SwellJoe - Slashdot User

Submission + - Slashdot isn't the only bratty ten year old around

Submitted by

SwellJoe

on Wednesday October 03, 2007 @04:28AM

SwellJoe writes: "October 3rd, 2007, is the tenth birthday of another Linux/OSS/IT staple: Webmin.

Clocking in at over 400,000 lines of code, 9 million downloads, and a list of standard and third party modules too long to count in a lazy afternoon, Webmin has slowly but steadily grown to become the world's most popular web-based system administration tool. To celebrate, the developers are holding a logo contest (it's the most popular contest running at SitePoint right now, by far), as well as launching a new blog. The first article is an interview with Webmin's lead developer, Jamie Cameron, about the history of the project and its future."

Submission + - My Story: Why I Switched to Linux (madpenguin.org)

Submitted by tomyLNX on Wednesday October 03, 2007 @03:22AM

tomyLNX writes: MadPenguin.org's Matt Hartley entails his story on why he chose to switch over to Linux completely. He writes, "It was shortly before Vista's release that I had found myself falling in love with Ubuntu, because it offered me the best of the beginner and advanced worlds in one single distribution. My skills with Linux were such that I could have very well have stuck it out with Debian, but I instead felt that Ubuntu better reflected my own choice for a Linux distro.

Submission + - Have Pictures of French Fries? You're a Terrorist!

Submitted by

Complain Here

on Thursday May 24, 2007 @09:59PM

Complain Here writes: "What would've been an innocent story about how someone's nephews loved the Bridgeport-Port Jefferson Ferry's "Ferry Fries" turned bizarre when the ship's crew threatened a passenger with arrest for taking pictures of their food. Frederick A. Hall, vice president and general manager of the ferry company was unrepentant, however, and said that the threat of arrest over three pictures showing children with fries and the food counter was justified because "there have been past incidents where possible acts of terrorism have been threatened." Clearly, this can only mean that terrorists are working on Weapons of Fat Destruction, which pose a grave threat to the American Way."

Submission + - Researchers Enlist Humanity to Digitize Books

Submitted by Crazy Taco on Thursday May 24, 2007 @09:30PM

Crazy Taco writes: Researchers at Carnegie Mellon have discovered a way to use the popular CAPTCHA puzzles as a method to digitize books. While books are ordinarilly digitized using scanners and then turned into readable text using optical character recognition, some books are too old or faded for this technique to work. In that case, humans are needed to help decipher the text so that it can be digitized. This particular method can harness many humans to help in this time consuming process.

"Humanity is wasting 150,000 hours every day on these [CAPTCHAs]," said Luis von Ahn, an assistant professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon. He helped develop the CAPTCHAs about seven years ago. "Is there any way in which we can use this human time for something good for humanity, do 10 seconds of useful work for humanity?"

Apparently he found the answer to his own question.

Submission + - Sun pledges patents to defend Linux

Submitted by netdur on Thursday May 24, 2007 @09:13PM

netdur writes: From TFA

In a surprise move this week Sun Microsystems CEO, Jonathan Schwartz, said the company was ready to use the company's extensive patent portfolio to help defend Red Hat and Ubuntu Linux against Microsoft's patent threat.
Thank you Sun

Submission + - Snooping Smartphones

Submitted by

AlHunt

on Thursday May 24, 2007 @08:57PM

AlHunt writes: "According to CNN, your smartphone could be spying on you!

The top of the article says it all:

You go to the Web site, decide it's just another piece of spam, and move on through your normal daily routine. There's the check-by-phone payment of your credit card bill, a high-level confidential business teleconference discussing sensitive company information, and finally arranging a dinner with that cute co-worker you don't want your boyfriend to know about.

Little do you know that all the while, someone else has been watching — and listening.

Welcome to the brave new world of smartphone spying
"

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