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kuwan writes "IBM has just released a press release that indicates they have the new PowerPC 970 running at 1.8 to 2.5 GHz making it 'the fastest PowerPC so far.' IBM's original estimates were to have the chip running at 1.4 to 1.8 GHz at introduction, so this is very good news for those of us hoping Apple will use this as their next-generation chip."

Bill Kendrick writes "ZDNet, Geek.com and others are reporting IBM's decision to choose Trolltech's Qtopia (the embedded version of their Qt library, used by the Sharp Zaurus PDA) in their forthcoming devices. See the announcement at Trolltech's website, and an earlier press release at IBM.com." Here's an earlier post about the new IBM reference platform.

molrak writes "Garry Kasparov has written his thoughts and observations on the difference between his recent battle with Deep Junior as opposed to his battle against Deep Blue, including some of the fundamental differences between the two programs. If you missed out on the event, you can catch up with it at the site of the event's sponsor, including both 2d and 3d viewing options. (Note, viewing options require both site registration with x3dworld and proprietary Microsoft software.)"

Dan writes "The Journaled File System for FreeBSD (JFS4BSD) Project has the goal of porting the JFS Technology from IBM/Linux to FreeBSD. It uses a log-based, byte-level file system that was developed for transaction-oriented, high performance systems. Scalable and robust, its advantage over non-journaled file systems is its quick restart capability: JFS can restore a file system to a consistent state in a matter of seconds or minutes. The jfsutils is under a compilable state on FreeBSD."

Dan writes "The Journaled File System for FreeBSD (JFS4BSD) Project has the goal of porting the JFS Technology from IBM/Linux to FreeBSD. It uses a log-based, byte-level file system that was developed for transaction-oriented, high performance systems. Scalable and robust, its advantage over non-journaled file systems is its quick restart capability: JFS can restore a file system to a consistent state in a matter of seconds or minutes. The jfsutils is under a compilable state on FreeBSD."

gholmer writes "The Blackdown project has finally released a production version of Java 1.4.1 for both ix86 and Sparc on Linux. This much-awaited release gives Linux users another choice for Java besides Sun's and IBM's."

rjnagle writes "The availability of HOW-TOs and newsgroups is supposed to make the sysadmin's job easier, right? Much as I am a proponent of the 'distributed learning model' for Linux, the endless searching for answers on the Web for setting up Linux RAID was getting to be a royal pain. Sure, there was a RAID how-to and an excellent newgroup, but some of the information is out of date, and the tricks suggested by people a year ago may be no longer needed today. Robert reviews the O'Reilly title Managing RAID on Linux below to see how it stacks up to HOWTOs, guesswork and anecdotal evidence. Managing RAID on Linux author Derek Vadala pages 245 publisher O'Reilly rating The best reviewer Robert Nagle (aka idiotprogrammer) ISBN 1565927303 summary This book brings RAID to the masses

A person deciding to go with RAID faces a panoply of options and gotchas. Hardware or software? How many controllers? ATA or SCSI (or ataraid)? RAID 1 or RAID 5? Which file system or distribution? Kernel options? Mdadm or raidtools? /swap or /boot on raid? Hybrid? Left or right symmetric? One poster pointed out that putting two ATA drives on the same controller could impact performance. Yikes! Didn't I do that? Upon discovering that O'Reilly had just published its Managing RAID on Linux book, looking at sample chapter , I bought the book and let my blood pressure return to normal.

RAID is one of these subjects that is really not complex; it's just very hard to find all the information in one place. This is precisely the book to solve the problem. Author Derek Vadala, sysadmin and founder of Azurance.com, an open source/security consulting firm, has gathered a lot of information and even personal anecdotes to go through the decision making process when going over to RAID. He goes step-by-step through that process, educating us about hard drives, controllers, and bottlenecks along the way. This exhaustive book may be the first to bring RAID to the masses.

Although parts of the book (RAID types, file system types) may seem already familiar to experienced Linux users, it is helpful nonetheless to have everything in a nifty little book. A section of file systems provided not only a rundown of the merits and drawbacks of each one, but also a guide to their utilities. I learned for example what "file tails" for Reiser are, and why using them causes performance to degrade after reaching 85% capacity. The book compares raidtools with mdadm as well as lovely commands like nohup mdadm -monitor -mail=paranoidsysadmin@home.com (which, if you haven't guessed, causes the system to email you RAID status reports upon boot).

People who use software RAID may skip over the chapter on RAID utilities for the leading RAID controller cards. Still, there was one interesting tidbit: Why, the author asks, do makers of controller cards put all their BIOS utilities on DOS floppies which require us to find a DOS boot disk? Seriously, how many of us carry around DOS boot disks nowadays? The book made me aware for the first time of freedos, an open source solution that solves precisely that problem.

