Slashdot Mirror

ankit writes: "Linux.com has an interesting interview with Brian Behlendorf, President of the Apache Software Foundation and CTO of CollabNet to talk about open source, the meaning of freedom, Richard Stallman and aliens from outside our solar system."

wrinkledshirt writes: "Bill Gates has finally spoken his mind on the GPL here. Interesting that he calls the GPL a PacMan-like entity considering that's how many of us view him and his company, but I digress ..." According to Gates, GPLd software "makes it impossible for a commercial company to use any of that work or build on any of that work. So what you saw with TCP/IP or Sendmail or the browser could never happen." Or the development of a full Free operating system either, I guess. Perhaps he should issue a company memo to the folks running Microsoft's stats.zone.com, who seem to be using GNU/Linux and Apache happily without donating MS Office to the FSF. Wacka wacka.

jsse writes "Linux.com has an interview with a Yopy programmer Young Hoon Kim. He told us what we can do with this promising Linux PDA - like running Apache on it." A little light on substance, but several interesting points. As it stands, the iPaq is really the only Linux handheld candidate at this level (with high end features like a color LCD). This one is due out later this year.

jsse writes "Linux.com has an interview with a Yopy programmer Young Hoon Kim. He told us what we can do with this promising Linux PDA - like running Apache on it." A little light on substance, but several interesting points. As it stands, the iPaq is really the only Linux handheld candidate at this level (with high end features like a color LCD). This one is due out later this year.

Slashback tonight brings you more details of avian transmission; some killer web pages for the bandwidth impaired (Merlin, anyone?); belated congratulations to Peter de Jager; an updated FAQ for the Simputer; and a geographic correction for anyone into The Gathering.

5k is more than you think. Drywall writes: "So after much deliberation (and announcement deadline pushed back a few days), the winners of the 2001 5k contest have been announced. It's interesting to note that the judges' assessments were in some cases very different from those of the contest viewers. Check it out."

They took care of the pigeon technicalities, we took care of the computer technicalities. Loco3KGT writes: "My article on the recent RFC1149 test is up on linux.com. It's an interview with Vegard Engen of the Bergen Linux Users Group, your typical followup type thing. Might be worth the read to a few."

Sheerest understatement. Good details here for anyone wishing to provide a nice high-latency, low-bandwidth, high-poop connection between not-so-distant places.

Still fits in your hand. There were some questions raised about the Simputer handheld device mentioned on Slashdot a few weeks ago, now metlin writes: "The Simputer FAQ has been updated, and this time around a few questions that the Slashdot commnunity maybe interested have been added. Some of these include GPLing the design, USB capabilities, IML and some more stuff regarding Linux & the Simputer. Check it out!"

Dave, what sort of meeting is this? Dave? An Anonymous Coward references this review of the Making of 2001, (and perhaps ought also mention Cliff Lampe's review of Kubrick's 2001: A Triple Allegory as well), then writes: "On May 26th ... http://www.isdc2001.org/. 'nuf said." Well, perhaps not quite 'nuf. This is the International Space Development Conference's 2001 meeting, and it's coming up soon -- May 24-28th. The submitter was apparently interested in the 2001: A Space Oddysey Banquet (#5 on this page), which sounds like an interesting dinner, which will be featuring no ham sandwiches (for authenticity).

Let us now praise famous men. Randy Rathbun writes "I just got a email from Peter de Jager, who, as you may or may not recall, is the guy who got all the bad Y2K press because he did his job getting the world to recognize there was a problem. Well, he is finally getting some well-deserved recognition from the Canadian Information Processing Society."

According to an email Rathbun quotes, de Jager says: "Although I've been thanked privately by thousands of people in IT, this is my first formal & public thanks for my work in Y2K and I'm as 'pleased as punch' to use an old Irish expression."

Hear, hear -- (many of) the Y2K enthusiasts deserve congratulations for speaking their mind and contributing greatly to the smooth transition that actually took place. (Anyone besides me have lots of water on hand that New Year's Eve?)

Gee, look how many colors are on this map! After I erroneously described giant game-fest The Gathering as a Dutch event, Rune Kristian Viken of the Gathering's crew pointed out that I wasn't even all that close. An apology to both countries, hope no one buys tickets to the wrong airport ;)

Viken wrote:

"The Gathering is a _NORWEGIAN_ Computer Party not a Dutch one. Its at Hamar / Norway - and nowhere in the Netherlands.

