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Software

Preload Drastically Boosts Linux Performance 144

Posted by kdawson from the getting-in-line-early dept.
Nemilar writes "Preload is a Linux daemon that stores commonly-used libraries and binaries in memory to speed up access times, similar to the Windows Vista SuperFetch function. This article examines Preload and gives some insight into how much performance is gained for its total resource cost, and discusses basic installation and configuration to get you started."
Software

Submission + - ODF v. OOXML: Eric Kriss, Peter Quin and the ETRM (consortiuminfo.org)

Submitted by
Andy Updegrove
Andy Updegrove writes: "Over the past 30 months I've conducted interviews with many of those most involved in the ODF-OOXML standards war, and received a great deal of inside information from them, some of which I have not previously shared. Last month, I launched an on-line book recounting the ODF saga, taking the story back to its roots in 2002 for those that tuned in late. In this fourth chapter of ODF vs. OOXML: War of the Words, I draw on a two hour interview with Peter Quinn's boss, State Secretary of Administration and Finance Eric Kriss, to tell the story of how Kriss and Quinn started down the road that would lead to the adoption of ODF — and much more."
Music

Submission + - NPR picks up RIAA lawsuits stories 3

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: NPR's programme Marketplace is running a series of segment specials in regard to how the RIAA's lawsuit strategy. The series is available for podcast, with the first being linked here, beginning at time stamp 19:50. While there is little new content for Slashdot readers, could this be the harbinger of the mainstream media and the general public finally taking notice?
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft loses anti-Trust EU case (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by CPUsInHotPlaces
CPUsInHotPlaces writes: The BBC is reporting that the European Union's "Court of First Instance" has ruled against Microsoft in the ongoing anti-trust case. As a result of this ruling, they must pay abide by the original ruling from 2004 (including a 497m euro fine), and also pay 80% of the EU commission's legal costs.

The only section of the original ruling that was not upheld was the comission's attempt to impose an independent monitoring trustee
Linux Business

Submission + - Mark Shuttleworth on Goals and Success (abclinuxu.cz)

Submitted by
tykev
tykev writes: "Mark Shuttleworth talks about success, failure, and the lessons he has learned. He gives his thoughts on Linux gaming, KDE vs. Gnome in Ubuntu, Microsoft's patent deals, the OpenXML format, and tivoization. From the interview: 'My interest is always in finding big changes in the world and then trying to accelerate them, and be part of them. [...] I won't start looking for another project until I'm comfortable that Ubuntu has fulfilled all its potential.'"
Operating Systems

Submission + - How-To: Switch Your Grandma to Linux (madpenguin.org)

Submitted by
LNX
LNX writes: "Matt Hartley of MadPenguin.org writes to let us know that a new article on How-To: Switch Your Grandma to Linux is up on his site. It's a humorous article that shows you how to take beginners, such as your grandma, and convert them into Linux users. He continues, "I've said it before, with the proper support in place, anyone can use certain Linux distributions successfully. And apparently, this has been shown to be true yet again. But even considering this success story, there remains a shortage of understanding on which dial-up modems will work and why, if that new all-in-one printer grandma just purchased will work with her chosen distribution and so on. Today, I will explore the viability of grandma, obviously not using some kind of broadband connection, making the switch. Hassle and benefit will be looked into here."
Biotech

Submission + - New Wonder Weed Fuels Cars 1

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "Jatropha, an ugly, fast-growing and poisonous weed that has been used as a remedy for constipation, may someday power your car. The plant, resilient to pests and resistant to drought, produces seeds with up to 40 per cent oil content that when crushed can be burnt in a diesel car while the residue can be processed into biomass for power plants. Although jatropha has been used for decades by farmers in Africa as a living fence because its smell and taste repel grazing animals, the New York Times reports that jatropha may replace biofuels like ethanol that require large amounts of water, fertilizer, and energy, making their environmental benefits limited. Jatropha requires no pesticides, little water other than rain and no fertilizer beyond the nutrient-rich seed cake left after oil is pressed from its nuts. Poor farmers living close to the equator are planting jatropha on millions of acres spurred on by big oil companies like British Petroleum that are investing in jatropha cultivation."
Announcements

Submission + - Brain Differences In Democrats and Republicans

Submitted by i_like_spam
i_like_spam writes: Scientists from NYU and UCLA report in Nature Neuroscience that the brains of Democrats and Republicans process information differently. This new study finds that the differences are apparent even when the brain processes common information, not just political topics. From the study, liberals were more likely to be accurate and showed more brain activity in the region associated with analyzing conflicts. A researcher not affiliated with the study stated, liberals 'could be expected to more readily accept new social, scientific or religious ideas.' Moreover, 'the results could explain why President Bush demonstrated a single-minded commitment to the Iraq war and why some people perceived Sen. John F. Kerry ... as a flip-flopper.
HP

Submission + - HP Plans It's Own Linux PCs to Beat Dell (madpenguin.org)

