Here's a true Hellmouth Halloween Horror Story: A Texas seventh-grader wrote -- at his teacher's request -- a "scary" story in which two classmates and his teacher were shot (the latter accidentally). He got a 100 on the story, and was thrown in jail for nearly a week on suspicion of making terroristic threats.

Kurt The Pope, most notable for his recent reviews of CodeWarrior and Code Fusion has taken time to play in a slightly different IDE ^[?] - Railroad Tycoon II Gold, by Loki. Click below for the skinny.

Most of my friends work either directly on the Internet or in some sort of Internet-related computer field. The Internet is the economic engine driving the curent "long boom" wave of American prosperity, and that wave is starting to spread all over the world. But now and then I wonder if this is such a good thing, and if we might all be better off if the Internet wasn't such an economic juggernaut. (Click Below for more idle speculation.)

Andrew Smith has written an excellent little feature on something so obvious that we usually don't give it a second thought: Server naming conventions. Since all my old machines are named after charachters from The Little Mermaid, and all the new Slashdot boxes use boring naming conventions like 'Linux360' (not for long tho!) I can understand this one. Its worth a read.

Princess Monoke, a wonderful anime film, was reviewed for us by frohike / Dan Potter. The film, done by Studio Ghibli / Hayao Miyazaki is currently coming to the US, and is popular in Japan under the name Mononoke Hime, directed by Hayao Miyazaki, with "translation" assistance by Neil Gaiman, of The Sandman and other literary undertakings. I'm looking forward to seeing the movie - click below to get the lowdown.

Even though violence among the young is dropping sharply, a federal law enforcement agency and a private threat-evaluation security firm have teamed up to develop a software program that will be tested in 20 schools around the country in December. Mosaic-2000 will look for "troubled" kids. Geek students are sounding the alarm at this mind-boggling over-reaction and unthinking deployment of technology as a safety -- and profit-making --tool in education. The price of being different is going up again.

Last week "The War In Heaven," the world's first Christian action game, went on sale, opening a whole new chapter in the never-ending struggle between technology and the self-proclaimed forces of morality.

"How do I find a woman like her?" I often get asked this question by young computer dudes who meet my lovely wife, Debbie, and wonder how an old ugly guy like me managed to get hold of such a wonderful woman while smarter, studlier young guys (like them) seem to strike out with every female they meet. These lonely youngsters all seem to think I must have a set of magic rules for attracting females. And guess what? I do. Click "Read More" and I'll share them with you.

Steven Young writes "As an intellectual property attorney, and a regular Slashdot reader, I would like to share a few of my thoughts regarding patent issues, especially as they relate to programmers. Although patents (for better or worse) are playing an ever-expanding role in the software field, many programmers do not know much about them." (Full story below.)

Two weeks ago, Jane's Intelligence Review presented media with a new, radically improved information model for the 21st Century. Will they pay attention?

Richard Bean wrote this piece about a chess match on MSN's Gaming Zone between ultragrandmaster Gary Kasparov and the entire rest of the world, with "the world's" moves being decided by online vote. But something went wrong after move #50, by move #58 MSN changed the rules so that only Windows users could vote on moves, and murmured complaints from disgruntled participants and observers about unfair move-selections and ballot-box stuffing (which MSN had originally claimed was impossible) rose to an online roar. Click below to read the full story.

Kurt has returned, continuing his reviews of Linux IDE ^[?] environments. After reviewing Code Fusion, he's reviewed Metrowerks CodeWarrior (for Suse). The full text of the review is below.

One of America's most enduring and self-deluded myths about itself is that it's a free, thus morally superior country. It's not, as last weeks' feature on Princeton Bioethicist Peter Singer made clear. This society is riddled with unapproachable taboos. But technology is changing that, making some of our self-inflated notions of ourselves actually come true.

John R. Zedlewski has contributed an excellent feature entitled 'Free Software and the Innovators Dilema'. Talks a lot about how industries tend to shift, and what happens when a new low end/low cost technology wrecks the margins. Its worth a read. Check it out.

A lot of people (even Jon Katz) have been telling me I should write a Slashdot feature myself now and then. Fine. I'm in a strange mood today, and a lot of strange thoughts have been buzzing through my head this week, so here goes. My first "observation of the week" is that the word "suits" is no longer viable to describe managers in tech companies. We need a more accurate term, and I have one for you. (More below.)

Lawrence Person writes "With Neil Stephenson and Bruce Sterling hot topics of interest here on Slashdot, I thought my "Notes Toward a Postcyberpunk Manifesto" might help add to /.'s SF debate. This originally appeared last year in an issue of Nova Express, the Hugo-nominated small press SF magazine I edit. However, though it's been translated into Portugese, it's never appeared on the web before. It discusses exactly why original cyberpunk works like Neuromancer were important, and why the work people like Stephenson, Sterling, Egan, Macleod, etc. are doing right now should more properly be thought of as postcyberpunk.

Last week the editors of the internationally respected magazine, Jane's Intelligence Review, asked Slashdot readers to preview an article on Cyberterrorism they had planned to run. But so many of you said (rightfully) that the article was lame, and so many of you had intelligent things to say on the subject, that the Jane's editors decided to trash the original piece and write a whole new one based entirely on your comments! And, in an unprecedented act of generosity, Jane's is going to *pay* those of you whose words make it into the final story, which is being written by Deputy Editor Johan J Ingles-le Nobel. Please click on the "Read More" link below to get the whole scoop directly from Jane's - including info on how to collect your money if you are one of the folks Jane's decides to quote.

First Prediction: January l, 2000. People will be ticked off to suddenly realize the Millenium is a year away. Join Sir Arthur Clarke, me, a Princeton plasma physicist and hopefully hordes of geeks and nerds in the first 21st century Slashdot Predict-A-Thon. Your history of the 21st century is as good -- and as welcome -- as anybody else's.

Long ago and far away, I started writing a series called "Road To Linux," in which I set out to learn Linux in a few weeks. Talk about clueless. Nearly one year, two wasted computers, a ticked-off spouse, (and a Yellow Lab who ate a motherboard) 30-plus books and manuals and much assorted debris later, I've more or less made it.

Rene S. Hollan has sent an insightful piece regarding the use of a non-GPL license that is still fair to the free software community, and might even win the approval of RMS ^[?] .