Sigh. Earlier in this century people thought that a red-white'n blue flag indicated a ship from the netherlands out of the colors. Now people think that The Gathering is a Dutch party.

*Sigh*. No respect for the Scandinavian DemoScene from you younglings! ;)

"

There's a pretty cool article running on Linux.com about the how-to for writing kernel drivers - in this case, the PC speaker. Interesting case and it's interesting to see what's going on in there.

There's a pretty cool article running on Linux.com about the how-to for writing kernel drivers - in this case, the PC speaker. Interesting case and it's interesting to see what's going on in there.

TheKompany has released a few programs that will surely interest KDE users and Linux users in general. Click below to read about their new software releases. (If you don't know what -- or who -- TheKompany is, you can read Linux.com's interview with TheKompany president Shawn Gordon.)

The first application is ReKall. Rekall is TheKompany's answer to MS Access. Lots of people have asked for this kind of application for Linux, and TheKompany in response has issued this Preview Release version. The Upcoming KOffice will include a version of Rekall. Instead of using Visual Basic like Access does, Rekall uses Python, as well as plug-ins for MySQL, Postgre-SQL, and Informix (other plug-ins for the various databases will follow.) Note: Since Rekall is using KDE-DB (also a contribution to KDE by TheKompany) and KDE-DB will be available only with the upcoming KDE 2.2; you'll need to do some simple compilation and installation. All the instructions are available at their web pages.

The next product is Aethera -- a nice PIM manager to manage all your email as well as contact information. You might say it's competing with Evolution, but both of the projects takes different direction of implementation. Aethera is also expandable with Plug-ins. (Debian packages are also available).

While ReKall and Aethera are Open Source, the last one is a commercial product called Kapital, which is an Quicken/MS Money workalike. The product costs money (you can find those prices at the above link) and it has one of the nicest and easiest GUI's I've been played with. You can download the beta to test it and find for yourself. (Debian packages are available for Kapital as well.)

Slashback tonight brings you more on how to find good books, how to have your car snipped off the Golden Gate Bridge, and what's up in the world of Linux audio and video, through an interview with GStreamer developers. Enjoy!

Can you read me? Over. With both feet in the stream of continuing evolution and convergence of distributed voting, online metaknowledge and probably a few other things, Johnathan Nightingale has created a site called Canonical Tomes, lately featured on Kuro5hin.

It's a really cool way to approach the "top picks" in a given subject, and fun to browse especially in the fields you're not very familiar with: the trick is a community voting system -- visit it and pick your favorites.

It also raises the question, though, of how to avoid an early lead from remaining permanent; how do new but excellent books gain a foothold? And what about situations where the popular books aren't the best ones? Kudos to Johnathan for putting this together, now it's your turn to point out the best books in your field to others.

Gee, Wally, I can colorize you from this "Linux" machine! starlady writes "Linux.com has an interview up with the developers of GStreamer. GStreamer, as mentioned here before, is a full featured multimedia framework with functionality for everything from mp3 playback to audio and video editing."

An excerpt, quoting developer Wim Taymans: "First of all, GStreamer is a real framework. This means that it can be used for a generic media player as well as serve as the core of large multimedia render farms. The GStreamer core is built in such a way that it is media agnostic, it doesn't know or care what media data it is handling. The interpretation of the media types is entirely handled by the plug-ins."

And though everyone is excited about video, things like this will make Linux a lot more capable as an audio capturing and manipulation platform, too.

The real question is, did you get in trouble? Regarding the dangling beetle which caused the city fathers of San Francisco some small consternation, Ms Golden Gate 2001 writes: "In case you're still fretting, or wondering, here are a few first-hand pieces of info about the stunt (I hope you guys weren't really believing what you read in the papers, now were you? ;-)

• the Bug was hung by cable and nylon webbing from a two-point suspension system (check the math -- that's not so easy: you try figuring out how to sling cable from *both* sides of the bridge to hang something nicely centred!)
  
• the Bug was never in sight of any commmuter after the initial 1-minute deployment (*under* the bridge!)
  
