Americans, after all, and the vast majority of our readership is in the U.S. We're certainly not opposed to doing more international stories, but we don't have any formal plans for making that happen. All we can really tell you is that if you're outside the U.S. and you have news, submit it, and if it looks interesting, we'll post it.



          Answered by: CmdrTaco
          Last Modified: 10/28/00

          • I think you missed the point, which is, that while people in the rest of the world are readily aware there are countries beside their own, this truth seems to be happily neglected by many citizens of the USA. So we furriners just occasionally point out that fact, in the faint hope, that one day the realisation will hit and not go away. If you get annoyed by being reminded, that you're not alone on this our little, soiled planet, think of how annoying it would be if everyone stopped paying any attention at all to you. Read it as you like. Stefan.
        • > you believe that only "roman citizens" should
          > enjoy its benefits.

          All roads lead to Rome. All huge fucking lines to get into a country lead into the US.

          It's better to be a citizen of Rome than to be the Queen of Toronto.

      • Then let's move it either to Antarctica, or space. Whoops, space won't work, thats been claimed for the US.
  • That last link should be here [nasa.gov], and it was yesterday's picture.

  • Errr, what happened to the law? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by NanoGator ( 522640 ) on Monday April 15, 2002 @07:08PM (#3347033) Homepage Journal
    "It also stipulates that further satirical names must be approved by MGM."

    Since when do they need permission to use a parodized name? I thought that parody law not only allowed one to use a similar name ('Goldmember' is not THAT similar...), but also their original artwork could be closely mimicked.

    Anybody remember reading about that guy who put up an 'aolsucks.com' site? AOL attempted to sue him because he used their artwork to parodize him. His lawyer said he was well within his rights because it was a pardoy/criticism of the company.

    Question: Wouldn't the same logic be applied as it was for this guy, or is there a variable I'm not considering?

    • You are correct about the "Fair Use" clause of copyright law; however, I feel this agreement is more a function of time (as in conservation therein). Imagine how long MGM could delay the release of this movie tying this up in court.

      WERM

    • Re:Errr, what happened to the law? (Score:5, Informative)

      by outlier ( 64928 ) on Monday April 15, 2002 @07:22PM (#3347096)
      Keep in mind that this is not a decision that involved the legal system. The original decision was made by the MPAA, which both studios are members of. Essentially, the industry is policing itself, and both groups agreed to be bound by those decisions.

      They could sue each other if they wanted, but they've settled in this way.
      • In other words, they gave up rights they would normally have as well.

        Kierthos
        • Sort of... MGM and New Line joined a club (MPAA). One of the rules of the club is that you can sort out disagreements within the club.

          MGM convinced the club to rule against New Line. However, MGM also said that wouldn't have a problem with New Line if New Line would do MGM some favors.

          At any point, New Line could've said "Screw you, these are our rights. You're not the boss of me." and refused to abide by the MPAAs initial ruling. At that point, MGM could have sued New Line (And probably lost), wasting valuable $$, raising anamosity within the industry, and possibly establishing a(nother) precedent that could come back and bite New Line on the ass when someone else tried to use a New Line-like title for their film. Instead, New Line (probably) agreed to show some MGM trailers before the film, and MGM agreed to let them use the title.

          On one hand we have an industry group making the Wrong Decision (TM) initially in supporting MGM's petition against New Line. That's bad.

          But on the other hand, we have an industry group policing itself -- not relying on the legal system to resolve disputes. That's not that bad.
        • --Ash nazg durbatulûk, ash nazg gimbatul, ash nazg thrakatulûk agh burzum-ishi krimpatul.--

          Yeah what he said
      • My understanding (and this is all rumor - I have no supporting evidence) is that MGM and New Line restarted talks over "Goldmember" after New Line got MPAA approval for four other titles:
        • "Live and Let Shag",
        • "You Only Shag Thrice",
        • "License to Shag", and my personal favourite:
        • "Never Say Member Again".
        It's also possible that the success of Fellowship of the Ring has made MGM much more receptive to the proposed trailer swap deal.
    • My IANAL-ish understanding is that the movie is in the gray area where parody ends and copying begins. If Mad does a "Goldmember" parody, that's clearly protected. A straight-up James Bond knock-off called "Goldmember" would be infringement. Austin Powers movies strike me as being on the parody side of the fence but the fact that they're movies, and that they're not unrelenting satires like Spaceballs or American Jedi [ifilm.com] might put them too close to the edge to take chances.

