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Music

Submission + - A Slashdot for music news?

Submitted by stanners
stanners writes: Shoutmouth.com, a music news site inspired by Slashdot, announced its launch earlier this month. Shoutmouth encourages member-submitted articles and comments, but unlike some 'social news' sites where members vote a story to the top, Shoutmouth manually moderates and categorizes stories, similar to Slashdot. Shoutmouth is organized by music genres and has categories for more than 1,000 top music artists. Shoutmouth runs on Xaraya, the framework/CMS used by IT Manager's Journal, owned by Slashdot's parent company OSTG.
Space

Submission + - SpaceX to Make 2nd Launch Attempt of Falcon I

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: SpaceX will make their second attempt to launch their Falcon I rocket later today. The first attempt suffered an anomaly that resulted in the vehicle's exploding seconds after lift-off. SpaceX is one of two commercial partners with NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportations Services program to encourage development of commercial space transportation capability for eventual resupply of crew and cargo to ISS. Expected launch time is 4pm California time (11pm GMT) and will be viewable from their webcast. Previous slashdot coverage of SpaceX/COTS.
Space

Submission + - X Prize Takes Suggestions

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: According to Hobbyspace, The X Prize Foundation is teaming up with mobile startup Zannel to allow users to submit videos with their suggestions on the biggest problems facing mankind. The winner gets to go to the X Prize Cup. The contest is here.
Media

Submission + - Linux as an OS for music production?

Submitted by Ximogen
Ximogen writes: "You just can't get decent music production tools for anything but Windows and MacOS, and I'll not touch anything from Apple with a bargepole. If you believe otherwise let me know as I'd be interested to find out. I currently use Cubase 4 as my primary music production application along with an extensive library of VST instruments, effects and mastering tools. So any Linux (either open or closed source) alternative would need to support VST2 & VST3"

I included the above comment in a post relating to a different story but it got me thinking. I am a Windows user for many reasons but the most significant reason in recent years is that I've just not been able to find acceptable music production tools for Linux. Given that I'm repeatedly informed by Linux users that Linux is more stable and out-performs Windows on equal hardware AND that I am currently looking to spec a new PC for the sole purpose of music production I thought I might put this to the test.

Unfortunately I fell at the first hurdle, drivers for my E-MU 1820M (E-MU 1010M + IO breakout box + sync daughter card) and given that I don't want to replace a perfectly functional £300+ audio interface that is pretty much where I've got to. Of course £300+ is peanuts compared to the extensive library of VST instruments, effects and mastering tools I've purchased over the years so if the performance benefits of moving to Linux were sufficient and I could utilize my existing library of VSTs I would consider new audio hardware.

While talking of hardware the new PC is likely to be built around an Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 2.4GHz CPU on an Intel DP965LT motherboard.

Am I barking up the wrong tree here? Is there likely to be enough of a performance difference to give any practical benefit? Does anyone out there use Linux for music production?

Any thoughts or recommendations gratefully received!
Security

Submission + - Security a top issue as teleworking grows

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes: "Security continues to dominate as IT's most pressing concern when it comes to supporting a large telecommuting workforce. But while security is a concern, teleworking, especially in the government realm, continues to grow at an impressive clip according to a study released by the CDW Government consultancy today. The group's report says during the past year, telework growth in the Federal government also outpaced the private sector: 35% of Federal teleworkers started teleworking, compared to 10% of private-sector teleworkers. It also said 44% of Federal employee respondents to the survey indicate that they have the option to telework — up 6% from 2006 — while 15% of private-sector employee respondents have that option, CDW says. http://www.networkworld.com/community/?q=node/1263 3"
Linux Business

Submission + - Central User Management w/Linux desktop and server

Submitted by
mvip
mvip writes: "With the Desktop improvements of the latest releases of Ubuntu Desktop I'm seriously considering migrating one of the offices I administrate entirely over to Linux. All the software that is not available for Linux will run under Wine, so no problems as far as that is concerned.

My thoughts is to install a server with some Linux distribution (Ubuntu Server or Gentoo), and then Ubuntu Desktop on the clients (a handful of them). The only thing I really need from the server is to share files, but I would also like to have central user management.