• the first to be informed were the traffic helicopters
  
• the Ironworkers who cut it down (in minutes) thought the job was well done ("They could probably get a job as ironworkers")
  
• the Bug was stripped of nasties, and as the Ironworkers said, it's a new habitat (just like when they sink a ship to create an artificial reef, only smaller, MUCH smaller)

Not the Mother-of-all-stunts, but worthy of some kudos - maybe for the most enthusiastic bunch of hard-working students who want the world to know they love what they do (and where the heck Vancouver is!). Even the website is there to promote engineering (seriously) to students.

All that technology, and it's still nigh impossible to get the facts heard over the Brownian noise :-P At least this is a good forum for venting without swords!

P.S. It's National Engineering Week in Canada! (Look out below!)"

Slashback tonight brings you more on how to find good books, how to have your car snipped off the Golden Gate Bridge, and what's up in the world of Linux audio and video, through an interview with GStreamer developers. Enjoy!

Can you read me? Over. With both feet in the stream of continuing evolution and convergence of distributed voting, online metaknowledge and probably a few other things, Johnathan Nightingale has created a site called Canonical Tomes, lately featured on Kuro5hin.

It's a really cool way to approach the "top picks" in a given subject, and fun to browse especially in the fields you're not very familiar with: the trick is a community voting system -- visit it and pick your favorites.

It also raises the question, though, of how to avoid an early lead from remaining permanent; how do new but excellent books gain a foothold? And what about situations where the popular books aren't the best ones? Kudos to Johnathan for putting this together, now it's your turn to point out the best books in your field to others.

Gee, Wally, I can colorize you from this "Linux" machine! starlady writes "Linux.com has an interview up with the developers of GStreamer. GStreamer, as mentioned here before, is a full featured multimedia framework with functionality for everything from mp3 playback to audio and video editing."

An excerpt, quoting developer Wim Taymans: "First of all, GStreamer is a real framework. This means that it can be used for a generic media player as well as serve as the core of large multimedia render farms. The GStreamer core is built in such a way that it is media agnostic, it doesn't know or care what media data it is handling. The interpretation of the media types is entirely handled by the plug-ins."

And though everyone is excited about video, things like this will make Linux a lot more capable as an audio capturing and manipulation platform, too.

The real question is, did you get in trouble? Regarding the dangling beetle which caused the city fathers of San Francisco some small consternation, Ms Golden Gate 2001 writes: "In case you're still fretting, or wondering, here are a few first-hand pieces of info about the stunt (I hope you guys weren't really believing what you read in the papers, now were you? ;-)

• the Bug was hung by cable and nylon webbing from a two-point suspension system (check the math -- that's not so easy: you try figuring out how to sling cable from *both* sides of the bridge to hang something nicely centred!)
  
• the Bug was never in sight of any commmuter after the initial 1-minute deployment (*under* the bridge!)
  
• the first to be informed were the traffic helicopters
  
• the Ironworkers who cut it down (in minutes) thought the job was well done ("They could probably get a job as ironworkers")
  
• the Bug was stripped of nasties, and as the Ironworkers said, it's a new habitat (just like when they sink a ship to create an artificial reef, only smaller, MUCH smaller)

Not the Mother-of-all-stunts, but worthy of some kudos - maybe for the most enthusiastic bunch of hard-working students who want the world to know they love what they do (and where the heck Vancouver is!). Even the website is there to promote engineering (seriously) to students.

All that technology, and it's still nigh impossible to get the facts heard over the Brownian noise :-P At least this is a good forum for venting without swords!

P.S. It's National Engineering Week in Canada! (Look out below!)"

I lurked in the recent Linux.com Live! IRC chat with the folks from BioWare (creators of the Baldur's Gate series) regarding their development of Neverwinter Nights. The game looks awesome, and will have a Linux client. Rock. Good discussion, and the perspective of commericial companies on porting is always good.