      That, by the way, is why the "It's a parody!" claims you always see here, when an open-source project blatantly infringes on the name of the commercial product it clones, are nonsense.

    • Re:Errr, what happened to the law? (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Wouldn't the same logic be applied as it was for this guy, or is there a variable I'm not considering?

      Yes, two:

      • Expense of lawsuit.
      • Inter-corporate relations.

      The suit had no real merit in law but it would have cost New Line money both for the lawyers and for the delay in release of the movie. The latter was probably the larger incentive for MGM to file suit and for New Line to give in. As reading articles on Slashdot for the past few years can teach you, lawsuits (from patent, copyright, et al) are a powerful weapon regardless of their merit. Also, entertainment corporations generally like to maintain some semblance of good relations with each other in case of future collaboration.
    • I think its terrible... would be like calling an open source OS Lindows :)

  • .NET (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Supa Mentat ( 415750 )
    When I first read about .NET and MS's philosophy with it (i.e. what hailstorm was supposed to be and what it's acceptance would accomplish) it terrified me. Now hailstorm is dead as we knew it and the threat it posed is (seemingly) gone. My question is: now that Hailstorm is not a factor, are there still any risks for the internet and software communities(both open and closed) assossiated with taking up the .NET framework (barring the fact that it _is_ MS we're talking about here, obviously they've screwed people before)? I think that the idea behind the framework of .NET and what it's effects on the way things are coded (from a purely programming point of view) could be very interesting and improve software; I am also very suspiscious of any big "ideas" coming out of MS. Any thoughts?
    • are there still any risks for the internet and software communities assossiated with taking up the .NET framework?

      Yep. Security and reliability. Passport isn't so great either.
      • Yep. Security and reliability.
        How so?

        Passport isn't so great either
        Same question, though I'll stipulate that I didnt get far when I tried to set up a passport site

    • Re:.NET (Score:3, Insightful)

      by BurritoWarrior ( 90481 )
      From the article:
      "Don't confuse an expansion of the operator strategy with any kind of de-commitment from the idea of user-centric web services that help create a more personalized, more consistent experience across the different technologies in an individual's life."

      Let me paraphrase the MicroSpeak:
      "We are still committed to the idea of controlling all aspects of people's lives beyond the PC. Once we get widespread adoption of .net technologies with the many varied devices out there, we will introduce subtle incompatibilities into the .net product line so that competing companies' products will break or function less efficiently.

      Since users have already committed too much time and effort (much like word .doc's), they will then be forced to dump their for the competing MS one. This is how we will leverage our way out from just making the servers to trying to make every single device you use a Microsoft one."

      If I am wrong, I will eat my shoes.

  • Surprise, Surprise (Score:4, Informative)

    by GeekLife.com ( 84577 ) on Monday April 15, 2002 @07:16PM (#3347073) Homepage
    MGM pulled the same shenanigans with The Spy Who Shagged Me. Threaten to sue (even though you'd almost certainly lose under parody protection), and force some trailers to be shown before the film.

    Yawn, I hope they put all of that in the agreement this time, so we don't have to hear about it in future installments.

  • NY Times was wrong on hailstorm, move on (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Ars-Fartsica ( 166957 ) on Monday April 15, 2002 @07:17PM (#3347074)
    People I know who are close to this product were puzzled the day these reports came out.

    They're moving to a federated model, meaning MS will not be the only one providing the services.

