Data Storage

How Do You Handle Home Media? 381

Posted by timothy from the one-bit-at-a-time dept.
carpoolio writes "Yahoo's Tech Tuesday has an interesting series on bridging the PC/home entertainment gap. The solutions are fairly complicated, and very Windows-centric. As I store more media on my PowerBook, I'm finding more ways I can't listen to or view it on my stereo and TV. One example: TiVo Desktop won't stream AAC files - only MP3s - from iTunes to TiVo. That's an easy fix, but still: how do you get stuff off of your computer and onto your TV, stereo, etc.?"
Software

Dealing with Inherited Data and Code? 34

Posted by Cliff from the organizing-the-informational-glut dept.
bhima asks: "Recently I have inherited an embedded project which developed and maintained by a recently acquired company. The 'technology transfer' consisted of me traveling to their facility for two weeks of special high intensity training and returning with a couple of hard drive, equivalent DVD-ROMS, 200 kilograms of paper and a stack of tape backups. These contain a lot of interesting and important data but it is in every conceivable format: hundreds of megabytes of Outlook PST files, Adobe PageMaker & Illustrator (4 different versions for Mac & PC), Gerber files, Microsoft Office files (every version ever), Visio Files, Tiffs, Jpegs, AutoDesk Files, Pro-E files. To top it all off they used no concurrent versioning system for their firmware so I have hundreds of tar.gz files that are snapshots of code, plus the resultant binary record for version represented by the tar file. We have a student translating all of the CAD data to our system, but that's only part of the story. Is there an easy way to get the firmware in to CVS or subversion? What's the best way to organize all of this data so that it's actually usable?"
Graphics

Reading FilmX Picture Files? 71

Posted by Cliff from the accessing-unconventional-file-types dept.
bzlman asks: "I just broke my finger and instead of conventional x-rays, the ER gave me a CD with huge picture files on it from the company called FilmX from sorna.com. Unfortunately, the software to read the pics is for Windows, and the file type for the images (each about 10 MB) is 'command line' (the files are of no conventional type). I've tried opening the files with every image program for Mac OS X and Classic, to no avail. These are high quality images I want to see, and I hope someone can help me find a Mac OS X way to view them. Thanks."
Wireless Networking

A Linux Server Express for Portable Wi-Fi? 37

Posted by Cliff from the powered-by-the-penguin dept.
crome wonders: "The new Apple Airport Express is a little wonder of technology. It packs a wi-fi base station with all the usual capabilities of base stations plus the iTunes over network thing in one little square appliance that plugs directly to the power plug in the wall. I have a few of these and I am quite happy with them. Often however, when I most need a wi-fi base station on the go, I also need a server on the go. For example, in my second home I have an old DSL modem, and I have an Airport Express but I have no way to share the connection over wi-fi because the Airport Express doesn't support PPTP. Having a similarly formatted small Linux server with two ethernet ports, a usable Linux distribution on it with all the tools one needs when traveling, and some disk space to save stuff would be great. Any hints on what components to use or anything that comes close to a Linux Server Express?"
Education

An Open Source License for Education? 50

Posted by Cliff from the on-alert-for-legal-licensing-gotchas dept.
Erno_Rubaiyat asks: "The educational foundation that I work for is preparing to release some software. We are committed to releasing it with an Open Source license, but are unsure what license to use. I was curious if anyone had considered or compared the Sakai license to the Creative Commons licenses? I like the Sakai license because it is so simple, but does it leave any obvious areas open for abuse? As a side note: we are including several packages that are licensed under the LGPL and the GPL. Are there any pitfalls that we should be aware of while licensing our 'original' work with a different license than these components?"
The Almighty Buck

Employee Stock Options? 358

Posted by Cliff from the are-these-worth-anything-in-today's-economy dept.
Evil Butters asks: "ComputerWorld has an interesting article regarding the decline of Employee Stock Options. Long gone are the days when companies would pass out stock options like toilet paper (as you were lucky if it was worth as much). Since most of us are probably in IT related fields, is anyone seeing any turn-around in compensation packages -- especially for IT folk? Everywhere I look, companies are still cutting back and finding reasons why compensation does not need to be increased (except for CEO's of course) no matter what your performance is like. But according to the article, 54% of the top S&P 250 companies are (at least) using restricted stock as performance perks, etc."
Programming

What OSS Programs are Still Needed? 290

Posted by Cliff from the itches-that-need-scratching dept.
suso asks: "I was thinking yesterday about how much open source software is out there already. Most categories are filled, but I wonder about what pieces of software still need to be written. What programs would you like to see in OSS form that are currently not available?"

