Well, I join slashdot (aka the "sinister Andover keiretsu") full-time today. It seems worthy of a story, although I'll limit it to the YRO section since those have been my traditional stomping grounds. There's no real news below, just some rambling and question-asking, but I hope it will be interesting nonetheless.

Elvis Maximus writes: "Wired News is running an interesting piece on the inroads Linux is making in Africa. The article focuses on the advantages of the 'free beer' nature of Linux, which is good, but neglects the fact that open source empowers people in developing countries to solve their own specific problems. Worth a look." Ironically, if commerical software vendors are vigilant, the advantages of Free alternatives will only be more evident. But licensing isn't as pressing an issue, maybe, when getting access at all isn't easy for most Africans.

Yes, it's been a long, hot (and rainy) summer, but it's over now. Things are finally getting back to normal, including Slashdot Interviews, which return with answers to 10 chosen readers' questions from often-slashodotted PBS Pundit Robert X. Cringely.

RevAaron asks: "With Java, and now C#, we're seeing the same (then revolutionary) concepts and features that Smalltalk had over twenty years ago. With open source versions like Squeak and GNU Smalltalk, not to mention numerous other versions, most of which have an free (as in beer) version available, why hasn't the open source world adopted it to a larger extent? It boggles the mind that the open source community hasn't picked it up, even with almost all of the source of the entire Smalltalk system available to developers, even with the commercial implementations. Is it simply a case of 'once a C coder, always a C coder,' with languages like C++ and Java being used by virtue of their Algol-derived syntax?" The choice of language of most developers is a queer thing indeed. I'm still surprised that COBOL has lasted for as long as it has. So if anyone has any insight as to why Smalltalk use isn't more widespread, please share.

paulywog asks: "I've used a fair number of non-Free (Beer) scientific plotting packages during college and as an engineer -- including Matlab, SigmaPlot and DeltaGraph, Excel (ick), SAS, my trusty HP 48G, among others. Lately, I've been looking for OSS resources that can provide similar features. Part of the reason is that there are some features that I've wanted, but never been able to get out the other software. One feature in particular: shade the area between two curves or shade the region outlined by error bars on this plot. I'd like to hear what experience other scientists and engineers have with OSS plotting packages in terms of ease of use, power, and flexibility."

Welcome to another episode of Slashback, since stories keep popping up in parts rather than in neat, hermetic, well-encapsulated little packages. So read this -- it's like going to the demolition derby. You want to see the slip-ups, the revisions, the torture of correction, but without having beer poured on you by strangers. Read on if you'd like (at the very least) to know more about the the British Columbia law which relegated naughty (violent) video games to the back of the arcade.

The fight to keep standards Open and Free is raging in the audio compression business. With mp3 tearing up bandwidth and the court system, Christopher Montgomery and the rest of the Ogg Vorbis team are working hard to ensure that the mp3 format has a Free alternative in their system, which seems to outperform mp3 everywhere it counts. I got the opportunity to pull Chris away from development just long enough to tell us exactly what's going on, and to answer some questions about the process and the product necessary to take on mp3.

Interested in a free domain for your open-source project? Huh, are ya? "Too bad, sucker," says the .cx registrar. On the other hand, you can drink beer (or sarsparilla) and talk tech with folks smarter than your average bear, create poetry using such fine poetic-sounding things as "Python" and "Java," and even let other people know the names of those who you would call Spammers. Read on, if the gist is really not enough.

Compenguin writes: "Justin of Nullsoft released three new pieces of free (as in speech and in beer) software, an installer, a pinger/grapher, and a throttlable file copier. They all use the zlib license. The source is available now, marking the first time nullsoft has actually released source to their "Open Source" products *Cough*Gnutella*Cough*."

e-gold writes: "See www.cryptome.org for a scoop on some Japanese CIA intel. John Young (an architect) does a better job at journalism on the Web than the VAST majority of paid "Web journalists," so this is par for the course for him. I'm glad to have hoisted a beer with him this summer." It's not so much the document itself but the FBI's reaction to it that's interesting. For some reason, the FBI in New York City is none too swift when it comes to threatening Web sites. Note that as I write this, cryptome.org is down, but there's no reason to think the site was pulled - it was mentioned on the AP wire, which seems to have been enough to beat it down to its knees.

Spoing dropped this bit of informative info into the bin: "Last week, a friend of mine griped that he didn't know of an easy way -- short of getting Adobe Capture and paying per-use licence fees -- of creating searchable PDFs. I scoffed, and told him I've done it many times, and it was free -- as in beer and speech. Dumbfounded, he pushed me to show him how, and I did; print to a Postscript file, and run ps2pdf on it...done! Since every document could be output as Postscript, his problem was solved. If he wanted to batch process the documents, he could set up a few scripts to simplify the task. While he was impressed, he ended up asking what seemed like an easy question; 'Can you do the same with a scanned image?'" And therein lies the question...

dewboy asks: "We're trying to set up a rack of SBC's (Single Board Computers) that will allow us to plug a certain number of SBC's into a backplane which will provide power. All interfaces (mouse, keyboard, VGA, Enet, etc) are on the faceplates of the cards, so all they really need is power. All we've been able to find so far are chasses that support a single SBC and a (4-20 slot) backplane. What we'd like is a chassis that supports 20 SBC's. Has anyone found anything like this?"

HerbieTMac writes: "Intel and HP are releasing HP's IA-64 emulator for Linux later this week. Particularly interesting is that this emulator will be free (as in beer) for download from Intel's and HP's Web sites."

This is not a diatribe about copyleft. It's an exploration of ways "music delivery" has changed over the last three decades, and why these changes have led to a commonly-held belief that music can be downloaded or exchanged without paying a dime to the artists who wrote and played the songs. (more below)

More information below -- for your edification and amusement -- on black holes (if they exist), Napster (a happy outcome for once), comparitive computer languages (after Chris Rijk's Java / C comparison) and more. Even a (gasp) positive statement about Microsoft. Hope you enjoy it.

Frequent book reviewer and genuine Englishman Duncan Lawie sent us this first-person account of UK Linux Expo 2000. Proof (not that it was needed) that not only is Linux continuing to grow in the UK as elsewhere, but that the disconnect between suits and geeks remains as evident as ever. Read below for good news and medium news -- thankfully, that seems to be as bad as it gets for this transmission.

semis asks: "It's interesting to see the number of free-beer (free for non-profit) software that is popping up. From StarOffice to the recently reported CAD software Cycas, the number of free-beer software packages is rapidly increasing. Sure -- this is good, until/if the OSs get market share, then happy hour finishes and the free-beer becomes expensive-beer. Is this trend a Good Thing (tm) or will it see our beloved OSs lose their open-source vision and simply become the new medium for commercial software?"

Our original interview with two SCO Presidents somehow turned into responses from just one, returned long after they were promised. Anyway, here are answers to your questions about SCO from David McCrabb, President of their Server Division.

Bob Bruce writes: "There will be a BSD BOF (Birds Of a Feather meeting) at Spring Comdex, on Wednesday April 19 from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. The BOF is at the Essex Inn at Grant Park, Chicago. You do not need to be a Comdex attendee to come along, everyone is welcome." Read on for more details.

troc writes: Here's the "info on this year's Linux Beer Hike sponsored by SuSE (and others). It's a European event, where Linux users wander around a nice hilly area, drink beer and exercise their minds of an evening doing Linuxy stuff. " I wanted to go last year, but my flabby ass probably shouldn't be goin' on ye old hacker hike ;)