The Software RAID stuff was pretty thorough and clarified a lot of things. The book does an excellent job in helping to identify and eliminate bottlenecks and optimizing hard drive performance (using hdparm and various monitoring commands). The anecdotes and case studies definitely clarified which RAID solution is suited for which task.

I am less impressed by the book's sections on disaster recovery and troubleshooting. Although these subjects are brought up at several places in the software RAID chapter, the book could have discussed several failure scenarios or used a fault tree (such as the famous Fault Tree in Chapter 9 of the Samba book, a marvel for any tech writer to read). The book doesn't even discuss booting with software RAID until the last 10 page of the book and then gives it only a single paragraph (even though the author acknowledges it as "one of the most frequently asked questions on the linux-raid mailing list."). Call me old-fashioned, but isn't the ability to boot into your RAID system ... kinda important? As someone who just spent a significant amount of time troubleshooting RAID booting problems in Gentoo, I for one would have liked more insight into the grub/lilo thing. Also, in the next paragraph in the last chapter on page 228, the author casually mentions that "all /boot and / partitions must be on a RAID-1." Say what? Please pity the poor newbie who religiously follows the instructions in the book but fails to read until the end. I'm not sure what the author meant by this statement, but it required a much more substantial explanation and needed to go into a much earlier chapter.

These complaints don't detract very much from this excellent book, a true O'Reilly classic and a model of clarity and helpfulness. This book provides enough knowledge to avoid the dread and uncertainty that comes with trying to tackle Linux RAID. With a book like this, a sysadmin can sleep a little easier.

Recommended Readings:

• Reliable Linux , by Iaian Campbell, Wiley and Sons, Dec 2001, ISBN: 0471070408. Gives excellent information not only about RAID but on general Linux reliability issues.
  
• Software RAID in the Linux 2.4 Kernel by Daniel Robbins. (Part Two).
  
• Linux Journal Article on Software RAID by Joe Edwards, Audin Malmin and Ron Shaker. ( Part Two).
  
• "How to do a gentoo install on software RAID" by Chris Atwood. Gentoo User Forum.

Robert Nagle (aka Idiotprogrammer )is a Texas technical writer, trainer and Linux aficionado. You can purchase Managing RAID on Linux from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

rjnagle writes "The availability of HOW-TOs and newsgroups is supposed to make the sysadmin's job easier, right? Much as I am a proponent of the 'distributed learning model' for Linux, the endless searching for answers on the Web for setting up Linux RAID was getting to be a royal pain. Sure, there was a RAID how-to and an excellent newgroup, but some of the information is out of date, and the tricks suggested by people a year ago may be no longer needed today. Robert reviews the O'Reilly title Managing RAID on Linux below to see how it stacks up to HOWTOs, guesswork and anecdotal evidence. Managing RAID on Linux author Derek Vadala pages 245 publisher O'Reilly rating The best reviewer Robert Nagle (aka idiotprogrammer) ISBN 1565927303 summary This book brings RAID to the masses

A person deciding to go with RAID faces a panoply of options and gotchas. Hardware or software? How many controllers? ATA or SCSI (or ataraid)? RAID 1 or RAID 5? Which file system or distribution? Kernel options? Mdadm or raidtools? /swap or /boot on raid? Hybrid? Left or right symmetric? One poster pointed out that putting two ATA drives on the same controller could impact performance. Yikes! Didn't I do that? Upon discovering that O'Reilly had just published its Managing RAID on Linux book, looking at sample chapter , I bought the book and let my blood pressure return to normal.

RAID is one of these subjects that is really not complex; it's just very hard to find all the information in one place. This is precisely the book to solve the problem. Author Derek Vadala, sysadmin and founder of Azurance.com, an open source/security consulting firm, has gathered a lot of information and even personal anecdotes to go through the decision making process when going over to RAID. He goes step-by-step through that process, educating us about hard drives, controllers, and bottlenecks along the way. This exhaustive book may be the first to bring RAID to the masses.

Although parts of the book (RAID types, file system types) may seem already familiar to experienced Linux users, it is helpful nonetheless to have everything in a nifty little book. A section of file systems provided not only a rundown of the merits and drawbacks of each one, but also a guide to their utilities. I learned for example what "file tails" for Reiser are, and why using them causes performance to degrade after reaching 85% capacity. The book compares raidtools with mdadm as well as lovely commands like nohup mdadm -monitor -mail=paranoidsysadmin@home.com (which, if you haven't guessed, causes the system to email you RAID status reports upon boot).

