elasticwings - Slashdot User

Submission + - Frank Zappa's Influence on Linux and FOSS developm (devx.com)

Submitted by Roblimo on Thursday June 03, 2010 @01:22PM

Roblimo writes: Zappa's Dinah-Moe Hummm is totally about Linux, at least in spirit, while the song Montana, with its talk of zirconium-encrusted tweezers and dental floss, "is obviously about Mac users." Not only that: In the early 70s Zappa wrote a song called Penguin in Bondage, an obvious foretelling of the anti-Linux lawsuits and threats from SCO, Microsoft, and other evildoers. Zappa was also a heavy user of the Synclavier, an electronic music-machine that was a precursor to today's "studio on a computer" recording and sound editing software. According to the article on DevX, today Zappa would no doubt be using Linux and Ardour for most of his recording and composition.

Submission + - Lessons in Hardware/OS Troubleshooting (itexpertvoice.com)

Submitted by

Esther Schindler

on Monday April 12, 2010 @03:27PM

Esther Schindler writes: "We like to imagine that every OS installation will work just as well as the vendor or open source community promises. When things don’t work out, identifying and remedying the case of failure can be time consuming and frustrating. This lesson in how to determine why Windows 7 didn’t install may help you troubleshoot a problem of your own — and save you from a Lost Weekend.

Maybe you'll find this useful all on its own. But the real key here is that the author is Ed Tittel — who's written over 100 books. If this hardware geek spends days solving a CPU-meets-Windows 7 problem, what chances do mere mortals have?"

Submission + - Crowdsourcing the Department of Public Works (oreilly.com)

Submitted by blackbearnh on Monday April 12, 2010 @10:21AM

blackbearnh writes: Usually, Gov 2.0 deals mainly with outward transparency of government to the citizens. But SeeClickFix is trying to drive data in the other direction, letting citizens report and track neighborhood problems as mundane as potholes, and as serious as drug dealers. In a recent interview, co-founder Jeff Blasius talked about how cities such as New Haven and Tucson are using SeeClickFix to involve their citizens in identifying and fixing problems with city infrastructure. "We have thousands of potholes fixed across the country, thousands of pieces of graffiti repaired, streetlights turned on, catch basins cleared, all of that basic, broken-windows kind of stuff. We've seen neighborhood groups form based around issues reported on the site. We've seen people get new streetlights for their neighborhood, pedestrian improvements in many different cities, and all-terrain vehicles taken off of city streets. There was also one case of an arrest. The New Haven Police Department attributed initial reports on SeeClickFix to a sting operation that led to an arrest of two drug dealers selling heroin in front of a grammar school."

Comment Special Driver? (Score 5, Funny) 133

by elasticwings on Tuesday March 07, 2006 @01:47PM (#14867757) Attached to: Investor Money Goes To Magic Lag Reducing Tech

Maybe it's a regular old NIC, but part of the driver just shuts down all your P2P apps and torrents.

Comment Re:Teaching (Score 1) 131

by Dee-Ann LeBlanc on Friday July 09, 2004 @04:26PM (#9655918) Attached to: WineX Install Goes Sour for LinuxWorld Editor

I repeatedly point out where to find the information about what hardware you have on your system (like in /proc). In that class, most people simply don't want to take the time to figure it all out, and rather than torture them I try not to force it. The information can't really be prepared ahead of time, either, to include in the course materials since we can't know what computers will be in the classroom--so I don't know exactly what every piece of hardware is in the system, myself, unless I take the time to go through it. Even if we've used the room before, we could end up in a situation like I did in one class where the computers had been replaced 2 weeks ago. I'm sorry you didn't like the class.

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