Submitted by thomas
thomas writes: HP is working on Linux PCs of its own to beat Dell, which shouldn't be too difficult considering Dell's minimal efforts in promoting Linux and open source. MadPenguin.org writes, "I think the biggest thing that ticked me off about Dell's Ubuntu offerings is that they put Canonical in charge of promoting their boxes. This is stupid, and they know darn well it should have been the other way around. I would like to see HP give both Windows and Ubuntu an equal mind share. Granted, there will need to be clarity regarding the legalities surrounding MP3 and WMV playback, but if someone would jump onto the clue train here and begin selling portable music players from iRiver (among others), which support OGG Vorbis, and allow users to provide YouTube videos showing how to legally (unless the US RIAA have changed their tune again ) rip CDs you own for playback onto your brand new OGG player, it should be fine.
Data Storage

Submission + - 48GigaBYTE flash chip (pennnet.com)

Submitted by Hal_Porter
Hal_Porter writes: Hynix have stacked 24 16 gigabit (2 gigabyte) NAND flash chips in a 1.4mm thick package, giving 48 gigabytes of storage. It's not clear if it's possible to write to them in parallel — if so the device should be pretty damn fast. The usual objection to NAND flash as a hard drive replacement is lifetime. NAND sectors can only be written 100,000 times or so before they wear out, but wear levelling can be done to spread writes evenly over at least each chip. I worked out that the lifetime should be much longer than a typical magnetic hard disk. There's no information on costs yet frankly and it sounds like an expensive proof of concept, but it shows you the sort of device that will take over from small hard disks in the next few years.
Google

Submission + - New Google Linux Apps Coming Soon !!

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: The goal of the Google Linux Client Team is to develop Linux desktop applications, such as what we have seen from Google Earth and Google Picasa with official Linux versions.Google had also made an interesting splash at the first-ever Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit (which they had kindly hosted at their Mountain View campus) during a presentation by the Google Linux Client Team. What was it? Well, there are some "significant accomplishments" and other new Google desktop applications coming out this year for the Linux platform.
Enlightenment

Submission + - Rolling my own parental controls in Linux

Submitted by ZekeSMZ
ZekeSMZ writes: It's been a year since I made the switch from windows to Ubuntu, and I can safely say I'm never going back. One of the best things I've done is to set up an Edubuntu system for my kids — ages 4 and 2. With applications such as Supertux, TuxPaint, G Compris, Stellarium and even Kolf, they amuse themselves for hours with the machine and can't damage it like they can a Windows box.

Now that my 4 year old is learning to read and type, I'd like to set up some form of parental controls on my network. I consider myself a moderately competant Linux user, but I do not have anything approaching the skills of the talented sysadmins I've worked with over the years. So, I'd like to reach out to the Slashdot community for advice on how to lock down my network so that they won't accidentally bump into the seedier side of the web.

What are the best firewall apps to use for internal filtering? Do (or could) any of them support pro-active whitelisting, where I could get an email with a blocked URL that my kids tried to visit, and in response — I set up a rule to allow or deny access to the URL. This is a fairly mainstream feature of various parental control software out there, how could a similar solution be set up in Linux?

I'm going to assume that my kids are smarter than me and will one day figure out how to own the network. You get bonus points if you can give pointers on setting up a dual system, one that they can hack, and one that is running in the background in silent or stealth mode to monitor activity. My intent here is not to be big brother, but rather a responsible parent.
The Media

Submission + - Commercial product descriptions on Wikipedia 1

Submitted by raner
raner writes: Recently my company sent out an internal request for comments concerning the modification and maintenance of existing Wikipedia pages about the company's products. Not surprisingly, this message came from the marketing department. I am a longtime Wikipedia fan, and my first gut reaction was "Uh oh, marketing and Wikipedia in the same sentence, does not sound like a good idea." What do people here think about this? Should companies edit Wikipedia pages that pertain to the company's own products?

In my view, it is possible to provide an informative description of a commercial product while still abiding by Wikipedia's rules of conduct. Clearly, a Wikipedia article cannot use the same lingo as an advertising brochure, but an objective (verifiable) description of a notable product seems to be okay by my book. After all, Wikipedia is full of articles about commercial products — http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Office, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coca-Cola, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audi_A4, etc. What we don't know is how much of these articles was contributed or edited by people who are actually associated with the product's manufacturer.

Keeping the recent Microsoft/Wikipedia scandal — http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/22/20 56214 — in mind, what is a good approach regarding this? Is it okay if the edits are within the rules stipulated by Wikipedia and the modifications are clearly attributed to a user that is associated with the company? For example, would you put some sort of mission statement on your user page that clarifies that the intention of the contributions is to make sure that all product information is accurate and up-to-date (and not just blatant advertising)? What about creating new articles about specific products? Or is it better to not edit or create pages at all and maybe just point out inaccuracies on the discussion page?

Comments and suggestions welcome!

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