    Nothing to add - the original article was just wrong.



    • They're moving to a federated model, meaning MS will not be the only one providing the services.

      ...which means the same stellar history of secure code, but with more people to blame for individual incidents!


      More or less the same business model present in the current IT Industry.

  • I'm pretty comfortable with Debian, and I am putting trying Gentoo on my to-do list, but I was wondering if anyone knows if there is some interest in bringing some of the source-based distro goodness to Debian.

    'apt-build install kde3' or something, mmmm ....
    • Generally if you want to build a deb from source, the one-liner is apt-get --compile source
    • I'm now running Gentoo (installed it this weekend). Was running Debian 2.2r5. Gentoo is markedly faster, and definitely more up to date (how long was it gonna take Debian to release KDE3 packages, even in unstable). I'm now running an entirely source based, KDE3 workstation, and it only took about 24 hours to compile everything *laugh*. If you've got time, and are comfortable with a command line, Gentoo seems to be a very nice distro so far. The portage utility is superb, though most of the setup of the machine is done by hand (read: know what you're doing first), it's well worth it. The only beef I had was that it doesn't use the SysV /etc/init.d/rc.d for startup, so VMWare was kinda a pain to get working. Overall, a very well done distro, but it does have some issues, and you really do need to know your way around to get it going. A word of advice, make sure /var has lots of space, as portage uses /var/tmp for compiling. I made the mistake of not making a seperate partition for /var, and making / only 300MB. Bombed about halfway through compiling XFree, and I had to start from scratch again. If you must make /var small, use the PORTAGE_TMPDIR variable to specify where you want it to compile in, otherwise you'll run into problems. Bleeding edge is nice, but I'd still consider Debian my distro of choice for anything other than my home machine which I don't really care about. Too much potential for problems. Good Luck

      • Re:Gentooizing Debian? (Score:1, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward
        I too installed Gentoo as of a week ago. I think it's pretty good but it could use a more automated installation option. The "by hand" way is cool once ... but I definately wouldn't look forward to installing it on several machines.

        Personally I can't say I noticed any speed improvements over my Debian 2.2r5/3.0 unstable system. And yes I compiled everything including the bootstrap and yes I optimized it for my CPU. I like the "emerge" system. It seems to be more advanced than apt-get. That's just my opinion though.

        As the last guy pointed out, the packages are very up to date. Whether or not that is important is a matter of opinion.

        Over all I think it is a good distro that does NOT fall into the "Yet another borring distribution" category. My only gripe is that it protects "su" by default and I can't figure out how to allow my "normal" user account to su over to root. :) So I have to ALT+F2 to another terminal to logon as root which I find quite annoying.
        • su is protected in the same way as with BSD distros. You must be a member of the "wheel" group to use the su utility. Simply edit /etc/group and include yourself in this group, and all will be well again :) Same goes for audio, cdrw drives etc, you must be a member of the appropriate group to write to the device.
      • VMWare was kinda a pain to get working
        Did you try emerge vmware?

        If that doesn't work, hit bugs.gentoo.org, there is an .ebuild there for VMWare 3.1 that works fine.
        • root@quark bin # emerge vmware
          Calculating dependencies !!! Couldn't find match for vmware; aborting.
          apparently it's not in the rsync yet, thanks for the info I'll check it out now.

    • Re:Gentooizing Debian? (Score:2, Informative)

      by JSD ( 6203 )
      What's wrong with:
      apt-get --build source <some-package>?

      It will act just like 'apt-get install <some-package>' except that now it downloads the source and builds it.
      • Gentoo automatically configures the source download, and uses your preferred optimizations. IIRC, Debian does not; that requires manual intervention, which is the whole point of Gentoo.
        • No doubt this could be argued forever. Personally I think the ``preferred optimizations'' argument is a poor one. There seems to be little, if any, real benefit to doing it. No doubt you feel different.