People who use software RAID may skip over the chapter on RAID utilities for the leading RAID controller cards. Still, there was one interesting tidbit: Why, the author asks, do makers of controller cards put all their BIOS utilities on DOS floppies which require us to find a DOS boot disk? Seriously, how many of us carry around DOS boot disks nowadays? The book made me aware for the first time of freedos, an open source solution that solves precisely that problem.

The Software RAID stuff was pretty thorough and clarified a lot of things. The book does an excellent job in helping to identify and eliminate bottlenecks and optimizing hard drive performance (using hdparm and various monitoring commands). The anecdotes and case studies definitely clarified which RAID solution is suited for which task.

I am less impressed by the book's sections on disaster recovery and troubleshooting. Although these subjects are brought up at several places in the software RAID chapter, the book could have discussed several failure scenarios or used a fault tree (such as the famous Fault Tree in Chapter 9 of the Samba book, a marvel for any tech writer to read). The book doesn't even discuss booting with software RAID until the last 10 page of the book and then gives it only a single paragraph (even though the author acknowledges it as "one of the most frequently asked questions on the linux-raid mailing list."). Call me old-fashioned, but isn't the ability to boot into your RAID system ... kinda important? As someone who just spent a significant amount of time troubleshooting RAID booting problems in Gentoo, I for one would have liked more insight into the grub/lilo thing. Also, in the next paragraph in the last chapter on page 228, the author casually mentions that "all /boot and / partitions must be on a RAID-1." Say what? Please pity the poor newbie who religiously follows the instructions in the book but fails to read until the end. I'm not sure what the author meant by this statement, but it required a much more substantial explanation and needed to go into a much earlier chapter.

These complaints don't detract very much from this excellent book, a true O'Reilly classic and a model of clarity and helpfulness. This book provides enough knowledge to avoid the dread and uncertainty that comes with trying to tackle Linux RAID. With a book like this, a sysadmin can sleep a little easier.

Recommended Readings:

• Reliable Linux , by Iaian Campbell, Wiley and Sons, Dec 2001, ISBN: 0471070408. Gives excellent information not only about RAID but on general Linux reliability issues.
  
• Software RAID in the Linux 2.4 Kernel by Daniel Robbins. (Part Two).
  
• Linux Journal Article on Software RAID by Joe Edwards, Audin Malmin and Ron Shaker. ( Part Two).
  
• "How to do a gentoo install on software RAID" by Chris Atwood. Gentoo User Forum.

Robert Nagle (aka Idiotprogrammer )is a Texas technical writer, trainer and Linux aficionado. You can purchase Managing RAID on Linux from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

An anonymous reader writes "The open source music database MusicBrainz was launched officially today. The data is partly in the public domain, partly under an open content like license. It includes artist/album/track information, with more to come. There's support for CDDB-like CD identification (actually, a lot of the current data was imported from freedb), but also identification of single tracks via audio fingerprints (TRMs). Help both in adding new content by tagging your music collection and consolidating the existing data is welcome. Also check out some technical information on the XML database at IBM developerWorks."

An anonymous reader writes "Xmingwin makes it practical to generate Windows programs from a Linux server. This column gives a recipe for setting up Xmingwin, outlines the most important reasons for doing so and shows you how to generate executables for multiple platforms -- including Windows DLLs -- from a single Linux source."

netdemonboberb asks: "I don't know where else we should turn, because no site will write articles on [this subject] and IBM is denying that their IBM 600 series laptops have flaky batteries. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute distributed these laptops to freshman students in 1999 and almost everyone I knew in my class had this issue. Ralph Levien's page has suggested it appears to be an issue with the 'Smart Monitoring' circuitry. I'm writing this article to get the issue out in the open so IBM can no longer deny it. These batteries are expensive, and I have had to replace mine 4 times already. Can anyone who reads/maintains slashdot help or provide any advice on getting resolution for this?" I must say that from personal experience, I've wondered if this might be the case as well. I have an IBM Thinkpad 600e laptop and I've already gone through 2 batteries. The laptop is currently inactive as it must be tied to the wall if it is to be used. Has anyone else experienced shorter-than-average battery life using these laptops? Were you able to do anything to improve the battery life?

developerWorks writes "Ever wish you had a place to let your Linux applications play -- where they wouldn't hurt anything else? Do your killer apps spend too much time killing each other? Originally conceived as a kernel developer's tool, UML lets you set up multiple virtual machines that are isolated from each other and from the hardware. Now, you can test applications all the way to failure without breaking the host system -- or even requiring a reboot. Veteran administrator Carla Schroder shows you how in this tutorial."

developerWorks writes "Ever wish you had a place to let your Linux applications play -- where they wouldn't hurt anything else? Do your killer apps spend too much time killing each other? Originally conceived as a kernel developer's tool, UML lets you set up multiple virtual machines that are isolated from each other and from the hardware. Now, you can test applications all the way to failure without breaking the host system -- or even requiring a reboot. Veteran administrator Carla Schroder shows you how in this tutorial."