Kim Peek, aka Rain Man Focus of NASA Study 366

Posted by CmdrTaco from the check-out-the-big-brain-on-brad dept.
Bob Vila's Hammer writes "Kim Peek - an autistic man who has been deemed a "mega-savant" for his astonishing knowledge of 15 grand subjects ranging from history and literature, geography and numbers, to sports, music and dates - is a part of a new NASA study to explore the changes in his brain since MRI images were originally taken in 1988. Not only was he the basis of the main character in the movie Rain Man, but he apparently is getting smarter in his specialty areas as he gets older. The study has scientists hoping that technology used to study the effects of space travel on the brain will help explain his mental capabilities."
News

Optimal 24 mark Golomb Ruler Proven 46

Posted by michael from the number-crunching dept.
A user writes "Four years ago, distributed.net users undertook the search for the optimal 24 mark Golomb Ruler. This year sees the successful conclusion of that effort. The diagram of the optimal ruler can be seen here. If you have no idea what a Golomb Ruler is, you can read up on them. Work on finding the optimal 25 mark ruler is still in progress."
United States

Could Nuclear Power Wean the U.S. From Oil? 1615

Posted by Cliff from the just-as-long-as-we-don't-glow-in-the-dark dept.
bblackfrog asks: "Is a Federal nuclear energy program viable? That is, can the USA eliminate our economic dependence on crude oil with a large scale federal program to build and maintain enough nuclear power plants to replace our current oil-based energy needs? The obvious political hurdles are (a) the left opposes nuclear energy, (b) the right opposes federalizing energy, and (c) the oil companies and Saudis wield a lot of clout. This makes a federal nuclear energy program far fetched I admit, however I'm more interested in the economics. Slashdot has covered advances in nuclear power technology. China's doing it." (Read more, below.)
Data Storage

Live CD for PPC? 45

Posted by Cliff from the hard-drive-not-required dept.
An anonymous reader writes "After reading this article, I was pretty excited about trying an Ubuntu live CD on my Mac, because I've heard a lot about the distro. But it turns out the only live CD is for x86. Looking around for PPC live CD's that support modern hardware (like a G5) and demo modern versions of KDE and Gnome has proven fruitless so far. Does Slashdot know of any current projects that have released or are working on releasing a nice PPC live CD?"
Operating Systems

Small, Fast RDP Client? 40

Posted by Cliff from the linux-for-a-specific-task dept.
Tazor asks: "I'm working for a small municipality in Denmark where most of our users are using our Windows terminal servers. Now we want to run a RDP client on our older PCs (133 mhz, 32 mb RAM, 2 gb disks). We figure that the best way to do this, is to use open source, and this is where I need your help. I'm trying to find a small Linux distro, running from either a floppy disk or from hard disk, that boots straight into a RDP client logon screen. It needs to be easy to customize (not much Open Source knowledge in our department) so that we can configure hostnames and set the distro to use Danish keyboard settings. We would also like it to be free. I found PilotLinux, but it runs from a Live-CD and is difficult to customize (for a PFY like me anyways). Hope that hardcore OSS geeks in here can help me."
Software

Control Panels for Web Hosting? 61

Posted by Cliff from the easing-website-administrivia dept.
jstrzalko asks: "I recently started a web design and hosting company and am looking at all of the control panel solutions to offer my clients. I consider myself quite adept at Linux so server administration is not the issue. I just want to be able to allow my clients to easily add/remove email addresses and domains, give them stats, manage their databases etc. Has anyone had good experience with any of them? I am currently running Fedora Core3 (test3) on my server, if that helps anyone."
The Courts

How has the USA PATRIOT Act Affected You? 1062

Posted by Cliff from the long-reach-of-Washington dept.
wetdogjp asks: "October 26th, 2004 marked the third anniversary of the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act (or USA PATRIOT Act, as it is more commonly known). While the Slashdot crowd can certainly muster the enthusiasm to debate its pro's and con's, I'd like to know: How has the USA PATRIOT Act affected you, personally? How has it interfered with your personal and professional life? Has this act influenced your Presidential vote?"
The Internet

Solutions to Ease the DDOS Trickle-Down Effect? 15

Posted by Cliff from the snowballing-traffic dept.
dealsites asks: "Recently, The Electorial Vote website run by Andrew Tanenbaum was hit with a triple-threat. Not only was it Slashdotted, it was hit with a DDOS attack in conjunction with the busiest normal traffic day, due to the election. Netcraft has an article detailing the steps taken to mitigate the traffic. Andrew's host provider is also the provider of my site. I'm sure were are on separate servers, him a dedicated server and semi-dedicated hardware for myself, but I noticed dramatic slowdowns of my site during this triple-threat traffic onslaught to Andrew's site. Are there any techniques other than throwing more CPUs and bandwidth at the problem to remedy this type of situation? I'm sure I can't be the only one that has noticed this. Any comments on other similar stories?"

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