C3ntaur - Slashdot User

After 2 Years of Development, LTSP 5.2 Is Out 79

Posted by timothy on Sunday February 21, 2010 @06:22PM from the terminal-velocity dept.

The Linux Terminal Server Project has for years been simplifying the task of time-sharing a Linux system by means of X terminals (including repurposed low-end PCs). Now, stgraber writes "After almost two years or work and 994 commits later made by only 14 contributors, the LTSP team is proud to announce that the Linux Terminal Server Project released LTSP 5.2 on Wednesday the 17th of February. As the LTSP team wanted this release to be some kind of a reference point in LTSP's history, LDM (LTSP Display Manager) 2.1 and LTSPfs 0.6 were released on the same day. Packages for LTSP 5.2, LDM 2.1 and LTSPfs 0.6 are already in Ubuntu Lucid and a backport for Karmic is available. For other distributions, packages should be available very soon. And the upstream code is, as always, available on Launchpad."

Comment Good luck with that (Score 1) 198

by C3ntaur on Friday February 19, 2010 @01:40PM (#31201418) Attached to: New Linux-Based Laptop For Computer Newbies

It's the applications, stupid.

The first time Joe Newbie tries to open a Shockwave web page, send an OpenOffice document to his buddy (who uses MS) that opens with crapped-up formatting, or tries to connect to an Exchange server (and no, OWA light is not a good alternative), he's going to have a bad taste in his mouth.

Badly written or no, the majority of the desktop/laptop world is using closed source products that are largely designed not to play well with anything else. Add to that teams of developers on the closed source side who are paid to iron out the nagging little bugs and quirks that make the (G)UI experience uncomfortable to the end user, but that most open source developers aren't interested in dealing with (it's not an itch they need/want to scratch). I don't know how open source can compete with that.

Sony Joins the Offensive Against Pre-Owned Games 461

Posted by Soulskill on Friday February 19, 2010 @07:11AM from the saddle-up dept.

BanjoTed writes "In a move to counter sales of pre-owned games, EA recently revealed DLC perks for those who buy new copies of Mass Effect 2 and Battlefield: Bad Company 2. Now, PlayStation platform holder Sony has jumped on the bandwagon with similar plans for the PSP's SOCOM: Fireteam Bravo 3. '[Players] will need to register their game online before they are able to access the multiplayer component of the title. UMD copies will use a redeemable code while the digital version will authenticate automatically in the background. Furthermore ... anyone buying a pre-owned copy of the game will be forced to cough up $20 to obtain a code to play online."

Comment Amazing. (Score 1) 1

by C3ntaur on Monday January 18, 2010 @02:43PM (#30810754) Attached to: Dark Side of the Moon video

Thanks for sharing this, Pink Floyd was a major influence during my formative years.

Proton Beams Sent Around the LHC 115

Posted by kdawson on Friday November 20, 2009 @05:40PM from the going-in-circles dept.

feldhaus writes "The BBC reports that the first beams for over one year have been successfully sent around the complete circumference of the Large Hadron Collider. Engineers do not yet have a stable circulating beam but they hope to by 0600 GMT on Saturday."

Comment I use the FAT filesystem most sticks come with (Score 5, Informative) 569

by C3ntaur on Thursday September 10, 2009 @05:59PM (#29383497) Attached to: Which Filesystem Do You Use On Portable Media For Linux Systems?

Then, if I need to preserve Linux file settings I'll zip, tar, or cpio and store them on the stick that way.

Comment Re:Kill your cable (Score 1) 345

by C3ntaur on Thursday August 27, 2009 @09:22PM (#29225881) Attached to: An End To Unencrypted Digital Cable TV and the HTPC

OK, you may sit in a room filled with just 20% CO2 for 10 minutes.

Comment Re:Kill your cable (Score 1) 345

by C3ntaur on Thursday August 27, 2009 @05:52PM (#29223699) Attached to: An End To Unencrypted Digital Cable TV and the HTPC

Amen to that. I've been running MythTV and receiving OTA broadcasts for years, and I always have at least 100 hours of yet-to-be-watched backlog. It's only gotten better since the final digital cutover, and I use my Netflix subscription to fill any gaps. I figure the money I've saved in cable bills has paid for my MythTV hardware several times over by now.