MrZeebo writes "According to this Financial Times story, Garry Kasparov has begun another match against a computer chess program on Sunday, this time playing against the Israeli-developed Deep Junior. Kasparov is the highest-rated chess player of all time, and lost to Deep Blue in 1997. According to the article, Deep Junior, despite evaluating less moves per minute than Deep Blue, is considered to be a superior chess player. The match will span 6 games, the last one being February 7th." Kasparov has won the first game.

keihin writes "From IBM: IBM's Global Security Analysis Lab (GSAL) has done extensive analysis of the Trusted Computing Platform Alliance (TCPA) chip available on some IBM systems. We have the chip running under Linux, and have studied it extensively. In order to clarify a lot of misunderstanding about the chip, we are making available some helpful white papers and open source device drivers for Linux, so that interested people can test and use the chip in an open environment."

watzinaneihm writes "Eweek has an Article about how Linux is getting accepted in Enterprises.IBM is releasing Tivoli for Linux. CA released Unicenter for Linux a few months ago.I got rumours about rumours that HP might do something similar with Openview. " One for those of you who dress nicer than me.

developerWorks writes "The first step in improving Linux performance is quantifying it, but how exactly do you quantify performance for Linux or for comparable systems? In this article, members of the IBM Linux Technology Center share their expertise as they describe how they ran several benchmark tests on the Linux 2.4 and 2.5 kernels late last year. The benchmarks provide coverage for a diverse set of workloads, including Web serving, database, and file serving. In addition, we show the various components of the kernel (disk I/O subsystem, for example) that are stressed by each benchmark."

developerWorks writes "The first step in improving Linux performance is quantifying it, but how exactly do you quantify performance for Linux or for comparable systems? In this article, members of the IBM Linux Technology Center share their expertise as they describe how they ran several benchmark tests on the Linux 2.4 and 2.5 kernels late last year. The benchmarks provide coverage for a diverse set of workloads, including Web serving, database, and file serving. In addition, we show the various components of the kernel (disk I/O subsystem, for example) that are stressed by each benchmark."

developerWorks writes "The Intel Xeon processor introduces a new technology called Hyper-Threading (HT) that makes a single processor behave like two logical processors. The technology allows the processor to execute multiple threads simultaneously, which can yield significant performance improvement. But, exactly how much improvement can you expect to see? This article gives the results the investigation into the effects of Hyper-Threading (HT) on the Linux SMP kernel. It compares the performance of a Linux SMP kernel that was aware of Hyper-Threading to one that was not." Ah, the joys of high performance.

developerWorks writes "The Intel Xeon processor introduces a new technology called Hyper-Threading (HT) that makes a single processor behave like two logical processors. The technology allows the processor to execute multiple threads simultaneously, which can yield significant performance improvement. But, exactly how much improvement can you expect to see? This article gives the results the investigation into the effects of Hyper-Threading (HT) on the Linux SMP kernel. It compares the performance of a Linux SMP kernel that was aware of Hyper-Threading to one that was not." Ah, the joys of high performance.

Landreth writes "OS2World.com reports that IBM has released their OS/2 strategy for 2003. They appear to be pushing the WebSphere Software Platform as well as client and server upgrades to Warp 4. The report can be viewed at IBM's website."

Landreth writes "OS2World.com reports that IBM has released their OS/2 strategy for 2003. They appear to be pushing the WebSphere Software Platform as well as client and server upgrades to Warp 4. The report can be viewed at IBM's website."

Slashback brings you more on Solaris, the not-quite-dead OS/2, and free software you can sneak onto your Windows-running computer. Also, Home Depot turns to the dark side, and Hughes winds down its two-way Internet-by-satellite service. Read on below for the details. Update: 12/18 00:30 GMT by T : The Home Depot item got chopped by accident; it's been restored below. Update: 12/18 00:38 GMT by T : Sigh. And -- my fault for misreading -- Hughes is shutting down their DSL business; satellite service continues at least for now.

Honest, I'm not dead. Again. silvaran writes "A clarification on CNet News indicates that IBM will not stop supporting or selling OS/2 as mentioned previously. Says IBM spokesman Steve Eisenstadt, 'As long as our customers want OS/2, we will support them... We don't have plans to withdraw OS/2.' The withdrawal notice lists several hundred components or software packages that will no longer be available, but OS/2 itself will still be offered."

