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GUI

Hardware-Accelerated Graphics On SGI O2 Under NetBSD 75

Posted by timothy from the progress-in-unexpected-places dept.
Zadok_Allan writes "It's a bit late, but since many readers will remember the SGI O2 fondly, this might interest a few. The gist of the story is this: NetBSD now supports hardware accelerated graphics on the O2 both in X and in the kernel. We didn't get any help from SGI, and the documentation available doesn't go beyond a general description and a little theory of operation, which is why it took so long to figure it out. The X driver still has a few rough edges (all the acceleration frameworks pretty much expect a mappable linear framebuffer, if you don't have one — like on most SGI hardware — you'll have to jump through a lot of hoops and make sure there's no falling back to cfb and friends) but it supports XRENDER well enough to run KDE 3.5. Yes, it's usable on a 200MHz R5k O2. Not quite as snappy as any modern hardware but nowhere near as sluggish as you'd expect, and since Xsgi doesn't support any kind of XRENDER support, let alone hardware acceleration, pretty much anything using anti-aliased fonts gets a huge performance boost out of this compared to IRIX."
Censorship

UK Gov. Clueless About Own Internet Blacklist 203

Posted by kdawson from the get-me-someone-with-a-clue dept.
spge writes "Computer Shopper magazine has interviewed the UK Home Office about its relationship with the Internet Watch Foundation and discovered that the government doesn't actually know what the IWF does, although it still plans to force UK ISPs to subscribe to the IWF's blacklist. The main story makes for interesting reading, but the best bit is the full transcript of the interview. Short version: the IWF investigates suspected child porn websites and adds any it finds to a list that ISPs can use to block these sites; uk.gov wants ISPs to use this list; however, the IWF is not an official government organization, does not appear to have legal permission to view child pornography, and quite possibly is breaking the law by doing so."
Hardware Hacking

MacBook Modded With Second Monitor Inside Logo 153

Posted by kdawson from the heart-on-your-sleeve dept.
An anonymous reader from the Macmod forum wrote in with this appealing hack: "This is one of the coolest mods I've seen all year. Mac Moder EdsJunk submitted this mod to our forums late Thursday night. By cracking open a MacBook he was able to put a second monitor inside of the screen. The end result is sweet. The second monitor can make the Apple logo have any kind of background, like the clown fish, or the flurry screen saver."

Comment Re:wrong on several counts... (Score 1) 298

by modir (#27046481) Attached to: Best Solution For HA and Network Load Balancing?

Since when is it possible to have an Active/Active cluster? Definitely not with Microsoft Cluster Server from Microsoft 2003:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Cluster_Server

And as I wrote in my article I am only writing about this one. And I was not talking about "Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003" or the NLB feature.

And about the vmware solution: He could create a snapshot of the running vm then copy the disk file(s) over to the other server and then delete the snapshot again. This whole process can be scripted with perl and RCLI. He only needs two ESXi servers for this. And they can be downloaded for free. It is definitely not the best solutions but one that would work.

And yes, your solution is probably the best one for his problem.

Comment Re:Some information about HA (Score 2, Informative) 298

by modir (#27038849) Attached to: Best Solution For HA and Network Load Balancing?

True, sorry I did not write it that clear. I was only writing about the Cluster software included with Windows. Not about other applications like NLB included with Windows too.

I just wanted to make clear that Microsoft Cluster Server is a lot easier to set-up (what the questioner has seen correctly) but this is because you get a lot less. He would have to install and configure several other applications (like NLB) to get the same as he gets with Linux HA.

Comment Some information about HA (Score 3, Informative) 298

by modir (#27038269) Attached to: Best Solution For HA and Network Load Balancing?

I want to give you some more information. Based on your visitor estimates I think you do not have a lot of knowledge about it. Because for this number of visitors you do not really need a cluster.

But now to the other stuff. Yes, Windows clustering is (up to Win Server 2003 [1]) a lot easier. But this is because it is not really a cluster. The only thing you can do is having the software running on one server, then you stop it and start it on the new server. This is what Windows Cluster is doing for you. But you can not have the software running on both servers at the same time.

If you really want to have a cluster then you need probably some sort of shared storage (FibreChannel, iSCSI, etc.). Or you are going to use something like DRDB [2]. You will need something like this too if you want to have a real cluster on Windows.

I recommend you to read some more on the Linux HA website [3]. Then you get a better idea what components (shared storage, load balancer, etc.) you will need within your cluster.

If you only want high availability and not load balancing then I recommend you to not use Windows Cluster. Better set-up two VMware servers with one virtual machine and then copy a snapshot of your virtual machine every few hours over to the second machine.