Comment Number each spot (Score 3, Insightful) 863

by C3ntaur on Sunday August 23, 2009 @08:47PM (#29167809) Attached to: "Smart" Parking Meters Considered Dumb

Then have the customer enter the spot number they parked in at the pay box. No return trip, no silly paper receipt to put on the dash board, no worries. Was that so hard?

Movable Clouds Migrate To Chase Tax Breaks 151

Posted by Soulskill on Saturday August 08, 2009 @12:40PM from the overcast-overcost dept.

1sockchuck writes "State legislators have been offering huge tax incentives to attract data center projects from cloud-builders. But what happens if the political climate changes and the tax break disappears? If you're Microsoft, you can just take your cloud and move it someplace else. The infrastructure for the Windows Azure platform is being migrated out of a facility in central Washington after the state ruled that data centers no longer qualify for a tax exemption on equipment. Mike Manos, a key player in site selection for many major data centers, predicts that future cloud platforms will move often to chase lower taxes or cheaper power."

Phoronix Releases Linux Benchmarking Distribution 31

Posted by timothy on Tuesday August 04, 2009 @09:31AM from the medium-infrastructure dept.

Bitnit writes "Phoronix has released a major update to their automated Linux benchmarking software, the Phoronix Test Suite, and more interestingly they have released their own distribution that's designed for hardware testing and benchmarking on Linux. With PTS Desktop Live they provide this Linux distribution that's to run only from a live environment off a DVD / USB key and then allows their benchmarking software to run — and only that — on this standardized software stack, which makes hardware comparisons a lot easier."

Submission + - Switching to Solar Power--One Year Later (extremetech.com)

Submitted by

ThinSkin

on Tuesday June 23, 2009 @01:54PM

ThinSkin writes: "Slashdot readers may recall Loyd Case's series of articles illustrating his experiences after switching to solar power for his family home. Loyd shared his one month update, a six month update, and now finally concludes his series after one year of solar power. Despite the $38,000 initial cost for the setup, Loyd is very optimistic after a $3000 savings after one year, meaning that in about 12 years he will break even--though he suspects ten years is a better estimate considering other factors. Other reasons such as feeling "green", increasing the property value of his house, and the "spousal acceptance factor" all support Loyd's decision on why he'd do it all over again if he could."

Submission + - FOSS or Community Model for Cloud Storage? 2

Submitted by

C3ntaur

on Tuesday June 02, 2009 @09:52PM

C3ntaur writes: "I've been poking at some of the online backup and "cloud" storage providers out there, and a couple of things occurred to me. One, most folks would like to have a reliable, secure way to backup their data remotely (into the "cloud", so to speak); and two, most of us have some amount of unused local disk capacity also.

So I'm thinking it would be pretty cool if there were some kind of community "cloud" storage project where you could donate some amount of your local disk space and receive an equal amount of raw space in the "cloud". Sort of a BOINC meets GPL type thing but for storage instead of CPU cycles. If you want triple redundancy, your "cloud" share would be a third of the amount you donated. If you didn't care about redundancy at all, you'd get whatever usable capacity you gave. Ideally the project would emulate a block device on which you could lay down whatever filesystem (and possibly encryption layer) you wanted."

Submission + - Privacy study shows Google's eyes are everywhere (bizjournals.com) 1

Submitted by

BrianWCarver

on Tuesday June 02, 2009 @06:11PM

BrianWCarver writes: "The San Francisco Business Times reports that researchers at UC Berkeley's School of Information have released a study and launched a website, knowprivacy.org, in which they found that web bugs from Google and its subsidiaries were found on 92 of the top 100 Web sites and 88 percent of the approximately 400,000 unique domains examined in the study. This larger data set was provided by the maintainer of a Firefox plugin called Ghostery which shows users which web bugs are on the sites they visit. The study also found that while the privacy policies of many popular websites claim that the sites do not share information with third parties, they do allow third parties to place web bugs on their sites (which collect this information directly, typically without the user's knowledge) and share with corporate "affiliates." The full report and more findings are available from their website."

Forensics Tool Finds Headerless Encrypted Files 374

Posted by timothy on Thursday April 30, 2009 @04:17PM from the sir-there's-an-anomaly-here dept.

gurps_npc writes "Forensics Innovations claims to have for sale a product that detects headerless encrypted files, such as TrueCrypt Dynamic files. It does not decrypt the file, just tells you that it is in fact an encrypted file. It works by detecting hidden patterns that don't exist in a random file. It does not mention steganography, but if their claim is true, it seems that it should be capable of detecting stenographic information as well."

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