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jregel asks: "Linus has stated that dump should not be considered a reliable backup program, and both tar and cpio have their limitations. So what are Slashdot readers doing for backing up Linux servers and workstations? (you do backup, right?)" Given this bit of news, have you used anything other than the standard Unix staple to back up your Linux boxes? If you were forced off of tar, cpio and dump, what would you use as a replacement?

looflirpa writes "Here is a post from Linus Torvalds. Seems like he has had enough linux for now, and is searching for a new leader for the linux kernel development. Certainly a shame, but everybody knew that this had to happen, sooner or later" This also is your chance to voice who should take the reins from the kernel's originator.

Stephen Cass dropped this into my submissions box last week, and he figured all of you might be interested in this editorial regarding research institutes, corporate interests and how this relationship may develop in the future. He writes, "Freely available software, developed by researchers, is good for science and keeps commercial companies on their toes. In an era of quasi-monopolies, research institutions should encourage it." Intrigued? Read the article below and think about ways in which we can answer this question: What can we do to we keep researchers in the Open Source community and not lose them (and their science) to the Corporate World where their breakthroughs will become another piece of "Intellectual Property"?

The following is an Editorial which appeared in the Jan. 20 issue of Nature Journal. Reprinted here with permission:

In Praise of Open Source Software

"Imagine how the Web might look today had it been invented by Microsoft and made proprietary, rather than at the European Laboratory for Particle Physics (CERN), where it was made available free. Scientists tinkering with computers to create tools for their research for no profit have underpinned the computer revolution. The bounds of supercomputing are being pushed back by hugely demanding challenges, such as protein folding and the cosmos; many of the pioneers of the Internet are not Internet millionaires, but are still labouring in their laboratories.

The profit motive, and the investments that go with it, are often essential. The scrappy, early 'Mosaic' browser designed at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois only took off when some of the scientists who invented it went on to set up Netscape. But the abuse of commercial monopolies is also too evident, with much of the world having been held hostage to the dismal operating system DOS for more than a decade.

This issue -- providing equitable access to all scientists and not just the richest -- is about to become critical as companies rush to build bioinformatic tools for genomics. Tools that add value to genome data are to be welcomed, but as the licensing strategy being adopted by Celera Genomics becomes clear, it gives new grounds for wariness. Unfortunately, restrictive material-transfer agreements are also becoming the rule even in publicly funded institutions. While academic research centres are an important cradle for industrial development, it is crucial that the not-for-profit motive should be respected when the needs of research communities are best served in this way.

The high cost of some journals has attracted enormous attention over the past few years, whereas the high cost of software and the often exorbitant licence charges have not. Most scientific software is proprietary, and beyond the reach of many poorer parts of the scientific community worldwide. All the more reason to be grateful, therefore, for the continuation of the open spirit in the tradition of Internet pioneers. Witness the group of Californian scientists developing sophisticated 'freeware' for DNA chip technology. The software, which users say compares favourably with costly commercial software, can be downloaded from the Web. Another example: scientists at the Max Planck Institute in Potsdam have made freely available a vast suite of plug-and-play tools, 'Cactus', that allows scientists from any discipline to use supercomputers without needing to know advanced computing techniques. A Japanese scientist is giving away E-Cell, a package that simulates basic cell processes. And so on.

The open-source movement has found its apogee in the Linux operating system developed by Linus Benedict Torvalds (see http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/~torvalds) as a 'hobby' -- which IBM last week decided to put at the core of its hardware plans. Because the code is not proprietary, it is being built on and debugged by an army of amateur developers worldwide, many of them academic scientists.

In short, amateur software developers are playing a key role in keeping systems open. But such activities need to be encouraged and professionalized by academic institutions; plans in France to create a research centre to provide bioinformatic tools for industrial and academic researchers build on the tradition of the Centre d'Etude du Polymorphisme Humain, the U.S. National Center for Biotechnology Information and the European Bioinformatics Institute. At a time when Microsoft looks as if it may be broken up (shades of AT&T) into 'Baby Bills', it would be ironic if science, and biology in particular, became a victim of new monopolies.

Nature © Macmillan Publishers Ltd 2000 Registered No. 785998 England.

Hautis asks: "I read somewhere that it should be possible to use huge, old fixed-sync monitors with any (*vga) video card under Linux, once you tell XFree86 the exact sync ranges or whatever values it needs. I happen to have a couple of old VAXen, that is, VAXstations, lying around in my family's cellar. 19 inch mono and RGB tubes, fixed sync. What kind of cables would I need (I can solder well enough)? Would I be able to use text modes also, would a frame buffer beneeded for this? What about (S)VGAlib? Can I have two graphics adapters, one conn't to my crappy old 15-inch and one to the huge ancient particle accelerator? Or should I switch between the displays when I want to use X? Will I get a cancer for staying up nights surrounded by 80's display technology?"

Jouni K Seppänen wrote in to tell everyone that Lars Wirzenius typed in his speech from LinuxExpo. It was pretty cool and I'm sure many of you will enjoy it. Mircea Ciocan wrote in to tell us that the indestructable distribution has risen from ages of silence. We now have Slackware 3.5b2 online for those daring slackers willing to join in. I started with Slackware years ago, and Dave still prefers it. And I know he and the other diehards will be happy that it's still alive. Finally, for a laugh, ewjc wrote in to give us a link to This Wired Article about a nudist who allows access to her site for anyone, unless you have Microsoft affiliations. On one hand, It's a blatant PR stunt designed to cash in on the current tidal wave of anti MS feelings, on the other hand, it's free nudity! (Laugh! I'm kidding! Sheesh. I better go back to the homework before I try to be funny again *grin*.