Michael G. Kaplan writes "CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart) are commonly used to prevent computers from filling out web forms. Computer vision experts have been able to design programs to foil CAPTCHA with a high degree of success. I have designed a CAPTCHA that is based on the identification of attributes contained in an image generated by the grouping of easily recognized 3-D objects. I call this the Virtual Photographic CAPTCHA and it is likely to remain invulnerable to automated attack for many years to come. A novel anti-spam system necessitated its development."

wikinerd writes "A Firefox developer talks about the project's controversial invitation-only developer recruitment policy and explains why Firefox will never grow up."

thelesserbean writes "Up at K5 there's a tongue-in-cheek look at the dirty world of software development's inside politics. Presented as a guide, it is actually full of useful advice and lessons learned the hard way. For instance, in the 'Ass-Covering' section, we read: 'The chief difficulty is reaching a satisfactory compromise between ass-covering and not appearing too negative. (...) The emails you sent will be used in evidence against you. Keep a professional tone: before sending any sensitive email take a moment to think how it would look at an industrial tribunal.'"

sarumont writes "Every Open Source developer uses or has used GNU make at some point or another. Everyone who has ever compiled a piece of Open Source software has used GNU's make. So what exactly is GNU make and how does it work? The 3rd Edition of 'Managing Projects with GNU Make' tells you all about using GNU make and more."

isn't my name writes "We all know that OSRM has come out to offer insurance against intellectual property claims for open source software. Recently, we've seen IBM open up 500 patents and SUN up the ante with 1600. But all of these moves are targeted at F/OSS software. There's an article at IPW that looks at the state of patent insurance for non-F/OSS."

prostoalex writes "O'Reilly's LinuxDevCenter features Freevo, 'a media platform that brings together various applications for video recording and playback.' They interview the developers, and talk about the current plans for the project. Freevo is not just a standalone product, it's a platform to which other developers, interested in home media on Linux, can plug into."

comforteagle writes "Howard Wen has interviewed 'FutureProof' of the JHymn project, a DRM removal application for iTunes song files laden, or 'crippled' as some say, to prevent filesharing. FutureProof tells us how Apple's DRM works, how to rip it out using JHymn, how they build on the work of 'DVD' Jon Johansen, and how to upgrade to that brand new iShuffle safely."

Bruce Lawson writes "I've read a lot of CSS books, but this one is the one I wished that I'd read when I was learning, and I suspect that other slashdotters may concur. It is firmly pitched at the coder rather than the designer, takes you from CSS virgin to upper intermediate level, with good attention to the process of (re)designing with CSS, legal issues such as Accessibility (section 508), and assumes that you're not scared of mark-up." Lawson offers this disclosure: "I should immediately disclose that I've worked for two different companies that have published the author, Rachel Andrew, but I have no connection with the publishers, or this book." Read on for the rest of his review.

Alef writes "The winners of the 2005 Independent Game Festival Student Showcase have been announced. However, at least one entry appears to have been ignored by the judges. This makes me wonder whether the elaborate description of their judging process merely is empty words." Update: 01/28 22:45 GMT by Z : Goodman simoniker wrote in with an update to this story in the comments. Basically, miscommunication reigns.

gManZboy writes "In an article that's sure to p/o Fortran programmers, Donn Seeley has assembled a rant that posits there are characteristics of good coding that transcend all programming languages, except Fortran. Seriously though, his point is that early FORTRAN made coding ugly. Thus the joke 'Don't write FORTRAN' was applied to anyone with ugly code. Though Fortran has in recent years overcome its early challenges, the point -- 'Don't write FORTRAN' (i.e. ugly stuff) -- still applies."

Tom V. writes "DevMaster.net has an article that outlines some of the technical differences between Half-life 2's Source and Doom 3 engines from various game development aspects such as graphics, A.I., physics, networking, etc. According to the author, the winner is the Source engine based on its 'completeness' as a game development package. However, in terms of graphics, the clear winner is Doom 3."

prostoalex writes "Peter Sefton appreciates OpenOffice Writer's open and documented XML format and hence tries to customize and configure OO Writer to his own liking. In the article on XML.com he plays with OpenOffice XML, introduces an XSTL style sheet to a Writer document, creates a keyboard shortcut for applying his own style, and creates a macro."

Spy der Mann writes "Remember the recent discussion on Binary XML? Well, there's news. The W3C just released the specs for XML-binary optimized packaging (XOP). In summary, they take binary data out of the XML, and put it in a separate section using MIME-Multipart. You can read the press release and the testimonials from MS, IBM and BEA."

Mai writes "What happens when two coalitions within a standard come into conflict, and it doesn't get resolved quickly? The ultrawideband technology standard shows you."

BlizzyMadden inputs this query: "Currently I am working on a small utility to convert HTML to plain text. As I test this, I create more and more different types of HTML files to regression test it. I wonder to myself if these test files that I make would be beneficial to other developers who may be doing similar work. To expand on this thought, I wonder if there is a community-based repository of test data anywhere that developers and use and contribute to. Just curious if anyone knows of any project website out there that offers this."

An anonymous reader writes "Take Two Interactive announced today that they have acquired the rights to the Civilization franchise. They also announced Civ 4, saying that "Civilization IV will also set a new standard for user-modification, allowing gamers to create their own add-ons using the standard Python and XML scripting languages." Okay, so XML's not a scripting language. But it's nice to see open source tech in a major PC game!" Civ IV will be released under the new 2K Publishing Label we reported on yesterday.

Craig Reynolds writes "In his recent book Artificial Intelligence for Computer Games: An Introduction , author John Funge takes us on a whirlwind tour of techniques from the literature of academic AI research and discusses their application to the nuts and bolts of game AI programming. While some of these topics are quite advanced, the text remains easily readable and grounded in what the techniques mean to real game programmers developing real game AI." Read on for Reynolds' review.

A reader writes: "There's been a lot of bits written recently about the growth of Open Source databases; as well as IBM's patent gift, as their release of the Java database Cloudscape. There's a contest running on SourceForge.net around Cloudscape; download and run with it." SF.net is part of OSTG, like Slashdot.

Insane_zoD writes "Looks like Sun is attempting to keep up with IBM in opening up patents for FOSS-based projects. From the news release: 'By giving open source developers free access to Sun OpenSolaris related patents under the Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL), the company is fostering open innovation and establishing a leadership role in the framework of a patent commons that will be recognized across the globe.'"

Pablo Lorenzzoni writes "On January 10th, the 6th International Free Software Forum - fisl6.0 [more info] issued a public call for papers. The conference will be held from June 1st to June 4th in Porto Alegre, a southern Brazilian capital already known by the World Social Forum. Proposals due on February 28th."