Now, as far as I know there are two ways to go when it comes to central user authentication; Kerberos or Samba w/ PDC. Kerberos seems to be the 'Unix'-way to do it (recommended in FreeBSD's handbook) , while Samba PDC is more like a mixed-environment solution. Both of these solutions can use OpenLDAP as a back-end, which I need. As for the file-sharing, I guess NFS goes with Kerberos, while obviously Samba takes care of the Samba file-sharing.

What I really want to know is what kind of experience people have when it comes to this. Which is the most 'optimal' way to go, and what would work with the least amount of tweaking/hacking?

I posted on both Ubuntu and Gentoo's forum, but received little feedback."
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - Phillips invent dynamic pants

Submitted by
Matthew Sparkes
Matthew Sparkes writes: "Philips has come up with a way to change the size and shape of clothes by weaving "muscle wires" into the fabric. The wires are made of shape-memory alloys that change length according to the small current passed through them. The idea is that you can try on a pair of trousers and change the length of the wires in the fabric until the trousers have the correct waist size, inside leg and width — then simply try the real trousers in exactly that size. Dynamic pants could also be useful for those Slashdotters with dynamic waist measurements..."
Power

Submission + - Mechanical Amplification Demonstrated

Submitted by
Sterling D. Allan
Sterling D. Allan writes: "A physicist from Serbia, from whence Tesla sprang, has come up with a notion that could be the most monumental discovery in gravity and inertia since Newton. Veljco Milkovi has received patents (awarded the rare "an original scientific work" designation) and has built demonstration devices to show how secondary up-and-down oscillations created by the primary back-and-forth oscillations of pendulum action evince many times more force than the force required to keep the pendulum in motion. A researcher from Utah recently replicated Milkovic work using bicycle parts, confirming the claim, and setting forth a simple DYI approach for the quest to derive useful energy from this phenomenon."
Programming

Submission + - Programming as a career?

Submitted by Jimmy
Jimmy writes: I've successfully applied for a CS-type degree starting this year. I'm pretty excited about it, and I know I'll enjoy the course. However, I have this big looming doubt about the IT industry. Some sources say that demand for graduates is outstripping supply, while others claim that both demand and supply have dropped. What's the true story? Should I turn down my offers and go build a career in auto repair? I really want to do this for a living, but is the money in it any more?
The Internet

Submission + - The state of web annotation

Submitted by
joeljkp
joeljkp writes: "The promise of web annotation systems is great: the ability to comment on specific content of any website, to correct errors and misconceptions, and to provide background information for future readers. It seems that this promise has not been fulfilled, but not for lack of trying. Notwithstanding systems like Stet, which work for local content only, there have been attempts ranging from Annozilla, a Firefox extension that works with the W3C's Annotea spec, to "Web 2.0" offerings such as Diigo and Fleck. Why haven't any of these systems caught on, and is there any hope in sight? If the community picks one, can we boost it to success?"
Handhelds

Submission + - SSH2 Client Released for PSP

Submitted by Croakyvoice
Croakyvoice writes: Zx-81 a prolific homebrew coder for the PSP has released a port of Dropbear to the PSP under the name PSPSSH: SSH2 Client for PSP : " Dropbear is a relatively small SSH 2 server and client. It runs on a variety of POSIX-based platforms. Dropbear is open source software, distributed under a MIT-style license. Dropbear is particularly useful for "embedded"-type Linux (or other Unix) systems, such as wireless routers. ""
Space

Submission + - Mars Rover Churns Up Yellow Soil

Submitted by
SeaDour
SeaDour writes: "Scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory are taking a closer look at images sent back by the Mars rover Spirit nearly a year ago, showing bright yellow soil that had been churned up by the rover's wheels. The soil appears to contain high concentrations of sulfur as well as traces of water. "This material could have been left behind by water that dissolved these minerals underground, then came to the surface and evaporated, or it could be a volcanic deposit formed around ancient gas vents," said Dr. Ray Arvidson. Researchers are planning to see if the soil turns up anywhere else in the area, potentially giving more clues as to its origin."

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