  • Re: Slashback (Score:5, Funny)

    by rmohr02 ( 208447 ) <mohr.42@DALIosu.edu minus painter> on Monday April 15, 2002 @07:22PM (#3347097)
    HOMER: Would you look at those morons... I paid my taxes over a year ago!

    LISA: You have to do your taxes every year, dad.

    Homer: Ahh! Marge! How many kids do we have? Oh, no time to count, I'll just estimate! Uh...nine!

    Marge: Homer, you know we don't h--

    Homer: Shut up, shut up! If I don't hear you it's not illegal! OK, I need some deductions, deductions... ah!! Business gifts!

    [Homer grabs the boat painting from above the couch and hands it to Marge.]

    Here you go, keep using nuclear power!

    Marge: Homer! I painted that for you!

    Homer: OK, Marge, if anyone asks, you require twenty four hour nursing care, Lisa's a clergyman, Maggie is seven people, and Bart was wounded in Vietnam!

    Bart: Cool!

  • Membership? (Score:1, Offtopic)

    by chrysrobyn ( 106763 )

    Yes, that's right, a Slashback featuring the title of "membership" says nothing about using a non-paypal method of subscribing to Slashdot.

    Love it or leave it, subscribership seems to me to be a way of supporting the site to which so many of us devote our time.

    Yet, they're not rushing to pacify their most zealous "PayPal Hating Credit Card Wielding" fans. Maybe it's difficult to set up a relationship with the local bank that allows a computer to accept a credit card number, spew out a hard copy receipt and then /dev/null the number. Or have one of the editors take some of his "Grammar Is Irrelevant" time and sit down with his e-mail reader of choice and one of those merchant credit card readers.

    I don't expect Slashdot will ever favor the most vocal Slashdot minority, the "Tin Foil Wearing Small Unmarked Bills" wielding folk.

  • Portable(ish) flac (Score:3, Interesting)

    by srichman ( 231122 ) on Monday April 15, 2002 @07:27PM (#3347124)
    ...which is being billed as the first portable Ogg Vorbis player.
    Yeah, but these guys [phatnoise.com] had flac [sourceforge.net] support [sixpak.org] two months ago.

  • I'm using Gentoo Linux right now, and it certainly is fast. I'm on a dual-P3 system, so running KDE3 (which is da bomb), reading Slashdot, checking my mail, and compiling KDevelop in the background isn't too bad. Things have gotten a bit easier with the addition of stage 2/3 tarballs, meaning that the build gcc/glibc rebuild binutils/gcc/glibc cycle is eliminated, cutting down the installation time a lot.

    Gentoo is a lean distro, to be sure. Everything uses MMX/SSE, which is nice, though the performance gain of that is probably marginal. What really gives it a good kick is that the base install contains only a handful of apps (the *bare* minimum) and everything else is installed as necessary. That's certainly not unique to Gentoo, but it's a plus. (Why have eject if you don't have a CD-ROM?)

    The only downside, though, is the lengthy compiles; a dual-P3 box is decent, but a full recompile of XFree86 still takes time. But hey, in my opinion, it's worth it.

    • Yeah, that's about how Gentoo linux is treating me too. (Why, oh why must it compile X servers for every video card? ;)) It's got to be one of the easiest ways of getting KDE3. I wish I could get through to the review site to see what the bugs are that I haven't noticed yet.


      What I'm not sure of now is whether portage has an equivalent to RPM dependency hell. My suspicion is that it should be less of a problem, just because source compatibility seems more common than binary compatibility, and because so far portage has been really good at figuring out dependencies on it's own. But ask me again in six months.

    • I'm with you on this. I thought that I'd try out Gentoo because it sounded cool, but I was fully expecting to install Debian the next day. I was wrong. Gentoo blew my socks off. It really has what all the other distros lack: Speed, extreme customization and ease of use. The install takes some guts for a newbie because it's all command-line, but it's definitely doable.