Like Marshall MacLuhan in Annie Hall. tree writes "The Boston Globe has a really interesting interview with Stanislaw Lem, author of the 1961 novel "Solaris": he is a bit baffled about the latest movie adaptation. In any event, it's a great read for fans of Lem."

They win, GNU Win, we all win. Shwag writes "Last week I downloaded TheOpenCD after it was on Slashdot. I learned about all kinds of great free (as in speech) software. I then searched for more and found out about GNU Win which is a win32 free software cd but it has way more software! Yay! This is a really great way to show people the benefits of free software and get them ready for transitioning to linux."

A platform built from an Acorn. An anonymous reader writes "The (London) Guardian's Online section reports today on the new Ionix PC earlier Slashdotted for being the first desktop to run Intel's XScale processor. The Guardian concentrates on how the new machine may revive the fading fortunes of the once-pioneering Risc OS, but also makes mention of the fact it is ditching old proprietary Acorn subsystems."

Woe to the boonie dwellers, until enough balloons are in place. Avenger writes "Another DSL provider is getting out of the market. Hughes Electronics has announced that they will no longer be providing high-speed Internet services. Over 160,000 users will be affected. As it stands right now, they still will be providing connectivity via DirecPC."

But it seemed like such a great do-it-yourself idea! adagioforstrings writes "You may recall last year Home Depot announced they were deploying Linux at 90,000 point-of-sale terminals across the nation. Well, time went by and no more was heard about it...until now, when Home Depot announced they would be upgrading their POS systems with technology from NCR Corp., and 360 Commerce Inc. and ... Microsoft Corp."

Slashback brings you more on Solaris, the not-quite-dead OS/2, and free software you can sneak onto your Windows-running computer. Also, Home Depot turns to the dark side, and Hughes winds down its two-way Internet-by-satellite service. Read on below for the details. Update: 12/18 00:30 GMT by T : The Home Depot item got chopped by accident; it's been restored below. Update: 12/18 00:38 GMT by T : Sigh. And -- my fault for misreading -- Hughes is shutting down their DSL business; satellite service continues at least for now.

Honest, I'm not dead. Again. silvaran writes "A clarification on CNet News indicates that IBM will not stop supporting or selling OS/2 as mentioned previously. Says IBM spokesman Steve Eisenstadt, 'As long as our customers want OS/2, we will support them... We don't have plans to withdraw OS/2.' The withdrawal notice lists several hundred components or software packages that will no longer be available, but OS/2 itself will still be offered."

Like Marshall MacLuhan in Annie Hall. tree writes "The Boston Globe has a really interesting interview with Stanislaw Lem, author of the 1961 novel "Solaris": he is a bit baffled about the latest movie adaptation. In any event, it's a great read for fans of Lem."

They win, GNU Win, we all win. Shwag writes "Last week I downloaded TheOpenCD after it was on Slashdot. I learned about all kinds of great free (as in speech) software. I then searched for more and found out about GNU Win which is a win32 free software cd but it has way more software! Yay! This is a really great way to show people the benefits of free software and get them ready for transitioning to linux."

A platform built from an Acorn. An anonymous reader writes "The (London) Guardian's Online section reports today on the new Ionix PC earlier Slashdotted for being the first desktop to run Intel's XScale processor. The Guardian concentrates on how the new machine may revive the fading fortunes of the once-pioneering Risc OS, but also makes mention of the fact it is ditching old proprietary Acorn subsystems."

Woe to the boonie dwellers, until enough balloons are in place. Avenger writes "Another DSL provider is getting out of the market. Hughes Electronics has announced that they will no longer be providing high-speed Internet services. Over 160,000 users will be affected. As it stands right now, they still will be providing connectivity via DirecPC."

But it seemed like such a great do-it-yourself idea! adagioforstrings writes "You may recall last year Home Depot announced they were deploying Linux at 90,000 point-of-sale terminals across the nation. Well, time went by and no more was heard about it...until now, when Home Depot announced they would be upgrading their POS systems with technology from NCR Corp., and 360 Commerce Inc. and ... Microsoft Corp."

Slashback brings you more on Solaris, the not-quite-dead OS/2, and free software you can sneak onto your Windows-running computer. Also, Home Depot turns to the dark side, and Hughes winds down its two-way Internet-by-satellite service. Read on below for the details. Update: 12/18 00:30 GMT by T : The Home Depot item got chopped by accident; it's been restored below. Update: 12/18 00:38 GMT by T : Sigh. And -- my fault for misreading -- Hughes is shutting down their DSL business; satellite service continues at least for now.

