jrepin - Slashdot User

Submission + - NSA Admits Retaining Snowden Emails, no FOIA for US press (matthewkeys.net)

Submitted by AHuxley on Saturday July 12, 2014 @04:19AM

AHuxley writes: The http://thedesk.matthewkeys.net... reports on a FOIA request covering "... all e-mails sent by Edward Snowden"
Remember how Snowden should have raised his concerns with his superiors within the NSA?
Remember how no such communication could be found?
Remember how one such communication was released but did not seem to be raising direct concerns?
Well some record of e-mail communications seems to exist but they are exempt from public disclosure under the federal Freedom of Information Act.

Submission + - The Q Platform uses Linux/OpenWRT to Control LED Light Bulbs and Stream Audio 1

Submitted by dmtaub on Friday July 11, 2014 @08:16AM

dmtaub writes: The Q is the only Open Source platform for music and light control on the market. In addition to using a smartphone to play music, set alarms/alerts, and trigger scenes, the Q will have a scripting IDE on the router configuration web page for aspiring programmers to play with light and sound.
There are only a few days left on the Kickstarter ( http://kck.st/1pCusil ) so now's the time to show support for a hackable smart-home platform that integrates music with colorful LED light bulbs.

Full disclosure: I am one of the co founders. Even though I am not working for them anymore, I still really want to see open-source, hackable LED lighting make its way to the masses.

Submission + - CentOS 6.5 vs. CentOS 7.0 NAS Performance Comparison (flexense.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 10, 2014 @02:42PM

Submission + - New Project to Get a Linux Distribution to run under Google's NaCl Sandbox (sourceforge.net)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 10, 2014 @09:40AM

An anonymous reader writes: Currently there is several challenges to getting Linux to run in the NaCl Sandbox inside Chrome.
I decided to approach an Google NaCl engineer with the idea. To say the least they are very interested in getting the broader community to work on fixing the following problems: Currently NaCl doesn't support pipes, most signals, nor symbolic links. Also supporting traditional fork is not currently possible in an efficient way. A custom spawn call is used. Forking and vFork are also are open ended issues. I think this would make for several great topics of master's thesis but have not found any place anywhere where one can submit ideas to that gets the attention the idea deserves. I have created a project here https://sourceforge.net/but have gotten no traffic on the idea at all. Slashdot users, how would you gather contributors to a really cool open source project?

Submission + - UK government to rush in emergency surveillance laws (theguardian.com) 2

Submitted by beaker_72 on Thursday July 10, 2014 @05:27AM

beaker_72 writes: The Guardian reports that the UK government has unveiled plans to introduce emergency surveillance laws into the UK parliament at the beginning of next week. These are aimed at reinforcing the powers of security services in the UK to force service providers to retain records of their customers phone calls and emails. The laws, which have been introduced after the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled that existing laws invaded individual privacy, will receive cross-party support and so will not be subjected to scrutiny or challenged in Parliament before entering the statute books. But as Tom Watson (Labour backbench MP and one of few dissenting voices) has pointed out, the ECJ ruling was six weeks ago, so why has the government waited until now to railroad something through. Unless of course they don't want it scrutinised too closely.

Submission + - Red Hat Extends Support, VMware Integration for OpenStack Platform (thevarguy.com)

Submitted by Mcusanelli on Wednesday July 09, 2014 @11:27AM

Mcusanelli writes: Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform 5 brings more efficiency, longer support and enhanced VMware support to Red Hat's open source enterprise cloud computing offering.

Submission + - No, Linux is not dead on the desktop (itworld.com)

Submitted by JimLynch on Wednesday July 09, 2014 @11:00AM

JimLynch writes: There are certain constants in life, and one of them is a never-ending spate of predictions that Linux is dead on the desktop. It's inevitable that we see these kinds of article popping up every once in a while. CIO has one of the latest examples of this as it tries to make the case that Linux is dead on the desktop.

Bah! I hate having to wade through these kinds of articles, but it's necessary to answer them lest the perception take root that "Linux is doomed!" and all the usual blather that goes along with such nonsense. Every single time I read one of these articles my eyes roll into the back of my head and various profanities burst from my lips.

Submission + - KDE Releases Frameworks 5 (kde.org)

Submitted by KDE Community on Monday July 07, 2014 @05:09PM

KDE Community writes: The KDE Community is proud to announce KDE Frameworks 5.0. Frameworks 5 is the next generation of KDE libraries, modularized and optimized for easy integration in Qt applications. The Frameworks offer a wide variety of commonly needed functionality in mature, peer reviewed and well tested libraries with friendly licensing terms. There are over 50 different Frameworks as part of this release providing solutions including hardware integration, file format support, additional widgets, plotting functions, spell checking and more. Many of the Frameworks are cross platform and have minimal or no extra dependencies making them easy to build and add to any Qt application.

