Slashback: Dry Mars, Wet Doc, Keyboard Teaser

Slashback tonight brings some corrections, clarifications, and updates to previous Slashdot stories, including a possible release date for the long awaited Optimus keyboard, yet another extension in the Blackberry court case, lakebed theory on Mars possibly all wet, US-CERT statistics perhaps not all they are cracked up to be, stem cell investigation reveals papers were faked, the FTC objects to the Netflix settlement, and a new Crossover Office fixes the WMF exploit among other things. Read on for details.

Optimus keyboard may have a real release date? Jacket writes to tell us that the much talked about Optimus keyboard has a suggestive message on their website. With "Good things come in small packages February 1, 2006" could it be possible that this holy grail (for some) keyboard could be available in our near future?

Yet another delay for Blackberry court case. ahsile writes "TheGlobeandMail.com is reporting that 'NTP Inc., the company suing Research in Motion Ltd over the Blackberry e-mail service, wants more time to respond to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's preliminary rejections of its patents.'

Lakebed theory on Mars all wet? Sensible Clod writes "The Meridiani Planum region on Mars, long believed to have been covered with water millions of years ago, may not have been so wet after all, according to a new study from the University of Colorado at Boulder. From the article: 'The new study indicates chemical signatures in the bedrock, interpreted...as evidence for widespread, intermittent water at Mars' surface, may have instead been created by the reaction of sulfur-bearing steam vapors moving up through volcanic ash deposits. Known as Meridiani Planum, the region may have been more geologically similar to volcanic regions in parts of North America, Hawaii or Europe.'"

US-CERT statistics not all they are cracked up to be? jtshaw writes "Tectonic has an interesting article about the latest US-CERT stats. The actual vulnerabilities for a hand full of OS's after wading through the data: Microsoft Windows - 44, Apple Mac OS X - 21, IBM AIX - 21, HP-UX - 15, SCO Unix - 9, Red Hat Linux - 7, Suse Linux - 12, Debian Linux - 10, Gentoo Linux - 5, FreeBSD - 13, NetBSD - 2. It appears to me that commercial unix systems and open source *nix systems did pretty well compared to Windows on the vulnerability front."

Stem cell papers, confirmed fakes. An anonymous reader writes "The committee created to investigate stem cell researcher Hwang Woo Suk has confirmed that his first and second papers were faked. 'dashing hopes that his work is a breakthrough in treatments for diabetes and Parkinson's disease. [...] The panel backed Hwang's claim that he cloned the world's first dog.'"

FTC objects to Netflix settlement. AtariDatacenter writes "Although some question the validity of a recent lawsuit against Netflix, many users were up in arms about the terms of the settlement, which seemed like more of a marketing gimmick. Today, we learned that The Federal Trade Commission agreed, and asked the judge to reject the terms of the settlement."

New Crossover Office fixes,among other things, WMF exploit. ubuntuincleelum writes "Just on the heels of the announcement of new WMF security vulnerabilities Codeweavers is releasing Crossover Office 5.0.1. A bugfix release, this release features a fix for the original WMF bug. Among the changes in this release: Improved support for Gnome, improvements in Debian packaging and improvements in general for operability on Debian and Debian Derivatives."

Meridiani Planum

[Anonymous Coward]

Known as Meridiani Planum, the region may have been more geologically similar to volcanic regions in parts of North America, Hawaii or Europe.'"
Which means it bears no similarity to volcanic regions in New Zealand?

"Good things come in small packages"

[renrutal]

Are they only delivering the keys?

For real ease of use, there must be 2 keys only

[mi]

The only two keys: "DO" and "Undo". The software is supposed to be able to figure out (correctly!), what to do (or undo).

Re:That keyboard looks cool, but...

[mattkime]

that link to the anti-circumcision page is quite a hoot!

Re:That keyboard looks cool, but...

[DrSkwid]

All my new keyboards are dead, all my old ones are still going.

I don't know how old this Silcon Graphics one is but it has a "YES Netware Approved" sticker on the bottom and I bought it *used* 3 yrs ago. None of the keytops show's the slightest wear, despite all day use sine it arrived.

I could hit burglars with the beast and still keep typing.

even at $400, 2 years is only $4 a week

I'm sure I'd pay $400 for the gee whizzest keyboard in the world, esp. if no other geek in town has one.

The bitches'll be on me like gnats on a dog's dick when I attach mine to my laptop at the WiFi hotspot.

Re:The world's first dog ?

[weierstrass]

Yes, it's because he cloned the first one that there is now more than one dog.

SCO has best flaw/user ratio.

[twitter]

SCO had only nine.

That's one for each user, fantastic!

Re:That keyboard looks cool, but...

[Peyna]

We had a bunch of these at a small ISP I used to work at. The customers would constantly complain over the phone about the annoying "typewriters" in the background. Needless to say, they are very tough keyboards.

Re:For real ease of use, there must be 2 keys only

[Michael Woodhams]

Ha! My keyboard is even easier to use - it has only *one* key. I entered this message in Morse code. :-)

Actual Date

[El Royo]

It was a small typo on the web page. The release date is April 1, 2006.