Honest, I'm not dead. Again. silvaran writes "A clarification on CNet News indicates that IBM will not stop supporting or selling OS/2 as mentioned previously. Says IBM spokesman Steve Eisenstadt, 'As long as our customers want OS/2, we will support them... We don't have plans to withdraw OS/2.' The withdrawal notice lists several hundred components or software packages that will no longer be available, but OS/2 itself will still be offered."

Like Marshall MacLuhan in Annie Hall. tree writes "The Boston Globe has a really interesting interview with Stanislaw Lem, author of the 1961 novel "Solaris": he is a bit baffled about the latest movie adaptation. In any event, it's a great read for fans of Lem."

They win, GNU Win, we all win. Shwag writes "Last week I downloaded TheOpenCD after it was on Slashdot. I learned about all kinds of great free (as in speech) software. I then searched for more and found out about GNU Win which is a win32 free software cd but it has way more software! Yay! This is a really great way to show people the benefits of free software and get them ready for transitioning to linux."

A platform built from an Acorn. An anonymous reader writes "The (London) Guardian's Online section reports today on the new Ionix PC earlier Slashdotted for being the first desktop to run Intel's XScale processor. The Guardian concentrates on how the new machine may revive the fading fortunes of the once-pioneering Risc OS, but also makes mention of the fact it is ditching old proprietary Acorn subsystems."

Woe to the boonie dwellers, until enough balloons are in place. Avenger writes "Another DSL provider is getting out of the market. Hughes Electronics has announced that they will no longer be providing high-speed Internet services. Over 160,000 users will be affected. As it stands right now, they still will be providing connectivity via DirecPC."

But it seemed like such a great do-it-yourself idea! adagioforstrings writes "You may recall last year Home Depot announced they were deploying Linux at 90,000 point-of-sale terminals across the nation. Well, time went by and no more was heard about it...until now, when Home Depot announced they would be upgrading their POS systems with technology from NCR Corp., and 360 Commerce Inc. and ... Microsoft Corp."

scales asks: "We currently use the Dispatcher component of IBM's WebSphere Edge Server as a load balancer on some Red Hat boxes where I work, and the boss has asked me to look into OSS alternatives. I've already been pointed at Linux Virtual Server and Ultra Monkey, and I was wondering if any readers have had any experience with these packages, or had any opinions they could offer about other products." Ask Slashdot last visited a similar topic way back in 1999, so I think it might be time for an update.

An anonymous submitter writes "IBM has posted a Software Withdrawal notice on their web site announcing that the OS/2 operating system, in all its forms, will cease to be available for purchase from IBM as of March 12, 2003. For users who have purchased the two year OS/2 Software Choice subscriptions, service will continue until December 31, 2004." We posted a pretty good story about the history of OS/2 earlier this year.

spicyjack writes "After reading this story, I thought this submit would be appropriate. A German company called Dream-Multimedia-TV has come up with a schweet custom box targeted for the PVR/Satellite markets. How about a machine with a 250Mhz IBM PowerPC, 2 SmartCard readers, one CompactFlash slot, UDMA66 IDE, MPEG2 support with MPEG4 (DivX) support on the way, Ethernet, LCD display, SPDIF out, yada yada yada (zipped User's Manual). Oh, and it is built specifically to run Linux. Available right now. Commence hacking!"

An anonymous reader writes "A recent article in the IBM Systems Journal describes an innovative solution to curb both spam email and telemarketing. In short, the potential recipient of a message/call advertises the potential cost of contacting him uninvited. If the sender agrees to pay that cost, it acquires a token that it includes in the message/call and the message/call is accepted. The recipient decides to collect the fee or not, while recipients in a white list are not required to carry a token. The author also provides for a more detailed description."

blowdart writes "According to this article on the BBC news site the charity Samaritans has chosen Linux to provide it with more secure and powerful computer systems. The installation was supplied by Trustix with IBM providing network security. 'One of the great challenges for computing in any charity is to provide more for less,' said Mike Hermon, Information Systems Manager at Samaritans. According to the Trustix press release the installation is limited to security hardware only, "Samaritans is installing a four zone Trustix Firewall on an IBM eServer x305 and a Trustix Proxy Server on an IBM eServer x300 server.'" Oddly enough, today's Word A Day is Good Samaritan.

