moodyblue - Slashdot User

Submission + - FreeBSD 8.1 Released (freebsd.org)

Submitted by hsn on Saturday July 24, 2010 @03:51PM

hsn writes: The highlights in the 8.1-RELEASE are the following:

[powerpc] FreeBSD now supports SMP in PowerPC G5 systems. Note that SMP support on FreeBSD/powerpc is disabled by default in GENERIC kernel.

[sparc64] FreeBSD now supports UltraSPARC IV, IV+, and SPARC64 V CPUs.

The ZFS zpool version has been updated to 14. The zfsloader has been added. This is a separate zfs(8) enabled loader. Note that a ZFS bootcode (zfsboot or gptzfsboot) need to be installed to use this new loader.

The bwn(4) driver for Broadcom BCM43xx chipsets has been added.

The run(4) driver for Ralink RT2700U/RT2800U/RT3000U USB 802.11agn devices has been added.

The sge(4) driver for Silicon Integrated Systems SiS190/191 Fast/Gigabit Ethernet has been added. This supports TSO and TSO over VLAN.

The uhso(4) driver for Option HSDPA USB devices has been added. A new uhsoctl(1) userland utility can be used to initiate and close the WAN connection.

The urtw(4) driver has been improved and now supports RTL8187B-based devices.

The ipfw(4) subsystem including dummynet(4) has been improved.

The pfil(9) framework for packet filtering in FreeBSD kernel now supports separate packet filtering instances like ipfw(4) for each VIMAGE jail.

The vlan(4) pseudo interface now supports TSO (TCP Segmentation Offloading). The capability flag is named as IFCAP_VLAN_HWTSO and it is separated from IFCAP_VLAN_HWTAGGING. The age(4), alc(4), ale(4), bce(4), bge(4), cxgb(4), jme(4), re(4), and mxge(4) driver support this feature.

The vlan(4) pseudo interface for IEEE 802.1Q VLAN now ignore renaming of the parent's interface name. The configured VLAN interfaces continue to work with the new name while previously the configurations were removed as the renaming happens.

The HAST (Highly Avalable STorage) framework has been added. This is a framework to allow transparently storing data on two physically separated machines connected over the TCP/IP network. HAST works in Primary-Secondary (Master-Backup, Master-Slave) configuration, which means that only one of the cluster nodes can be active at any given time. Only Primary node is able to handle I/O requests to HAST-managed devices. Currently HAST is limited to two cluster nodes in total.

FreeBSD cam(3) SCSI framework has been improved and a new kernel option option ATA_CAM has been added. This turns ata(4) controller drivers into cam(4) interface modules. When enabled, this option deprecates all ata(4) peripheral drivers and interfaces such as ad and acd, and allows cam(4) drivers ada, and cd and interfaces to be natively used instead. Note that this is not enabled by default in the GENERIC kernel.

The mvs(4) CAM ATA driver for Marvell 88SX50XX/88SX60XX/88SX70XX/SoC SATA controllers has been added. This driver supports same hardware as the ata(4) driver does, but provides many additional features, such as NCQ and PMP.

The liblzma library for LZMA2 lossless data compression algorithm and the userland utilities xz(1), xzdec(1), lzma(1), and lzmainfo(1). has been imported.

The ACPI-CA has been updated to 20100304.

ISC BIND has been updated to version 9.6.2-P2.

OpenSSH has been updated from version 5.1p1 to version 5.4p1.

OpenSSL has been updated to version 0.9.8n.

sendmail has been updated to version 8.14.4.

The supported version of the GNOME desktop environment (x11/gnome2) has been updated to 2.28.2.

The supported version of the KDE desktop environment (x11/kde4) has been updated to 4.4.3.

Submission + - stackoverflow-like gaming Q&A site launched (stackexchange.com)

Submitted by SecondaryOak on Saturday July 24, 2010 @02:57PM

SecondaryOak writes: As part of the initiative by the guys behind the highly-successful Stack Overflow to create a plethora of Q&A sites on topics other than programming, the gaming Q&A site seems to be gathering momentum. Just 16 days since the start of the private beta and 9 days since it was open to the public, the site has just surpassed the 1000-questions mark. If you ever wondered if it's possible to jump over the flagpole in Super Mario Bros., you might find an answer there.

Journal Journal: Work internet

Journal by moodyblue on Wednesday July 01, 2009 @09:07AM

The big boss or "chief" has decreed that the internet, apart from it's most unsound, unstable, and unreliable parts are now open to all users. This has resulted in a 50% increase in traffic to the internet, I hope the poor little proxy sized on for a couple of hundred users will cope!

Journal Journal: Sweet zombie Jackson

Journal by moodyblue on Friday June 26, 2009 @03:40AM

Sweet zombie Jackson, he has finally kicked the bucket. This means there will several unbearable days in which people cry rivers of crocodile tears over someone everyone has written off years ago. I hope it doesn't turn into a Princess Di part 2.

Journal Journal: First Post 1

Journal by moodyblue on Wednesday June 17, 2009 @05:13AM

I am going to use this journal or "blog" in the new money to vent about the Kafkaesque bureaucracy that infests my current workplace. Anyone working in the private sector will find the rules and regs used by all UK public sector organizations utterly baffling.

IT Labor Shortage Is Just a Myth 619

Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday March 10, 2008 @12:00PM from the also-roswell-and-jfk-and-high-fructose-corn-syrup dept.

buzzardsbay writes "For the past few years, we've heard a number of analysts and high-profile IT industry executives, Bill Gates and Craig Barrett among them, promoting the idea that there's an ever-present shortage of skilled IT workers to fill the industry's demand. But now there's growing evidence suggesting the "shortage" is simply a self-serving myth. "It seems like every three years you've got one group or another saying, the world is going to come to an end there is going to be a shortage and so on," says Vivek Wadhwa, a professor for Duke University's Master of Engineering Management Program and a former technology CEO himself. "This whole concept of shortages is bogus, it shows a lack of understanding of the labor pool in the USA.""

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