The Internet

Network Performance Testing? 18

Posted by Cliff from the simulating-bits dept.
ItsMr.Data asks: "Recently, the department I work in has been planning on rolling out a new gigabit backbone network. We have been looking for ways to test network congestion. I am looking for a simple but accurate tool to test different paths through the network. I looked at Iperf, but I wonder what other test setups are out there, and if any are customizable to emulate differing types of traffic, such as streaming media, file sharing traffic, and video conferencing. So, what network performance testing setups do you use?"
Music

Simplest Ogg Streaming Clients for non-Unix Users? 64

Posted by Cliff from the for-those-other-OSes-out-there dept.
Dr. Smeegee asks: "I recently set up an .ogg stream for beta testing, on a website chronicling my hometown's music scene in the 80's. I stream nothing but independent bands from the Evansville area. I chose IceCast using Ogg Vorbis for obvious reasons. The only problem is, I've been using ogg123 on BSD for so long, I didn't realize that streaming Ogg support is sketchy at best on the Windows and Mac platforms. Can anyone suggest good players? Or am I going to have to downgrade my sound and stream in .mp3?"
Software

Trip Planning Software for Linux? 62

Posted by Cliff from the plotting-your-nomadic-wanderings dept.
imadcow1 asks: "I recently went on a trip that involved many destinations. I had to use Yahoo Driving Directions which was not efficient at all. Is there a trip planning program (open source or not) for Linux?"
It's funny. Laugh.

Funniest IT Related Boasts You've Heard? 490

Posted by Cliff from the humorous-distraction-from-american-politics dept.
Karma asks: "The other day I saw a Slashdot comment which read, '[Projects] don't start getting interesting until you are dealing with Staff Years to develop them. Anything under that and you can actually keep the full design in your head'. An immodest boast, but not too funny. This made me wonder, in the macho worlds of IT and developers, what are the funniest and silliest boasts or bragging claims you've made, or heard? Tell us how they came back to haunt the overconfident."
Links

Monitoring the U.S. Elections Online? 535

Posted by Cliff from the tallying-up-those-electoral-votes dept.
shahman wonders: "I'll be on the road all day this election day, so the only access I'll have is through my PDA/Phone. I was wondering if any Slashdot readers know of WAP-enabled services or low-bandwidth sites that are providing (semi) real-time election coverage?" Nobbin has a similar, but less bandwidth-restrictive question: "I was wondering where I could find live results for the coming U.S. election, online. I live in Australia so I can't get them through watching CNN and so forth. I'm looking for something similar to the Austalian Electoral Commission's virtual tally room. So far, Google hasn't turned up much."
Displays

Are LCD Displays Ready For Gaming? 170

Posted by Cliff from the can-they-handle-the-framerate dept.
Player issues this query: "Since the holiday season is rolling around, I've been contemplating shelling out the big bucks for a nice LCD display. I'm a die-hard gamer, with several choices of monitors in the market today, it can get a little confusing. Ghosting seemed to be a problem with intense games, but with displays reaching 8ms-16ms response time, is it really an issue anymore? Is it time for this gamer to move on to greener pastures, or stay the course with my trusty CRT?"
Businesses

Where To Find Ambitious Business Partners? 50

Posted by Cliff from the searching-for-mbas dept.
LostInTranslation asks: "If I were an MBA looking to make a fantastic new dotcom company, I would look around places like /. to try and net some technical wizards to do my bidding. Sites like this collect that kind of tech genius. But the problem is that I already am a technical wizard, and what I need is someone who is driven to sell wizardry. Where does one find that kind of person? Is there some kind of newsgroup they frequent? I've done a few searches, but nothing of value came up. How does a geek find a suit that wants to be exploited?"

50K Linux Man Bites At Merkey.net 248

Posted by timothy from the guy-must-hate-speech dept.
magnany writes "In a recent article, former TRG CEO Jeff V. Merkey had offered to pay 50K USD for a BSD-licensed Linux. Groklaw did a followup on his offer, to which Jeff responded by notifying the FBI of Groklaw's 'hate crimes violation.' Merkey doesn't exactly have a great record, either, which is made even more apparent by his recent threats to file suit against Merkey.net for slander and trademark infringement, amongst others. In addition, he has also reported Merkey.net to the FBI's hate crime department. What could Merkey.net do to get Jeff V. Merkey off their backs?"

