kzadot writes: "A bit of good old kiwi ingenuity, you can make a jet engine in your own home, and keep your beers cool as a side effect. And not a single piece of Number 8 wire in sight. Full instructions included."

jwales writes: "Larry Sanger, editor-in-chief of the Nupedia and Wikipedia sister projects, has written a fabulous response on k5 to Britannica's decision to start charging fees for access. It's all about freedom (in the sense of free speech), but there are implications for freedom (in the sense of free beer)."

func writes with a rather strange situation: "Hey, my house was robbed, and they stole my computer, vcr, rc heli, and all my beer (!bastards!). But, on the positive side, the thief has been using the computer, and managed to infect himself with the Sircam virus. Now, some of my friends are getting virii sent to them by my stolen computer! Any way to track this guy via email, or even an ip or something stored in the virus code itself? And if I do find him, do I send the cops, or just my 6-foot-4, 260-lb ex-eastern-block buddy Radek?"

StrawberryFrog writes: "Borland Kylix for x86 Linux is now free-as-in-beer for writing free-as-in-GPL'd apps. You can read all about it and download it from the Borland site."

Last week, you asked Shawn Gordon questions about his venture TheKompany, an outfit which has been (fairly) quietly working on a small flotilla of software for GNU/Linux systems, and some cross-platform applications as well. His responses are below; you might be surprised at a few of them. (And some lucky Debian hacker might even pick up a job.)

Craig Maloney wrote this review of a book intended to remove some of the confusion from the powerful, free 3D modelling program Blender. Blender is fun to play with, and has been used to create some amazing 3D graphics, but it's not exactly intuitive. Just figuring out what some of the major buttons do was a triumph for me, but I haven't touched it in a few years -- I'd like to try Blender again, but with a book like this one at the ready to supplement the user interface.

Zenithal asks: "I've been slowly and silently developing an online game for quite some time now, and I'd like very much for it to be free. The problem is that the game will require several servers and lots of bandwidth if it is at all successful. For now my workplace is willing to sponser my needs, but if things ever picked up it would start costing serious money to run. What I'm wondering is, how can I make any money to maintain the game universe and possibly maybe even get cash for a few beer? I know the potential is there to sell box versions and manuals, but that just doesn't seem realistic. Any ideas Slashdot?" If you aren't willing to sell the game, then maybe you can sell things about the game to fund its further development. Of course, it goes without saying that the game will have to be good, so one of the first things one should do is get a good core group out there to test it. Also, if any game like this is to succeed, it should not ignore whatever community that happens to develop around it. I know something like this is unlikely, but if it were to happen, what would you do to get it started?

FIGJAM writes: "Actelis, based in Fremont, California, have raised $26 million to enable speeds up to 155Mbs over copper lines by overcoming crosstalk interference with error-correction." The article is unfortunately short on technical details, long on current telecom market financial conditions. There's a bit more information on their website, but be warned, it's nearly as buzzword centric and glib. The speed of fiber over existing copper is still too tantalizing to ignore, though, even if it's not as sexy as actual fiber to the home.

drachen writes: "Trolltech has announced that Qt/Windows will now be available under a non-commercial license. To sum it up: 'Developers may use a Non-Commercial License of Qt for evaluation purposes; and Developers may use a Non-Commercial License of Qt on a personal basis to create free programs, and the source code must be made available.'" There's also talk of this at dot.kde.org.

Top-down cool. A huge glob of capital hovers on the 43rd floor of a skyscraper somewhere in America, telling you and me what we should think is hip this week. Welcome to the whole damn world. Fortunately or otherwise, our cool-chasing is built into our genes, and it can exist with or without money driving it. Maybe the grassroots can't destroy our money-driven musical culture, but I bet there's a way a natural culture can thrive alongside the one we're force-fed. (This is the last of three features on pop music; you may want to read part one and part two for background.)

Musical styles evolve like biological species evolve, in response to their environment. Musical ideas flourish -- or die off -- depending on how well their human creators are rewarded. A big factor in the evolution of musical style is us, the listeners; the next sound is cool, some old sounds are lame, Artist X now gets our dollars while Artist Y goes back to working as a waitress. Style marches on. But dollars just help steer the evolution of the machine. It's technology that decides where it can go. And to understand what influence our music technology can have, it helps to know what influences it has had. (Part two of three; here's yesterday's part one if you missed it.)