I lurked in the recent Linux.com Live! IRC chat with the folks from BioWare (creators of the Baldur's Gate series) regarding their development of Neverwinter Nights. The game looks awesome, and will have a Linux client. Rock. Good discussion, and the perspective of commericial companies on porting is always good.

redcoat writes "After two long years, MySQL 3.23 has been declared stable. Improvements over 3.22 and .21 include rudimentary transaction support using the BerkeleyDB lib, full-on replication (master/slave configuration) and lots of other goodies. It's been a long wait, but a worthwhile one, no doubt."

lmsig asks: "I've recently run into a dilemma. I own a Palm IIIxe and my wife was given a Palm m100 for a Christmas gift. Unfortunately they have different shapes and use different cradles and cables to HotSync. I didn't think this would be a big deal; just throw one into each COM port; low and behold I have to reconfigure the software each time since it can only support one device. Palm has told me that they do not support the use of multiple cradles on a single desktop. Does anyone have any creative ideas to conveniently access both devices?" Considering the fact that high-tech households will have more than one Pilot, I think Palm has dropped the ball on this one. Why is it that the Hotsync software can only be operated on one port? Does the Unix software have this limitation?

As we all know, Halloween is coming, and once again - we have a new Halloween document - this time from William Bill Gates himself. A Microsoft Employee sent it to Ryan C. Gordon, who published it here. It's a long one. Comments? stop flaming me! Its a parody!

Cruachan writes: "Reuters reports that scientists in the United States have revived a 250-million-year-old bacteria that is believed to be the oldest living creature ever discovered. (The story is no longer available on the Reuters Web site.) The bacterium that lived millions of years before the dinosaurs was in a state of suspended animation in an ancient salt crystal in an underground cavern near Carlsbad, New Mexico." This is one of the most amazing things I've heard in a long time. [Updated 19 Oct.14:00GMT by timothy:] Reuters has since pulled it; look below for more links :)

Links that work are tough to come by sometimes -- emmett sent one to to BBC Coverage (with pictures!), while several folks contributed others, including this unnamed correspondent, who writes: "An article in the L.A. Times has an interesting story about a revived microbe which might have been locked in a crystal of salt for 250 million years." Additionally, readers pointed to the Reuters story, hosted on yahoo! Thanks for the links, everyone.

King_B writes: "Interesting perspective on the OSS development model. Is anybody working on a new text editor?" It's an interesting article talking about the development of open source projects, and who joins them, and who starts new projects. Makes one think about the "scratching the itch" comment that's often heard.

crazney writes "Linux.com has an article up by Ryan Gorden of Loki on porting from Windows to Linux, in particular the troubles faced with Microsofts MFC API and the extensions implemented by Microsofts Visual C++ on the C++ language." Talks about porting, the gaming industry, and gives suggestions for portability from someone who should know.

crazney writes "Linux.com has an article up by Ryan Gorden of Loki on porting from Windows to Linux, in particular the troubles faced with Microsofts MFC API and the extensions implemented by Microsofts Visual C++ on the C++ language." Talks about porting, the gaming industry, and gives suggestions for portability from someone who should know.

wildag writes "I've recently come into a battle with a guy who owns this site. You might notice the 'similarities' between his web site and Linux.com. I'm going to doubt that Linux.com bought the interface from him. The acutal battle comes from a statment that is on his message board (posted by the admin - Leo). He says 'The layout of any website is "public domain" which is freely available to the public' (that is avaliable here: http://hobbes.resne t.tamu.edu/forums/showthread.php?threadid=25). What do you guys think? (BTW, Linux.com has been notified and he didn't ask permission)." There are countless websites that are direct ripoffs of others, but few as blatant as this one. My policy with Slashdot has always pretty much been take what you want, but give us credit for what ya lift. I've seen this done many times to many sites and it always bums me out: making a well designed website is hard work, and imitation is the sincerest form of flattery... but isn't saying thanks and crediting your source part of it too? (For those who don't know, Slashdot is owned by VA Linux now, which also owns Linux.com. This doesn't really have anything to do with this story, but I figured I'd mention it). I post this not to point fingers or cause a fight, but to open a discussion about this. Just because you can take something, should you? When are you stealing? Is is hypocritical to demand open source, but not be willing to share your design? And should "Sharing" mean "You can take it, and claim it as your own, and not give the original creator any credit?" Its an issue that spans genres: Web Pages? Source Code? Samples in Music? Fair Use?

Tonight at The Usual is our now traditional LWCE mega party. This time it's brought to us by OSDN, VA Linux, and all the assorted sites like Linux.com, Themes.org, SourceForge, ThinkGeek and what have you. The party is of course to celebrate the Debian 2.2 release. Music will be provided by San 'NeTTwerk' Mehat DJing and featuring Jon 'CowboyNeal' Pater scratching. The party starts at 8pm and continues well past my bed time.