[1] I don't know about Win Server 2008
[2] http://www.drbd.org/
[3] http://www.linux-ha.org/
Music

French President Busted For Copyright Violation 317

Posted by kdawson from the do-as-i-say dept.
An anonymous reader writes "ZeroPaid has an interesting take on the story of Nicolas Sarkozy being accused of copyright infringement. The irony, of course, is Sarkozy's pushing of a 3-strikes law — disconnecting from the Internet those accused of file sharing — in France and across the EU. The French president had apparently offered to settle the copyright infringement accusation for one Euro, but the band rejected the offer, calling it an insult. The article notes that each year since 2006, a high-profile anti-piracy entity has been on the wrong end of a copyright infringement notice. In 2008, Sony BMG was sued for software piracy. In 2007, anti-piracy outfit BASCAP received a cease and desist order related to pirated software. And in 2006, the MPAA was accused of pirating 'This Film is Not Yet Rated'."
Security

Submission + - Obama Helicopter Security Breached by File Sharing 1

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "A company that monitors peer-to-peer file-sharing networks has discovered a potentially serious security breach involving President Barack Obama's helicopter. "We found a file containing entire blueprints and avionics package for Marine One, which is the president's helicopter," says Bob Boback, CEO of Tiversa, a security company that specializes in peer-to-peer technology. Tiversa was able to track the files, discovered at an IP address in Tehran, Iran, back to its original source. "What appears to be a defense contractor in Bethesda, Md., had a file-sharing program on one of their systems that also contained highly sensitive blueprints for Marine One," says Boback adding that someone from the company most likely downloaded a file-sharing program, typically used to exchange music, not realizing the potential problems. "I'm sure that person is embarrassed and may even lose their job, but we know where it came from and we know where it went." Iran is not the only country that appears to be accessing this type of information through file-sharing programs. "We've noticed it out of Pakistan, Yemen, Qatar and China. They are actively searching for information that is disclosed in this fashion because it is a great source of intelligence.""
Wireless Networking

Contest For a Better Open-WRT Wireless Router GUI 217

Posted by kdawson from the doing-well-by-doing-good dept.
Reader RoundSparrow sends word of a contest, with big cash prizes, being mounted by a commercial vender of open source Open-WRT routers. You have 10 months to come up with "the most impressive User Interface/Firmware for Ubiquiti's newly released open-source embedded wireless platform, the RouterStation." Entries are required to have open source licensing and will all be released. First prize is $160,000, with four runners-up receiving $10,000. RoundSparrow adds: "Could be built on top of existing X-WRT or LuCI OpenWRT web interfaces. OpenWRT Kamikaze 8.09 was just released. Now is perfect timing for OpenWRT to get some kick-ass interface and usability ideas. I'm not affiliated with the contest vendor."

Comment Re:Support Incident Tracker (Score 1) 321

by modir (#27010113) Attached to: Best FOSS Help Desk Software For Small Firms?

I can only recommend this one too... I have to evaluate a new trouble ticket system last week. And of all the open source products I found this one was the best.

We had OTRS before. OTRS is very good too, but really hard to install.

A friend is using RT. Now with the newest version the user interface looks really good too. And I think many problems mentioned by others are gone.
Image

The Art of The Farewell Email 703

Posted by samzenpus from the so-long-suckers dept.
With so many people losing their jobs, the farewell email, letting colleagues and contacts know where you are moving and how you can be reached, has become common. Writing a really good one, whether it be funny, sad or just plain mad is an art form. Chris Kula, a receptionist at a New York engineering firm, wrote: "For nearly as long as I've worked here, I've hoped that I might one day leave this company. And now that this dream has become a reality, please know that I could not have reached this goal without your unending lack of support." In May, lawyer Shinyung Oh was let go from the San Francisco branch of the Paul Hastings law firm six days after losing a baby. "If this response seems particularly emotional," she wrote to the partners, "perhaps an associate's emotional vulnerability after a recent miscarriage is a factor you should consider the next time you fire or lay someone off. It shows startlingly poor judgment and management skills — and cowardice — on your parts." Let's hear the best and worst goodbye emails you've seen.
Censorship

IWF Backs Down On Wiki Censorship 226

Posted by kdawson from the that-streisand-thing-again dept.
jonbryce writes "The Internet Watch Foundation, guardians of the Great Firewall of Britain, have stopped censoring Wikipedia for hosting what they considered to be a child porn image. They had previously threatened to block Amazon for hosting the same image." Here is the IWF's statement, which credits the Streisand Effect for opening their eyes: "...in light of the length of time the image has existed and its wide availability, the decision has been taken to remove this webpage from our list. Any further reported instances of this image which are hosted abroad, will not be added to the list. ... IWF's overriding objective is to minimize the availability of indecent images of children on the internet, however, on this occasion our efforts have had the opposite effect."
The Military

40 Years Ago, the US Lost a Nuclear Bomb 470

Posted by kdawson from the chrome-dome-down dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "A BBC investigation has found that in 1968 the US abandoned a nuclear weapon beneath the ice in northern Greenland after a nuclear-armed B52 crashed on the ice a few miles from Thule Air Base. The Stratofortress disintegrated on impact with the sea ice and parts of it began to melt through to the fjord below. The high explosives surrounding the four nuclear weapons on board detonated without setting off the nuclear devices, which had not been armed by the crew. The Pentagon maintained that all four weapons had been 'destroyed' and while technically true, investigators piecing together fragments from the crash could only account for three of the weapons. Investigators found that 'something melted through ice such as burning primary or secondary.' A subsequent search by a US submarine was beset by technical problems and, as winter encroached and the ice began to freeze over, the search was abandoned. 'There was disappointment in what you might call a failure to return all of the components,' said a former nuclear weapons designer at the Los Alamos nuclear laboratory. 'It would be very difficult for anyone else to recover classified pieces if we couldn't find them.'"

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