DiniZuli writes "I've been employed by a small NGO to remake their entire IT-infrastructure from scratch. It's a small company with 20 employees. I would like to ask the /.-crowd what worked out best for you and why? I came up with a small list: Are there any must have books on building the IT infrastructure? New desktops: should it be laptops (with dockingstations), regular desktop machines or thin clients? A special brand? Servers: We need a server for authentication and user management. We also need an internal media server (we have thousands of big image and video files, and the archive grows bigger every year). Finally we would like to have our web server in house. Which hardware is good? Which setup, software and OS'es have worked the best for you? Since we are remaking everything, this list is not exhaustive, so feel free to comment on anything important not on the list."

If you spent a good portion of your childhood reading the classic "Choose Your Own Adventure" books, you'll be glad to know that you can soon waste countless hours at work turning to random pages on your iPhone. Edward Packard, one of the original authors of the series, has helped create an app called U-Ventures which uses special effects to create a story in the traditional Choose Your Own Adventure format. From the article: "The first U-Venture is a sort of a sequel to a classic title, The Cave of Time. In 'Return to the Cave of Time,' the U-Venture, 'you go back in the cave — you don't have a choice on that,' Packard tells NPR's Neal Conan. But from that point on, the reader chooses her own course."

Ponca City, We Love You writes "Bite a hot pepper, and after the burn your tongue goes numb. The Baltimore Sun reports that Capsaicin, the chemical that gives chili peppers their fire, is being dripped directly into open wounds during highly painful operations, bathing surgically exposed nerves in a high enough dose to numb them for weeks. As a result patients suffer less pain and require fewer narcotic painkillers as they heal. 'We wanted to exploit this numbness,' says Dr. Eske Aasvang, a pain specialist who is testing the substance. Capsaicin works by binding to C fibers called TRPV1, the nerve endings responsible for long-lasting aching and throbbing pain. Experiments are under way involving several hundred patients undergoing various surgeries, including knee and hip replacements using an ultra-purified version of Capsaicin to avoid infection. Volunteers are under anesthesia so they don't feel the initial burn."

AdamWill notes a Mandriva press release with the news that the government of Nigeria has selected Intel-powered classmate PCs running Mandriva Linux for educational use in a nationwide pilot. About 17,000 machines will be involved at first. We can only wonder at the maneuvering and negotiations that went on with the OLPC project. The latter had its first announced order for 100,000 XO machines, from Uruguay, with a potential for 400,000 over time. The bigger news out of OLPC is that Microsoft is porting XP to the platform, and chairman Nicholas Negroponte says that's fine with him: "It would be hard for OLPC to say it was 'open' and then be closed to Microsoft. Open means open."

PoliTech passed us a PC World link, noting that the newest version of OS X, Leopard, has already been adapted to run on a PC. "The OSx86 Scene forum has released details of how Windows users can migrate to Apple's new OS, without investing in new hardware -- even though installing Leopard on an PC may be counter to Apple's terms and conditions. The forum is offering full instructions on how to install the system, including screenshots of the installation process. Not all the features of Leopard function with the patch -- Wi-Fi support, for example, is reportedly inoperable. Historically, Apple's likely next move will be to track down and act against those behind the hack."

kungfujesus writes "The Pirate Bay crew has been working on this secret project for quite some time now. Back in April they wrote a cryptic post on their blog announcing that something was coming. In a response to this announcement TPB admin Brokep told TorrentFreak: "The past, the present and the future. It's all the same, but one thing's for sure, we will radiate for weeks", today it became clear that he was referring to the resurrection of Suprnova."

enharmonix writes "A bit of an update on the recent Digg revolt over AACS. The NYTimes has taken notice and written quite a decent article that actually acknowledges that the take-down notices amount to censorship and documents instances of the infamous key appearing in purely expressive form. I was pleased to see the similarity to 2600 and deCSS was not lost on the Times either. More interesting is that the EFF's Fred von Lohmann blames the digg revolt on lawyers. And in an opinion piece, John Dvorak expands on that theme."

Proudrooster writes "In the past two weeks AT&T has sent out disconnect letters to VOIP customers in big rude red letters, stating that VOIP service will be suspended in 30 days and permanently disconnected in 60 days. They cited E911 service as the reason. (It is peculiar that AT&T is unable overcome an E911 technical hurdle, since SBC/AT&T is also the local landline company in many areas where VOIP cancellation notices are being received.) Many AT&T VOIP customers have found that they are unable to transfer their phone numbers to a new provider. Further, AT&T is unwilling to set up a forwarding message directing callers to a new phone number for those who are unable to transfer their old numbers. In effect, AT&T has told many long-term VOIP subscribers: 'We are turning off your phone in 30 days, goodbye.'"