DieNadel writes "As posted here, support to ProPolice was added to OpenBSD. You can check the announcement. Note that THERE ARE dependencies that should be taken care of before building a new kernel, even on -stable."

developerWorks writes "Studies by industry analysts forecast even greater demand for wireless and mobile devices, creating substantial opportunities for wireless device application and service providers. Faced with an increasingly difficult challenge in raising both average revenue per user (ARPU) and numbers of subscribers, wireless carriers and their partners are developing a host of new products, services, and business models based on data services. This article looks at location-based services, security, and how they boost both service and revenue."

developerWorks writes "Studies by industry analysts forecast even greater demand for wireless and mobile devices, creating substantial opportunities for wireless device application and service providers. Faced with an increasingly difficult challenge in raising both average revenue per user (ARPU) and numbers of subscribers, wireless carriers and their partners are developing a host of new products, services, and business models based on data services. This article looks at location-based services, security, and how they boost both service and revenue."

An anonymous reader writes "Looks like some folks at IBM have had moderate success in getting P2P adopted within the corporate enterprise. One new paper on the site describes experiences in deploying a decentralized search network spanning machines in 43 countries. Another describes a system for peer-to-peer sharing of dynamic web applications instead of static files. The idea is to support development and distribution of simple modules that themselves form meta p2p networks. Neat."

cworley submitted - several times - this well-linked submission about a slightly boring topic - fast computers. "Top500.org has just released its latest list of the world's fastest supercomputers (updated twice yearly). For the first time, Linux Beowulf clusters have joined the teraFLOP club, with six new clusters breaking the teraFLOP barrier. Two Linux clusters now rank in the Top 10: Lawrence Livermore's "MCR" (built by Linux NetworX ) ranks #5 achieving 5.694 teraFLOP/s, and Forecast Systems Laboratory's "Jet" (built by HPTi) ranks #8 reaching 3.337 TeraFLOP/s. Other Linux clusters surpassing the teraFLOP/s barrier include: LSU's "SuperMike" at #17 (from Atipa ), the University at Buffalo at #22 and Sandia National Lab at #32 (both from Dell ), an Itanium cluster for British Petroleum Houston at #42 (from HP ), and Argonne National Labs at #46 (from Linux NetworX ) reached just over the one teraFLOP/s mark with 361 processors. In the previous Top500 list compiled last June, the fastest Intel based Netfinity 1024 processor clusters from IBM were sub-teraFLOP/s and the University of Heidelberg's AMD based "HELICS" cluster (built by Megware ) held the top tux rank at #35 with 825 GFLOP/s."

An anonymous submitter writes: "This looks kind of interesting for those who want to run a feather weight Linux on really old hardware."

Leslie Proctor writes "The Free Standards Group Open Internationalization Initiative, OpenI18N (formerly known as Li18nux) announced the release of the XML specification of the common XML locale data." Here is the announcement.

An anonymous reader writes "Here is a good introduction of the Grid architecture and information about the Globus toolkit for building applications for information exchange on the Grid and help for developers who want to integrate Web services and Grid computing."

Let's clear out a few of the case mod submissions which tend to pile up in dusty corners of our submission bin: MarkCC writes "An incredibly bizarre sort-of case mod: someone recreated the computer terminals from Terry Gilliam's Brazil, using an old Mac and a 1923 underwood typewriter." We mentioned some Mac case mods the other day. And remember, if it looks fast, it might as well be fast.

developerWorks writes "Porting existing Windows DLLs to Palm OS has historically been a tedious process. This article introduces you to an interesting technique that makes this process easier by using Perl. It demonstrates a Perl script that analyzes existing C source code and automatically generates many of the source files required for porting. You should be able to use the code outlined in the article to help with your own porting projects."

developerWorks writes "Porting existing Windows DLLs to Palm OS has historically been a tedious process. This article introduces you to an interesting technique that makes this process easier by using Perl. It demonstrates a Perl script that analyzes existing C source code and automatically generates many of the source files required for porting. You should be able to use the code outlined in the article to help with your own porting projects."

Benoit Fries writes "EE Times reports that IBM researchers have created a simple computation engine that's more than 250,000 times smaller than the most advanced silicon circuitry. Called the world's smallest computer, the system relies on a 'molecular cascade' that pushes a handful of carbon monoxide molecules across a copper surface to perform digital logic functions. 'Even if CMOS density follows Moore's Law for 40 more years, molecular cascades are still going to be smaller,' they said."

riclewis writes "Hannibal from Ars Technica offers an explanation of some of the internals of the new IBM chip. It's certainly more powerful than anything on the desktop now, but by the time it's released a year from now, it looks to be middle-of-the-pack (which could still be a step up for Apple...) This excitement over the early release of hardware specs kinda reminds me of all the hype surrounding the Sony's Emotion Engine when it was introduced a couple years ago. In fact, some are suggesting the PPC 970 chip might be closely related to the PS3's 'Cell' processor..."

