rtoads - Slashdot User

Comment Re:A file server? Linux? (Score 1) 417

by rtoads on Saturday July 24, 2010 @08:38AM (#33013026) Attached to: What To Do With an Old G5 Tower?

Yeah, but no more security patches or bugfixes for that OS. Thanks, Apple. Linux OTOH will remain current for the forseeable future.

Linux is also 100x more configurable for file serving, group permissions, etc.

We've got three legacy PPC machines running Debian and they work dandy as file and web servers. Even a 600Mhz G3 running Yellow Dog. Power draw is an issue, I guess, but we're not going to run out and buy a bunch of low-wattage servers tomorrow, so using them is a lot better than throwing them out.

Bark Beetles Hate Rush Limbaugh and Heavy Metal 220

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday February 11, 2010 @01:24PM from the tiniest-minds dept.

Aryabhata writes "According to scientists, climate change and human activity have allowed bark beetle populations to soar. They decided to fight the beetles by using the 'nastiest, most offensive sounds' that they could think of. These sounds included recordings of Guns & Roses, Queen, Rush Limbaugh and manipulated versions of the insects' own sounds. The research project titled 'Beetle Mania' has concluded that acoustic stress can disrupt their feeding and even cause the beetles to kill each other."

How Do You Measure a Game's Worth? 188

Posted by Soulskill on Saturday January 23, 2010 @06:26AM from the if-it's-frags-per-dollar-then-quake-live-wins dept.

RamblingJosh writes "Video games can be very expensive these days, especially with so many great games on the horizon. So I wonder: how exactly do you get the most gaming entertainment for your dollar? '... the first thing I personally thought about when approaching this was money spent versus time played. Using Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions as an example: I bought the game for about $30 Canadian, and played it for roughly 85 hours. That comes out to 2.83 hours per dollar spent, a pretty good number. In this case, the game was a lot of fun and it was cheap, and so the system works fairly well. There are so many other things to think about, though. What if the game wasn't so good? What about the fact that it's portable? ... What about the new content? Multiplayer?'"

Fighting With Your Fingers — A Canceled Indie Game Concept For Natal 45

Posted by Soulskill on Friday January 22, 2010 @11:51PM from the at-least-they're-thinking dept.

ChiefMonkeyGrinder writes "Though Microsoft's Project Natal won't be released until later this year, indie studio Arkedo has already revealed a canceled project for the peripheral. Called 2 Finger Heroes, it was to be a beat 'em up where your fingers do the fighting. 'Characters would be controlled by moving your fingers, while special moves could be done by incorporating your whole hand. The environment could even be affected by moving your arms folded at your chest.' On why it was canceled, one of the developers said, 'One of the design flaws of this, apart from the fact that it demanded some very precise pattern recognition from the Natal system, is that it would have been HELL to localize. Yup, what can be understood as the victory sign in France could be a terrible insult in the UK, for instance. And we are not even talking about Italian. Oh, the possibilities...'"

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