Journal Journal: Please mod me down 1
I've been writing many stupid posts recently.
If you see such a post, please don't hesitate. Mod me down.
Modding me down will help to tame me and make me a better person.
Comment Drivers (Score 1) 2
...but I hope that I can learn to write drivers for hardware (never needed in Windows)...
You won't need to in a modern Linux distro either (unless you want to). Hardware support is generally very good. You'll find that 99% of the drivers you need are already in the kernel and work out of the box.
Comment Chuck & Larry (Score 1) 631
Does this remind anyone else of a scene in I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry?
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/I_Now_Pronounce_You_Chuck_and_Larry (See the first sentence in the third paragraph of the plot summery)
I just find it (the counter protest) funny that something similar happened in real life.
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/I_Now_Pronounce_You_Chuck_and_Larry (See the first sentence in the third paragraph of the plot summery)
I just find it (the counter protest) funny that something similar happened in real life.
Submission + - Windows Administrator move to Linux 2
x_IamSpartacus_x writes: I have been administering Windows machines for more than 10 years and am extremely comfortable in a Windows environment. I went to school as came out with a Windows Network Administration degree, my CCNA and a Cisco Network Admin degree and have worked in the corporate world administering mid-level scale Windows environments. Unfortunately, I took only 1 (basic) Linux administration class and promptly forgot it because it had no bearing on my degree plan(s). I know the slashdot community will hate me for this but I would really consider myself quite technical and yet I know virtually nothing about administering Linux. I am hoping that the slashdot community can (after forgiving me for my obvious lack of geeky Linux knowledge) help me get started on my quest to be as familiar with Linux as I am with Windows. I have no CS background so I am not a programmer but I hope that I can learn to write drivers for hardware (never needed in Windows) and get a deeper understanding of the Linux environment and it's strengths. Where should I start and what path should I follow to do this?
Submission + - Build a $200 Linux PC (extremetech.com)
WesternActor writes: Computers are getting cheaper to buy every year, but there are still sometimes advantages to building them yourself. ExtremeTech has a story about how they sought out the parts for a $200 computer that (of course) runs Linux as a way of breaking the budget barrier. They even test it against a commercially available eMachines nettop to see how it compares in terms of performance. This probably isn't something everyone will want to do, but it's an interesting example of something you can do on the cheap if you put your mind to it.
Submission + - Community College Degree Curriculums?
sinthetek writes: "I am searching for CS degree curriculums that aren't heavily rooted in proprietary technologies (preferably one with transferable credit for *nix classes). Does anyone know of any community colleges or technical schools that have a selection of transferable credit courses on Open technologies anywhere in the continental US? I've only found one or two and I am having to download PDFs to even find out most of the time so any recommendations or insight would be appreciated, thanks!"
Comment Re:WTF (Score 1) 213
Good point. That made me think. On the surface there is nothing wrong with a hello world program. However, technologies are only as effective, secure, and efficient as the systems on which they depend.
Believe it or not, I'm a "glass half full" kind of guy; I'm just paranoid :)
Believe it or not, I'm a "glass half full" kind of guy; I'm just paranoid
Comment Re:WTF (Score 1) 213
No. Humans make mistakes; it's a natural fact of life. To expect anything to be flawless is foolish.
Comment Re:Why is this alarming? (Score 1) 490
Sounds like you have a serious case of reality distortion
To the fanboys: I'm not trolling, it's called a joke.
Submission + - Microsoft takes over www.micksoft.com (blogspot.com)
An anonymous reader writes: I heard that Microsoft has threatened the owner of www.micksoft.com with a lawsuit because it infringes on Microsoft's trademark. The site is down now and the owner says that he is losing money because of it. It could be a typosquatter, i doubt that because he says he is a java programmer.
Submission + - Encoding video for mobile devices?
MadGeek007 writes: I am developing at app for Android that will use many short (averaging 10-20 minutes) instructional videos. Unfortunately, I know next to nothing about encoding video. I'd like to use a codec that is supported by Android and iOS out-of-the-box. I need the videos to look decent on large mobile displays (IPhone 4, HTC EVO,etc), and still be able to stream well on a good 3G connection. The sound quality is also important. With so many different display resolutions on mobile devices, do I need to encode multiple copies of the same video? Or can I get away with a one-size fits all video? Can anyone recommend encoding software, codecs, resolutions, and bitrates that would work best for this?
Submission + - Google's Googlebot indexing the IPv6 internet (fix6.net)
Japje writes: As of 18th of June (perhaps sooner) the Googlebot has been indexing websites via IPv6. This means unique content on the IPv6 internet will finally be searched and indexed.