      Perhaps the coolest thing about gentoo is that while it is easy to use and to maintain, it somehow teaches you all the fundamentals of running a linux machine at the same time. Portage, the packaging system is totally rad and ... I better stop ranting before somebody calls me a narc, but Gentoo rocks. If you like using linux, or have ever thought about trying linux, you need to use Gentoo. Period.
  • I am not a linux newbie, but I don't read source code, and can't troubleshoot compilation problems when I encounter errors compiling packages from source. With that said, I am finally getting work done on my gentoo box, and I'm almost completely Windows free. After 4 years of on and off w/ Red Hat, and struggling w/ RPM and compiling from source, I've finally gotten all the deskstop apps I need running, and running well under Gentoo with no major problems. This includes DVD, MPlayer, CDR, OpenGL with nvidia's drivers and a TV Tuner card w/ xawtv.
  • "A Microsoft spokesperson has stated that Microsoft is shifting from a model in which MSN was the sole operator to a model where the operation of these services is available to multiple operators."

    Bleep! That is to say rumours of Hailstorm's death have been greatly exagerated? Curses!

  • Interstellar ping (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Lupus Rufus ( 11262 )
    This supposed quark star is 450 light years away, and ultracompact, which according to NASA's site would allow light to orbit. So here's an idea: Concoct a message for future human societies (probably not too different from the messages now designed for extraterrestrial civilizations), and send it in a wad towards RX J185635-375, so that it might get there, orbit a few times, then come shooting back to earth 900 years from now to be picked up by whatever remnants of our civilization are still around.

    Of course, the chances of this working are a million to one, and the arrival date might be off by a few hundred years, but if it did work I think it would be an great archeological find for the 4th millenium or so.

    btw, anyone else read Interstellar Pig back in the day? William Sleator is a GOD.

  • One of the links on the Nasa page goes to some neat animations on orbitiung black holes, nuetron stars, etc.

    http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/htmltest/rjn_bht.html [nasa.gov]

    good stuff

    watch out for the time dialation.

  • Tiny visible star, huge X-ray star (Score:3, Informative)

    by ChrisCampbell47 ( 181542 ) on Monday April 15, 2002 @09:54PM (#3347737)
    That image of the quark star (arrow pointing to something tiny / invisible) is misleading.

    I actually saw the video press release go out on NASA TV last week (woohoo, I get to watch NASA TV at work). They did a fade FROM that picture to another one done in the X-ray spectrum (Chandra) where that virtually invisible star turned into a shining beacon of quark.

  • seeing as "mike myer's brush with the humor police" is mentioned in the summary, you may want to at least mention his name somewhere.. you possibly even wish to go so far as to explain just what sort of brush this happened to be.

    was it bristley? pokey? does he have grounds to sue for brutality?

  • Sharp Zaurus (Score:2, Insightful)

    by jred ( 111898 )
    A player for a format not many people are using on a platform even fewer people are using. Admirable, but not likely to be a commercial success.

    Ok, everyone who keeps saying that they refuse to buy a player that doesn't support Ogg Vorbis needs to step up to the plate. Heck, you get the added bonus of it running on Linux. If *you* don't, who will? Then when it fails, everyone will say it's because the people *want* closed source, proprietary products...
  • So, instead of Microsoft wanting to have all my personal information, it'll be lots of companies sharing it.

    Man, I need advice here: Do I crack jokes about how much safer I feel now that Microsoft is planning to share it's hoard of all my info? Or do I ask how is this an improvement on everyone sharing my info now?

    Between this and the WinXE-Tivo story (a few hundred bucks worth of buggy software and a $1000 computer to replace a $300 appliance in a still-tepid market), I can't decide which is more of a product without a need. Ah, well, lets all sit back and enjoy the warm glow as Microsoft burns another billion of that massive war chest. Microsoft cell phones, XBox blues, a legal case based on "Security By Obscurity"... and now these techno-misfires.

