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Music

Submission + - Linux Music DJing

Submitted by
Cocodude
Cocodude writes: "I'm moving to a new house in London and as the house IT expert, I want to be in control of computerised music at a housewarming party. I haven't been able to find any suitable automated DJing systems for Linux, where I can queue up some songs to be played with an automated detection of the end of each song and hopefully some rudimentary beatmatching. I don't want to have to run Windows to do this, so how can I, in this simplistic situation, prove that open source software for an open source operating system can do the job?"
Handhelds

Submission + - Why is there no Firefox Mobile Browser?

Submitted by
GGCRabidGopher
GGCRabidGopher writes: "Being both a big fan of PDA's and Firefox, I had to ask myself why there is no Firefox browser for either the Palm OS or Windows Mobile. The standard version of IE that ships with windows mobile is very limited in it's ability do much of anything. There has to be a better mobile browser available but maybe I am just missing something."
Operating Systems

Submission + - Are .tmp files necessary or just bad programming?

Submitted by planckscale
planckscale writes: After spending another hour deleting .tmp files from a bloated XP machine I started to wonder, is the .tmp file necessary when coding an application on the MS platform? Why do so many apps produce .tmp files and is it just because of bad coding or does the use of them dramatically speed up an app? Don't coders use dev/null to reduce them in linux? I can understand the use of them in case an app crashes for recovery purposes, but why don't more apps have the capacity to delete their own .tmp files once they are done with them? Is it too much to ask to at least have the option when closing an app to delete your temp files?
Announcements

Submission + - Firehose malfunctioning?

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: I have a feeling all Up and Down votes are being counted as Down votes. There hasnt been any submissions that got above Blue today, and nearly everything i vote up quickly becomes purple.
It's funny. Laugh.

Are Sysadmins Really that Bad? 273

Posted by Cliff from the is-there-a-b0fh-near-you dept.
tgbrittai asks: "According to Paul Boutin they are merely an obstacle to be manipulated or outmaneuvered. According to Steve Wozniak they are pimps. I've known my share of good and bad sysadmins, programmers and every other professional role out there, and I have to wonder: are sysadmins really THAT bad?" Most times sys-admins are overworked and underpaid and have to deal with users who take advantage of their local IT person, tasking them to fix systems that they callously break. Others are truly worth the name "Bastard Operators from Hell". How would you rate your sys-admin and what things did you have to do to make things run smoothly (or not)?
Networking

Submission + - Korea

Submitted by
ech0
ech0 writes: "While talking to one of my friends from South Korea, he mentioned that most people in South Korea have fiber running into their homes compared to most of America's families having Cable and DSL. He asked, "Why is America so slow in adapting the new technology, when they are the ones who are creating designing most of it?" I could not answer him. Why do you think America is so slow in adapting?"
Slashdot.org

Submission + - The Power of Lightning

Submitted by
Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward writes: "In the mid 1990's I worked with a friend at a laboratory in Philadelphia. He was head of IT and I was a tech writer. On a stormy July night we were cruising down the main highway into the city and saw the sky lit up with spectacular lightning bolts everywhere. We looked at each other and said "Wow" or something like that. The next morning we saw the power of lightning. It all started when we tried to open the lab's door with our card swipe — it was dead. So we pulled out a key and opened the door — the lights were out and the security system was dead. Moving further into the building we found the computer driven phone system was dead too — if fact there were some melted circuits in the closet. But what literally blew us away was the UNISYS server in the office — both side metal doors were blown off and lying three feet away. The circuit boards resembled melted plastic (did I forget to mention the smell?) — there was no fire so we were lucky there. The tape that had been in the tape drive looked like melted goo pouring out the front. It was truly spectacular to look at. So we inspected the rest of the building and suspected lightning had a hand in this but it could have been a surge (we did have surge protection but that has its limits). We ended up on the roof and noticed the roof was covered with tiny bits of white plastic like snow. Then my friend said "Where's the alarm company antenna?" It turned out that it had shattered in a lightning hit and the alarm company had neglected to ground the antenna. Anyone else experience the power of lightning in the IT world?"
Data Storage

Submission + - Removable drive Filesystem for Linux and Windows

Submitted by kishore.avv
kishore.avv writes: Wonder which filesystem /.'ers use for their removable drives (with large numbers of small files), for windows and linux. NTFS is unstable on linux and YAReG/etc. are unstable for large number of files. Is there any really good journaling file system providing driver level (even user level is tolerable) but stable, operation for both operating systems? Googling does not help very much here.
Portables

Submission + - Best Linux Laptop

Submitted by
kcbanner
kcbanner writes: "I have been waiting to purchase my next laptop for quite some time now and have been wondering: What is the best brand/model of laptop to run Linux? This would mean all the devices are supported by the stock Linux kernel, without any ugly binary blobs needed. I am also a game developer, so it would need to have a fairly recent nVidia graphics card with generous amounts of RAM. It doesn't have to have Linux preinstalled (in fact I would prefer that it didn't). So whats the best laptop for Linux?"
Music

Submission + - Portable That Can Play MP3 from DVD?

Submitted by Denyer
Denyer writes: These days CD players that can handle MP3 from data CD are ubiquitous. Many portable DVD players also claim to play MP3s, but turn out to play them only from burned CDs, not burned DVDs. Can any /.ers recommend some models that definitely do play MP3 from DVD-R and/or DVD+R? Thanks!
Robotics

Journal Journal: Rare Japanese rollerskating robot for sale on Ebay 1

Journal by bizzykehl
If you were blown away by the recent Asimo showing at CES, it turns out you can *own* the next best thing. This skateboarding/rollerskating robot works great to relieve you of office boredom, and will definitely impress anyone who catches a glimpse of him.PLEN features unique balancing skills that help him skateboard/rollerskate/walk/kick around your workspace, and you can control him from your BREW-enabled cell ph
Programming

Submission + - People Don't Hate to Make Desktop Apps.. Do They?

Submitted by Annie Peterson
Annie Peterson writes: Paul Graham has been maknig the argument that desktop development is dead — That's his premise for declaring Microsoft dead as well, and he claims that no one out there likes to develop for the desktop anymore. But that's not true, or is it? Desktop development is easier, faster, more productive, and infitinetly more enjoyable — right? The question is, since Web Apps were originally built on desktop applications themselves, have the tables flipped? Or is it just wishful thinking?
User Journal

Submission + - Blood groups 'can be converted'

Submitted by mrneutron2004
mrneutron2004 writes: When someone is in need of blood, there sometimes isn't enough available. Motor vehicle accidents and major trauma can damage vital organs, leading to blood loss, and then shock. If blood can be given in a timely manner, it can give doctors the time they need to perform surgery and correct internal injuries. However, finding the right blood type to avoid rejection is a problem, thus patients are given 0- a universal blood type. With more blood available using this new technique, countless lives may be saved. For those against blood transfusions (Jehovah Witnesses), they are even working on "fake" blood. Scientists have developed a way of converting one blood group into another. The technique potentially enables blood from groups A, B and AB to be converted into group O negative, which can be safely transplanted into any patient. http://www.fastsilicon.com/latest-news/blood-group s-can-be-converted.html?Itemid=60
Networking

Submission + - Dreamhost down nearly 24 hours, thousands affected

Submitted by
dgtlmoon
dgtlmoon writes: "Following a planned power outage that went for an unplanned amount of time due to some burnt out cables discovered during the maintainence dreamhost.com hosted websites are down, some estimates are between 100,000 and 250,000 domains are affected, further-more when the power came back on they found a bunch of core routers to be dead and are having difficulty resuming normal operations, this is issue is just about to tick over to 24 hours open."

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