The Final Round of ILoveBees 56

Posted by Zonk from the hive-coming-to-a-close dept.
Ensign Trolltalk writes "The Alternate Reality Game ilovebees (previously covered here and here) has entered its endgame, with the presumably final round of telephone calls taking place Sunday October 31st. Anyone wishing to get involved before it's over should check out the latest axon list (available here in more human-readable format with GPS coordinates, city, state, call time, and links to maps) and be prepared for anything. On Thursday November 4th, live "Combat Training Exercises" will be held in New York, Chicago, Austin, and San Francisco. It's believed that attendees will get to see and play Halo 2 before the game's official release. See the 404 page for details on these events."

Clothing For Gadget Guys 154

Posted by CmdrTaco from the right-here-in-my-pocket dept.
Andru Edwards writes "In an article looking at the advancements in clothing for gear loving professionals, it becomes apparent that you no longer need to sacrifice your gadgets for style. SCOTTeVEST has recently released a sport jacket, khakis, and tie all specifically tailored with hidden pockets and compartments for businessmen who don't want to leave their tech at home. The clothing includes an integrated tunnel system which allows you to hide all the wires affiliated with your devices within the lining of the item, aptly dubbed the "Personal Area Network"."
Data Storage

Experiences w/ Software RAID 5 Under Linux? 541

Posted by Cliff from the how-well-has-it-worked-for-you dept.
MagnusDredd asks: "I am trying to build a large home drive array on the cheap. I have 8 Maxtor 250G Hard Drives that I got at Fry's Electronics for $120 apiece. I have an old 500Mhz machine that I can re-purpose to sit in the corner and serve files. I plan on running Slackware on the machine, there will be no X11, or much other than SMB, NFS, etc. I have worked with hardware arrays, but have no experience with software RAIDs. Since I am about to trust a bunch of files to this array (not only mine but I'm storing files for friends as well), I am concerned with reliability. How stable is the current RAID 5 support in Linux? How hard is it to rebuild an array? How well does the hot spare work? Will it rebuild using the spare automatically if it detects a drive has failed?"
Links

Cool RSS Feeds? 78

Posted by Cliff from the special-interest-monitors dept.
mgessner asks: "I'm searching for some new and interesting things to read related to geekdom, humor, the Internet, and all things technological. Normally, I'd search Google for this, but trying to find something like RSS feeds on Google would be like looking for a needle in a haystack: there's just too much to sift through. So, does anyone want to share their favorite RSS feeds (other than our own beloved /.) they'd like to recommend?"
Hardware Hacking

Getting a USB Peripheral Idea to Market? 67

Posted by Cliff from the turning-possibilities-into-realities dept.
WillAdams asks: "I have an idea for an almost embarrassingly simple USB device, which I believe would be fairly popular --- no hardware or device driver development skills though. Ideally I'd like to approach a company, hand the product idea off and just collect a small royalty. Unfortunately the most obvious choice doesn't accept product submissions. Any suggestions?"
Programming

Short Coding Projects? 122

Posted by Cliff from the things-you-can-complete-in-a-coupla-hours dept.
sapped asks: "Whenever somebody advocates a new programming language for you to try, they will usually suggest writing something in it that will take you an hour or two to code, so that you can get a feel for it. My problem is that I tend to go from extremely trivial ideas straight to stuff which will keep me busy, for at least a few days. I don't seem to have a handy in-between size project that I can test stuff in. The closest I came to this was writing a little ad-blocking proxy for my browser, a few years back. Any ideas on neat small non-trivial projects?"

Two New TLD's Near Approval 329

Posted by CmdrTaco from the still-waiting-for-dot-rob dept.
Iphtashu Fitz writes "The Associated Press is reporting that ICANN is nearing approval of two new top level domains: .travel and .post. The Universal Postal Union in Bern, Switzerland, wants ".post" for national postal services, local post offices, business partners and stamp collectors around the world. Private companies that provide postal services, such as Federal Express and UPS, also would be eligible. The Travel Partnership Corp., a New York-based trade group, seeks ".travel" for travel agents, airlines, bed and breakfast operators, tourism bureaus and others in the travel industry. ICANN is also considering eight other TLD's including .asia, .eu, and .jobs but they haven't progressed as far as .travel and .post. More information here."

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