Linus Torvalds (and David Diamond) wrote this book; chromatic wrote the review below. It may be hard to say much new about Linus and the results of his 1991 inspiration to loose his kernel on the world, but this book is historically informative, with copyrighted Torvalds humor to boot (I snorted in parts) and fun facts about growing up in Finland. And for a multimedia extravaganza, you can even listen to some conversation between Linus and co-author David Diamond.

Faux_Pseudo writes: "In an attempt to flood your field of vison with more advertising the NY Times (free reg)has an article on how "digital technology may be used for the first time to place "virtual" products in scenes of a syndicated television series." If you were taken aback by The Duke selling Coors beer you might want to unplug the TV now." This sort of digital manipulation isn't totally new, but it seems like what we've seen so far is just the tip of the reality-distortion iceberg. As xueexueg puts it, "With any luck we'll see Capt. Janeway ask the food replicator for a meal, and a personal pan pizza will materialize."

Chanc_Gorkon asks: "anyone know of any EMWIN software for Linux? EMWIN stands for Emergency Managers Weather Information Network. Weathernode is a free as in beer client for windows that can accept this info. EMWIN will pick up National Weather Service alerts usually before the TV and Radio people say anything. I searched both Freshmeat and Google and saw nothing but maybe embryonic projects, not ready even for developer consumption. Further info can be found at the NWS's EMWIN page. It seems, to me, that this would be a nice thing to have on Linux since Weathernode eats resources. This program even can retreive NEXRAD images and animate them."

TrixX writes: "The following article is about a law that's being discussed at the Congress of Argentina." I've attached the summary of the law -- it'd essentially make it a law to migrate to free software. Pretty interesting proposal.

A nameless cretin writes: "Yahoo and Bigfoot are both noted for providing free services. They both seem to be planning to add fees for selected services. Yahoo's "Yahoo! by Phone" service, also known as "1-800-MY-YAHOO", provides various information services via voice phone, including the ability to retrieve e-mail. According to this page they are planning to charge a monthly subscription fee beginning May 7, 2001. Bigfoot provides a variety of e-mail services, such as relaying and filtering. They do not provide mail boxes. Although some of their pages still indicate their services are free, some member pages (requiring member login) indicate a $19.99 annual subscription fee will be required for many of their services. Although I am disappointed in these changes, I would like to thank them for the service they have provided us. I hope they are able strengthen themselves financially and continue to exist. I also hope they explore new means of providing free service." Any other free-beer services you've noticed being shut down or leaning suspiciously of late? It's been rather nice to have so many free email accounts in the meantime, eh?

NiceGeek asks: "Is there any interest in a 'Geek' bar? After reading a comment in a recent story on Slashdot, I started thinking about a 'geek hangout' type bar. Basically, beer, music, classic arcade and console games and maybe classic network games like Doom and Quake. One advantage to the 'classic' theme would be reduced overhead. I already possess a lot of classic consoles/games and older stand-up systems are pretty cheap also. I would also consider adding a 'cyber-cafe' for broadband access. I have several other ideas but would like to see if there is any interest." It's an interesting idea, but are there any other things that you think such an endeavor would need? NTN Trivia consoles would be a nice addition (it would fit in well with the other things listed). I have fond memories of playing NTN with friends when it was available at a local hangout.

An AC sent in this link about Linux use in the world of special effects and animation. There are one or two errors in the story that make it clear the writer isn't that familiar with Linux, but it's still a good article about the digital effects world taking advantage of a free-beer operating system that runs on commodity hardware.

If you remember our Guiness Beer Really Sucks story, you'll recall that WIPO's rule has been "no sucks domains." There's a three-part test and if you pass any of the parts you're in the clear, but one of the silly gotchas about test number three is that Xsucks.com has repeatedly been ruled "identical or confusingly similar" to trademarkX. This makes no sense, of course. But the strange thing is that WIPO on Monday reversed itself. In one of the rare decisions awarded to the domain holder, the arbitration panel said that the owner of LockheedMartinSucks.com could keep his domain, because it was not confusingly similar to LockheedMartin.com. Um. What?

This is a "double header" interview. Our guests are Jimmy Wales of the recently-started Nupedia open content encyclopedia project and Michael S. Hart of Project Gutenberg, which Hart started in 1971. The two projects are very different -- Nupedia is creating an encyclopedia, while PG is creating an open-ended database of public domain and out-of-copyright texts -- but they are similar in that both projects' primary goal is free (beer and speech) access to information. Post questions (one per post, please) below for Wales and/or Hart about their creations (or any related topic). We'll send 10 of the highest-moderated questions to them tomorrow, and will publish their answers as soon as they get them back to us.