Submission + - CentOS Linux Version 7 Released On x86_64 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 07, 2014 @04:06PM

An anonymous reader writes: Today, CentOS project unveiled CentOS Linux 7 for 64 bit x86 compatible machines. CentOS conforms fully with Red Hat's redistribution policy and aims to have full functional compatibility with the upstream product released in last month. The new version includes systemd, firewalld, GRUB2, LXC, docker, xfs instead of ext4 filesystem by default. The Linux kernel updated to 3.10.0, support for Linux Containers, 3d graphics drivers out of the box, OpenJDK 7, support for 40G Ethernet cards, installations in UEFI secure Boot mode on compatible hardware and more. See the complete list of features here and here. You can grab this release by visiting the official mirror site or via torrents. On a related note there is also a CentOS Linux 7 installation screencast here.

Submission + - CentOS 7 is here! 1

Submitted by nbritton on Monday July 07, 2014 @04:02PM

nbritton writes: The CentOS Project is pleased to announce the immediate availability of CentOS 7 for x86_64, including images for docker, and various cloud providers. There are many fundamental changes in this release, compared to previous releases of CentOS. Notably the inclusion of Linux kernel 3.10, SystemD, Gnome3, and a default filesystem of XFS. You can read the official announcement here, read the release notes here, and download a copy here.

Submission + - Operating System U Aims For The Year of Linux Desktop 1

Submitted by jones_supa on Sunday July 06, 2014 @07:02AM

jones_supa writes: A new Linux distribution under development is among the latest dreaming of commercial success in hopes of finally conquering the Linux desktop and having their OS pre-installed on systems being sold in brick and mortar stores. Operating System U is to be based off Arch Linux, run a modified version of the MATE Desktop Environment, and will use Wayland from the get-go. In the features page some criticism is given how buggy both MATE and X.org currently are and how better choices are needed. MATE shall also get a component they call "Startlight", which pairs the Windows Start Button with Apple's Spotlight. To make all of this a reality, the team is going to try a Kickstarter campaign later this month to raise $150,000 USD for the development of Operating System U, plus they're trying to rely on external funding as well. It is questionable whether that funding level will go very far for a team of ten with very lofty goals. Canonical has invested millions and employing hundreds of developers and still hasn't completely cracked the Linux desktop.

Submission + - Damian Conway On Perl 6 And The Philosophy Of Programming

Submitted by M-Saunders on Friday July 04, 2014 @07:49AM

M-Saunders writes: Perl 6 has been in development since 2000. So why, 14 years later, hasn't it been released yet? Linux Voice caught up with Damian Conway, one of the architects of Perl 6, to find out what's happening. "Perl 6 has all of the same features [as Perl 5] but with the rough edges knocked off of them", he says. Conway also talks about the UK's Year of Code project, and how to get more people interested in programming.

Submission + - Is Microsoft modding slashdot submissions?

Submitted by XB-70 on Thursday July 03, 2014 @11:34AM

XB-70 writes: I put what I thought was a witty comment on a Microsoft article and got modded troll.

I don't mind it — but it leaves me to wonder: Are Microsoft employees modding down non-supportive comments? What do Slashdot readers think?

Submission + - New Class of Stars Are Totally Metal, Says Astrophysicist (medium.com)

Submitted by KentuckyFC on Thursday July 03, 2014 @07:42AM

KentuckyFC writes: Stars form when clouds of gas and dust collapse under their own gravity, generating enough heat and pressure to fuse the atoms inside them together. When this cloud of dust and gas is the remnants of a supernova, it can contain all kinds of heavy elements in addition to primordial hydrogen, helium and lithium. Now one astrophysicist has calculated that a recently discovered phenomenon of turbulence, called preferential concentration, can profoundly alter star formation. He points out that turbulence is essentially vortices rotating on many scales of time and space. On certain scales, the inertial forces these eddies create can push heavy particles into the calmer space between the vortices, thereby increasing their concentration. In giant clouds of interstellar gas, this concentrates heavy elements, increasing their gravitational field, attracting more mass and so on. The result is the formation of a star that is made entirely of heavy elements rather than primordial ones. Astrophysicists call the amount of heavy elements in a star its "metallicity". Including preferential concentration in the standard model of star formation leads to the prediction that 1 in 10,000 stars should be totally metal. Now the race is on to find the first of this new class of entirely metal stars.

Submission + - Poor ethics could poison the big data well for everyone (citeworld.com)

Submitted by Copy that 2 on Wednesday July 02, 2014 @09:45AM

Copy that 2 writes: It's a cliché to say that with great power comes great responsibility, but it's true and the same applies to great opportunity. Big data is the next big opportunity, but if companies are going to get the most out of it, they need to be open, transparent, responsible and ethical.

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