From the combined log of Fix6.net:
"2001:4860:4801:1109:0:6006:1300:b075 — [18/Jun/2010:08:46:05 +0200] GET /robots.txt HTTP/1.1 200 69 Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)"
From the combined log of Fix6.net:
"2001:4860:4801:1109:0:6006:1300:b075 — [18/Jun/2010:08:46:05 +0200] GET
Submission + - Freebsd 8.1 Released (freebsd.org)
datentod writes: The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 8.1-RELEASE. This is the second release from the 8-STABLE branch which improves on the functionality of FreeBSD 8.0 and introduces some new features. Some of the highlights:
zfsloader ,zpool version of ZFS subsystem updated to version 14,NFSv4 ACL support in UFS and ZFS; support added to cp(1), find(1), getfacl(1), mv(1), and setfacl(1) utilities,UltraSPARC IV/IV+, SPARC64 V support, SMP support in PowerPC G5,BIND 9.6.2-P2,sendmail updated to 8.14.4,
OpenSSH updated to 5.4p1,GNOME 2.30.1, KDE 4.4.5
zfsloader
OpenSSH updated to 5.4p1,GNOME 2.30.1, KDE 4.4.5
Submission + - Scientists Find 2,700-year-old marijuana (grabi.co.cc)
An anonymous reader writes: Researchers say they have located the world's oldest stash of marijuana, in a tomb in a remote part of China. The cache of cannabis is about 2,700 years old and was clearly ``cultivated for psychoactive purposes," rather than as fibre for clothing or as food, says a research paper in the Journal of Experimental Botany.
The 789 grams of dried cannabis was buried alongside a light-haired, blue-eyed Caucasian man, likely a shaman of the Gushi culture, near Turpan in northwestern China.
The 789 grams of dried cannabis was buried alongside a light-haired, blue-eyed Caucasian man, likely a shaman of the Gushi culture, near Turpan in northwestern China.
Submission + - FreeBSD 8.1 Released (freebsd.org)
hsn writes: The highlights in the 8.1-RELEASE are the following:
[powerpc] FreeBSD now supports SMP in PowerPC G5 systems. Note that SMP support on FreeBSD/powerpc is disabled by default in GENERIC kernel.
[sparc64] FreeBSD now supports UltraSPARC IV, IV+, and SPARC64 V CPUs.
The ZFS zpool version has been updated to 14. The zfsloader has been added. This is a separate zfs(8) enabled loader. Note that a ZFS bootcode (zfsboot or gptzfsboot) need to be installed to use this new loader.
The bwn(4) driver for Broadcom BCM43xx chipsets has been added.
The run(4) driver for Ralink RT2700U/RT2800U/RT3000U USB 802.11agn devices has been added.
The sge(4) driver for Silicon Integrated Systems SiS190/191 Fast/Gigabit Ethernet has been added. This supports TSO and TSO over VLAN.
The uhso(4) driver for Option HSDPA USB devices has been added. A new uhsoctl(1) userland utility can be used to initiate and close the WAN connection.
The urtw(4) driver has been improved and now supports RTL8187B-based devices.
The ipfw(4) subsystem including dummynet(4) has been improved.
The pfil(9) framework for packet filtering in FreeBSD kernel now supports separate packet filtering instances like ipfw(4) for each VIMAGE jail.
The vlan(4) pseudo interface now supports TSO (TCP Segmentation Offloading). The capability flag is named as IFCAP_VLAN_HWTSO and it is separated from IFCAP_VLAN_HWTAGGING. The age(4), alc(4), ale(4), bce(4), bge(4), cxgb(4), jme(4), re(4), and mxge(4) driver support this feature.
The vlan(4) pseudo interface for IEEE 802.1Q VLAN now ignore renaming of the parent's interface name. The configured VLAN interfaces continue to work with the new name while previously the configurations were removed as the renaming happens.
The HAST (Highly Avalable STorage) framework has been added. This is a framework to allow transparently storing data on two physically separated machines connected over the TCP/IP network. HAST works in Primary-Secondary (Master-Backup, Master-Slave) configuration, which means that only one of the cluster nodes can be active at any given time. Only Primary node is able to handle I/O requests to HAST-managed devices. Currently HAST is limited to two cluster nodes in total.