  • IEEE Reconsiders DMCA Restriction (Score:5, Informative)

    by Captn Pepe ( 139650 ) on Monday April 15, 2002 @11:25PM (#3348094)
    A note that I think should have gotten into today's Slashback -- the New Scientist [newscientist.com] is reporting [newscientist.com] that the IEEE has rescinded its decision to make all paper submitters agree not to violate the DMCA in their articles, amid a storm of protest.

    "The plan is to remove the reference to the DCMA," says Bill Hagen, intellectual property rights manager for the IEEE. "It's controversial to say the least. We've been getting a lot of correspondence, comment and opinion and have been forced to reconsider it."

    This is even better than preserving the status quo, because in this case the hooplah got the problems of the DMCA out in front of the IEEE membership, which is very large and includes some extremely influential people. Score one for the good guys.

  • New Hailstorm nothing but damage control. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Alsee ( 515537 ) on Tuesday April 16, 2002 @02:39AM (#3348675) Homepage
    Another case of over eager media looking to see the worst in tech companies. Or maybe just the worst in Microsoft.

    Nope, Hailstorm is dead dead dead. A key feature of Hailstorm was that Microsoft wants to be the "gatekeeper" of the internet. In order collect a toll requires a monopoly. People are NOT going to pay at a toll booth when there's a free street to the same place.

    The "new and improved" version of hailstorm is nothing but a glorified version of a standard username/password database. I doubt many companies are going to buy the software, and even if they do the proffits of selling the software are nothing compared to OWNING the identity of everyone on the net and selling the service.

    The "new and improved" hailstorm is a desperate attempt to keep a colossal failure from sinking .NET with it. Hailstorm was .NET's flag-ship product. Saying "Hailstorm is alive and well" is nothing but a damage control spin.

    -

  • My delusion that lawyers are rational human beings (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Alsee ( 515537 ) on Tuesday April 16, 2002 @03:11AM (#3348769) Homepage
    MGM was negotiating to place an ad for the upcoming Bond adventure "Die Another Day" before the "Austin Powers" film

    That really sums up the value of MGM's case against Goldmember. If they genuinely felt that the name tarnished their James Bond property then why the hell would they want to use it to advertize a Bond film?!

    It also stipulates that further satirical names must be approved by MGM.

    Ok, maybe I'm having delusions that lawyers are actually rational human beings, but you *could* read that to mean MGM realized it was a frivolous lawsuit and to avoid a countersuit they stipulated they would approve any and all satirical names in the future. :)

    -
    • yes, its a delusion.
      I'll wager what happened is something like this:

      MGM said, "we want you to advertise a bond file"
      NLC says "mmmmNo"

      MGM brings its 'CASE' to the MPAA.
      MPAA says "You can't do that"
      NLC says "we're protected under the parody law"
      MPAA says "This is about the agreement you have with us, and we're arbitrating and we say NO. If you take it to court, we'll toss you out of the MPAA and sue you for breech of contract"
      NLC "you bastards!"
      MPAA "yes?"
      MGM "you know, we don't want to be an ass, so we'll let you keep the name, if you advertise are next JB film. Oh yeah, here is an approved list of parody names, feel free to use those. If you use something else, we'll go through this again."
      NLC "stupid MPAA"

      Clearly, because MGM acted first and put NLC into a defence position, they won.
  • A player for a format not many people are using on a platform even fewer people are using. Admirable, but not likely to be a commercial success.

    Ever since the zaurus has come out, it seems everyone has been against. When it came out everyone complained the website could not be accessed from mozilla, you complained there were not enough applications and now you doing it again.

    It runs linux, a development model was produced to encourage, not beat the open source community. The first fruits of that is already coming through. What do you people want!!!!

    I've had a development model since March. It is wonderfully usable, has everyting I could want and I am now writing apps for it. I had a windows CE machine for years before that and never did much more than read the address book.

    Seesh, no wonder microsoft are winning, they don't have to listen to you lot winging.

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