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Operating Systems

Submission + - Parallelize applications for faster Linux booting

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A common complaint about GNU/Linux is the amount of time the operating system takes to start. There are several independent tasks involved to evolve from a cold Linux system to one that you can interact with through a shell or window manager. This article takes you through all major stages of Linux boot and initialization.
Linux Business

Submission + - Pushing a Linux build across a network

Submitted by tiredofnick
tiredofnick writes: Do any slashdotters know of a method to push out a Linux build across a network? I work for a college and I am thinking of pushing for an all Linux computer lab. One thing I need to know before I present my arguments for such a lab is if there is a solution for pushing out a Linux image across the network to a lab full of computers. Does anyone know of any such solution?
Security

Submission + - Are firewalls okay at a creative workplace?

Submitted by
No-Tec
No-Tec writes: "I'm part of a rapidly growing company that recently instituted a company wide and very strict firewall. We are employing 100+ now including accounting, sales, marketing, etc, so I do agree that it was imperative to implement some sort of outgoing restrictions. Problem is, the firewall has extinguished all of our [marketing] creative outlets: in-browser flash, streaming music, most video formats, etc. Disregarding the obvious drop of moral, do you think restricting the creative department is counter-productive to our positions or do you think it's justified in what they are doing? I'm interested in what the designers and IT'ers on /. think about this. I'm sure the designers can chime in and agree that we need a little more leeway to do our job effectively."
Security

Submission + - OpenBSD's IPv6 mbufs remote kernel buffer overflow

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Well, the counter on www.openbsd.org now says two remote holes in more than ten years. This is due to a corruption of mbuf chains when given specially crafted IPv6 packets. This is only exploitable from the local network, but wireless nodes are local, right? A fix is available in the usual place.
Announcements

Submission + - No joke: Linux.com Launches April Fool's Contest

Submitted by
lisah
lisah writes: "If you've been looking for a way to upstage CmdrTaco (OMG!! Ponies!),now's your chance. Linux.com has launched an April Fool's Day contest calling for 'humor pieces related to Linux or open source.' Get your geek on, make the judges laugh, and you could win $100 gift certificate to ThinkGeek (no joke). Are you one of the .0001% of the community that's not funny? That's okay, there's still a place for you since Linux.com is also welcoming article pitches for the other 364 days of the year."
Debian

Submission + - Seeking OSS abstract submission webware

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: I have been tasked with building a website for organizing an academic event on a Debian box running Apache — I have root and all that that implies. The website is supposed to accept abstracts (latex/.doc/html-forms/text) of invited talks and then we will schedule (building/room/time) and make submissions available in an online program for attendees that can be sorted by the talks time/place/author/title/etc... I have searched Google and gone through the Debian repository of web software trying to find something that will fulfill these needs, but I have had no success. Coding my own seems like a time consuming task and I would rather build on OSS so that I don't have to reinvent the wheel. Does anyone here know if such code exists and if not what would you suggest as close enough that can be recoded to the task at hand?
Google

Submission + - Cracking Google's 'secret sauce' algorithm

Submitted by
jcatcw
jcatcw writes: "There's more to placement in the Google results than the PageRank value. Google remains elusive about the 200 factors it uses to score pages and decide which goes to the top. One factor seems to be a ranking of the site that posts a link to the site under consideration. Is a link from slashdot worth more or less than a link from del.icio.us? The advice: pretend Google isn't there."
Microsoft

Microsoft OneCare Last in Antivirus Tests 144

Posted by CowboyNeal from the not-so-great-expectations dept.
Juha-Matti Laurio writes "PC World has a story reporting that Microsoft's Windows Live OneCare came in dead last out of a group of 17 antivirus programs tested against hundreds of thousands of pieces of malware. The report of an Austrian antivirus researcher was released at the AV Comparatives Web site this week. Several free AV products were included in the test as well." While the top dog was able to find 99.5% of the malicious code, OneCare clocked in at 82.4%. Of course, there's no metric for the severity of the malware in the 17% gap.
News

Chimps Found Making Own Weapons to Hunt for Food 410

Posted by CowboyNeal from the boards-with-nails dept.
Pojut writes "The Washington Post has an article involving chimps and weapons. Apparently, there have been direct observations of chimps in the west African savannah modifying sticks to create spears. They then use these spears to kill small mammals and eat them. It is the first time that an animal other than a human has been directly observed in crafting a weapon for the purpose of hunting or killing."
Spam

Jail for Selling Email Lists to Spammers 172

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the losing-the-key dept.
amigoro writes "UK will start jailing the people who trade in email addresses, or any other personal data. The current Data Protection Act only fines people who do that, but the money one can make from trading in personal information was far higher than the measly GBP 5000 one had to pay if caught. The new regulations will result in a two year prison sentence for violating the Act."

Linuxcare Reincarnated as Levanta 71

Posted by CmdrTaco from the digging-out-a-classic-icon dept.
ches_grin writes "BusinessWeek is running a nice profile on Levanta, the former dot-com poster child once known as Linuxcare. From the article: 'It's not that Matt Mosman has an easy job. As Linux continues its march deeper into Corporate America's racks and racks of servers, his small Silicon Valley company, Levanta, is one of many trying to help companies install and manage all those servers--a big, complex problem that's not being solved very well right now. Still, Mosman has one thing going for him: He can't do much worse than his predecessors.'"

Final Fantasy vs. Oblivion 141

Posted by Zonk from the ready-fight dept.
An anonymous reader writes "bit-tech has up a short comparison between Final Fantasy VII and Oblivion. While Oblivion is touted as the latest and greatest PC-based RPG, Final Fantasy VII is held in the minds of many gamers as the best RPG of all time. From the article: 'At the time of its release, nearly ten years ago, FFVII received rave reviews from the press and the public, and it has a claim to being the best loved Final Fantasy game ... In a Top 100 Games of all time, it would be up there in the single digits. It is, by all accounts, Sergeant Pepper-Citizen Kane great. If something is great, it should be great whenever you pick it up -- buy a fresh copy of Pepper or Kane now and they'll still blow you away: they were great in '67 and '41, and they're great now. Is the same true of FFVII?'"

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