Slashback's updates tonight (read on below) have more on Dataplay, background on the PowerPC that Apple and IBM have been brewing, the return (triumphant?) of XviD, Neal Stephenson's next opus, and more.

Pins and needles, pawns and bishops. s20451 writes "It looked grim earlier in the week, but following a fifth game meltdown by Kramnik and a brilliant game 6 by Fritz, the computer has tied the match 3-3. Betting on the computer in game 6 would have brought you a 7-1 return! I'll be on the phone to Vegas."

The new, new, new economy has room for camels. SwiftOne writes "According to their website, The Perl Journal has gotten enough subscriptions to begin online release (the planning of which was previously covered, along with the concerns about not reaching their goal. The first (next) issue is expected in early November."

Maybe it was the 15th-mover disadvantage. melt writes "Dataplay, the Boulder-based manufacturer of quarter-sized recordable discs and drives, finally called it quits on Friday, October 11, 2002. The remaining 120 employees (who have been on furlough for the past few weeks) have been let go and the company has closed shop. They are looking for a buyer for the remaining pieces. Full story at the Rocky Mtn News web site."

Zoom in until you see little canyons ... Twirlip of the Mists writes "IBM's chief scientist for their iSeries family of servers (a.k.a. the AS/400 family) has an article on iseriesnetwork.com describing the somewhat confusing history of the POWER4 microprocessor. In light of recent speculation about a possible relationship between IBM and Apple, this article is of particular interest. It clears up-- at least partially-- some of the complex, incestuous relationships between the PowerPC architecture, the PowerPC processor family, and the POWER4 processor. As an added bonus, there's some talk about the upcoming POWER5 and POWER6 processors near the end. The key phrase (and disclaimer): 'expected to appear in 2004.'"

Shame on Sigma. Gruturo writes "After almost 3 months the XviD project and website have reopened, though Sigma Designs has not complied yet with all their requests (they still carry their copyright on many modified sources). In these last 2 1/2 months the project still went underway, although unofficially:
B-frames are practically ready, motion estimation algorithms have been improved, work started for Qpel implementation."

Please stop teasing us. If you liked Cryptonomicon, you've probably been impatiently watching the announcements of when the next Stephenson book would appear. wka writes "Previous false starts notwithstanding, Amazon says Neal Stephenson's new novel Quicksilver will be published in January."

And next week, building box-girder bridges. scubacuda writes "Lawmeme has released Part III to their Law School in a Nutshell series (Part I and Part II were previously featured on /.)"

BritMit writes "One of the more intriguing types of algorithm is the genetic algorithm. Genetic algorithms mimic Darwinian natural selection, where "fitness" selects individuals for survival, breeding, and, hence, adaptive mutation. A previous article: Genetic algorithms applied with Perl covered the background on this, and provided two Perl implementations, one that bred bytes and another that bred words. This follow-up article expands this idea of Perl evolution with more advanced material on genetic algorithms."

BritMit writes "One of the more intriguing types of algorithm is the genetic algorithm. Genetic algorithms mimic Darwinian natural selection, where "fitness" selects individuals for survival, breeding, and, hence, adaptive mutation. A previous article: Genetic algorithms applied with Perl covered the background on this, and provided two Perl implementations, one that bred bytes and another that bred words. This follow-up article expands this idea of Perl evolution with more advanced material on genetic algorithms."

KingARP writes "This article details how to secure dynamic content on an Apache Web server. Topics covered include general security issues pertaining to dynamic content, securing Server Side Includes, configuring Apache's Common Gateway Interface, and wrapping dynamic content. The article is targeted primarily at Webmasters and system administrators responsible for maintaining and securing a Web server; however, anyone with a need or desire to server dynamic content will benefit from the topics covered."

Brent writes "In this installment of 'Secrets of the wireless elite,' you'll learn about the prevalent technologies in the Japanese market. In addition, it shows why publishing Web sites for wireless -- while not technically revolutionary -- is where the market is right now."

gmkeegan writes "The Economist is running a story about Sun's new N1 operating system whose purpose is to make today's system administrators redundant. The idea is to virtualize the computer system so that the automated resource management software can add, remove and manage everything dynamically. The article mentions similar efforts by IBM, HP, and Microsoft."

Lee writes "Over the years, HTML has only become bigger, never smaller, because new versions had to maintain backward compatibility. That's about to change. On 5 August 2002, the first working draft of XHTML 2.0 was released and the big news is that backward compatibility has been dropped; the language can finally move on. So, what do you as a developer get in return? How about robust forms and events, a better way to look at frames and even hierarchical menus that don't require massive amounts of JavaScript. This article takes a sneak peek at what's new in XHTML 2.0 and how you might one day put it to use."