FreeBSD cam(3) SCSI framework has been improved and a new kernel option option ATA_CAM has been added. This turns ata(4) controller drivers into cam(4) interface modules. When enabled, this option deprecates all ata(4) peripheral drivers and interfaces such as ad and acd, and allows cam(4) drivers ada, and cd and interfaces to be natively used instead. Note that this is not enabled by default in the GENERIC kernel.
The mvs(4) CAM ATA driver for Marvell 88SX50XX/88SX60XX/88SX70XX/SoC SATA controllers has been added. This driver supports same hardware as the ata(4) driver does, but provides many additional features, such as NCQ and PMP.
The liblzma library for LZMA2 lossless data compression algorithm and the userland utilities xz(1), xzdec(1), lzma(1), and lzmainfo(1). has been imported.
The ACPI-CA has been updated to 20100304.
ISC BIND has been updated to version 9.6.2-P2.
OpenSSH has been updated from version 5.1p1 to version 5.4p1.
OpenSSL has been updated to version 0.9.8n.
sendmail has been updated to version 8.14.4.
The supported version of the GNOME desktop environment (x11/gnome2) has been updated to 2.28.2.
The supported version of the KDE desktop environment (x11/kde4) has been updated to 4.4.3.
[powerpc] FreeBSD now supports SMP in PowerPC G5 systems. Note that SMP support on FreeBSD/powerpc is disabled by default in GENERIC kernel.
[sparc64] FreeBSD now supports UltraSPARC IV, IV+, and SPARC64 V CPUs.
The ZFS zpool version has been updated to 14. The zfsloader has been added. This is a separate zfs(8) enabled loader. Note that a ZFS bootcode (zfsboot or gptzfsboot) need to be installed to use this new loader.
The bwn(4) driver for Broadcom BCM43xx chipsets has been added.
The run(4) driver for Ralink RT2700U/RT2800U/RT3000U USB 802.11agn devices has been added.
The sge(4) driver for Silicon Integrated Systems SiS190/191 Fast/Gigabit Ethernet has been added. This supports TSO and TSO over VLAN.
The uhso(4) driver for Option HSDPA USB devices has been added. A new uhsoctl(1) userland utility can be used to initiate and close the WAN connection.
The urtw(4) driver has been improved and now supports RTL8187B-based devices.
The ipfw(4) subsystem including dummynet(4) has been improved.
The pfil(9) framework for packet filtering in FreeBSD kernel now supports separate packet filtering instances like ipfw(4) for each VIMAGE jail.
The vlan(4) pseudo interface now supports TSO (TCP Segmentation Offloading). The capability flag is named as IFCAP_VLAN_HWTSO and it is separated from IFCAP_VLAN_HWTAGGING. The age(4), alc(4), ale(4), bce(4), bge(4), cxgb(4), jme(4), re(4), and mxge(4) driver support this feature.
The vlan(4) pseudo interface for IEEE 802.1Q VLAN now ignore renaming of the parent's interface name. The configured VLAN interfaces continue to work with the new name while previously the configurations were removed as the renaming happens.
The HAST (Highly Avalable STorage) framework has been added. This is a framework to allow transparently storing data on two physically separated machines connected over the TCP/IP network. HAST works in Primary-Secondary (Master-Backup, Master-Slave) configuration, which means that only one of the cluster nodes can be active at any given time. Only Primary node is able to handle I/O requests to HAST-managed devices. Currently HAST is limited to two cluster nodes in total.
FreeBSD cam(3) SCSI framework has been improved and a new kernel option option ATA_CAM has been added. This turns ata(4) controller drivers into cam(4) interface modules. When enabled, this option deprecates all ata(4) peripheral drivers and interfaces such as ad and acd, and allows cam(4) drivers ada, and cd and interfaces to be natively used instead. Note that this is not enabled by default in the GENERIC kernel.
The mvs(4) CAM ATA driver for Marvell 88SX50XX/88SX60XX/88SX70XX/SoC SATA controllers has been added. This driver supports same hardware as the ata(4) driver does, but provides many additional features, such as NCQ and PMP.
The liblzma library for LZMA2 lossless data compression algorithm and the userland utilities xz(1), xzdec(1), lzma(1), and lzmainfo(1). has been imported.
The ACPI-CA has been updated to 20100304.
ISC BIND has been updated to version 9.6.2-P2.
OpenSSH has been updated from version 5.1p1 to version 5.4p1.
OpenSSL has been updated to version 0.9.8n.
sendmail has been updated to version 8.14.4.
The supported version of the GNOME desktop environment (x11/gnome2) has been updated to 2.28.2.
The supported version of the KDE desktop environment (x11/kde4) has been updated to 4.4.3.