Fawking DSL writes "``NetBSD can be intimidating from a Linux user's perspective. However, as the Linux user base grows, more people are finding their needs aren't being met by traditional Linux distributions. NetBSD is ready to step up to fill this niche. While Linux and NetBSD share many characteristics, there are some key differences.'' Check out this article at BSD Today."

Dave Sifry writes: "I wanted to let you guys know that my response to Tim O'Reilly's recent column about Linuxcare. Things really aren't as bad as some in the press have made it appear. I feel it is important to get a dose of facts into the conversation -- now that we're out of our quiet period and we can talk about what's going on, and all of the neat stuff we've been working on." After all that's been said about LinuxCare, it's good to hear info straight from the top, and that Tim O'Reilly is an active listener. Just remember who's speaking.

Anonymous Coward writes: "There's a cool article over on O'Reilly network showing how to set up a network connection between a Linux box and Palm Pilot, and then run a Web server on the Palm to access the documents. There's also a VNC client which I'm downloading now. Wild!"

palpatine was one of many readers to write with the news that "[m]any of the developers of Stampede Linux have resigned today, putting in doubt the future of the distribution." The link here connects you to a letter signed by 22 people who have declared their separation from Stampede, including former buildmaster Rob Aagaard and former lead Alpha developer J. Daniel Powell. (Read more.)

The letter is written by Jacob Moorman, who had been until yesterday Stampede's assistant head developer. In part, it reads: "Due to a number of reasons based on the current administrative nature of the Stampede Linux distribution, we are unable to continue supporting the efforts of the distribution. As a group, we feel that the needs of the group have not been supported by the current model of operations."

I asked project founder Matt Woods about the resignations and what they mean to Stampede's plans, in particular to tomorrow's scheduled Stampede .90 release.

Matt attributes the resignation of several developers and other folks associated with Stampede Linux to disagreement among project members about how the Stampede project should be managed.

"The resignations have been brewing for quite some time. The major reason for resignation is the current method of leadership. Those who resigned wanted to see a board of directors that handled all matters (BSD style). They were unhappy with the tiers of leadership that exist today (much like the linux kernel development structure). The current leadership method has worked well up until this point, and shows no indications of future failure."

Happily, he writes, "I am still on good terms with most of the developers, to quote one of them: 'Business is business, friendship is friendship,' that is, the two are unrelated."

And what does the sudden change in personnel mean to Stampede Linux?

"The future of Stampede is not in doubt, we're recruiting more and more developers as we speak (The response from the development volunteer community has been tremendous). Development will be hindered in the short term, but we forsee a future explosion in the speed of the development cycle. Unfortunatly, 0.90 will need to be delayed for a short amount of time (exactly how much time is unclear at this juncture), but users can be assured that 0.90 is coming, and it is coming soon."

Stampede developers past and present are invited to contribute their insight into what caused the rift. If you're involved with (or considering) an open-source project with more than one person, you may want to pay attention to what they say.

palpatine was one of many readers to write with the news that "[m]any of the developers of Stampede Linux have resigned today, putting in doubt the future of the distribution." The link here connects you to a letter signed by 22 people who have declared their separation from Stampede, including former buildmaster Rob Aagaard and former lead Alpha developer J. Daniel Powell. (Read more.)

The letter is written by Jacob Moorman, who had been until yesterday Stampede's assistant head developer. In part, it reads: "Due to a number of reasons based on the current administrative nature of the Stampede Linux distribution, we are unable to continue supporting the efforts of the distribution. As a group, we feel that the needs of the group have not been supported by the current model of operations."

I asked project founder Matt Woods about the resignations and what they mean to Stampede's plans, in particular to tomorrow's scheduled Stampede .90 release.

Matt attributes the resignation of several developers and other folks associated with Stampede Linux to disagreement among project members about how the Stampede project should be managed.

"The resignations have been brewing for quite some time. The major reason for resignation is the current method of leadership. Those who resigned wanted to see a board of directors that handled all matters (BSD style). They were unhappy with the tiers of leadership that exist today (much like the linux kernel development structure). The current leadership method has worked well up until this point, and shows no indications of future failure."

Happily, he writes, "I am still on good terms with most of the developers, to quote one of them: 'Business is business, friendship is friendship,' that is, the two are unrelated."

And what does the sudden change in personnel mean to Stampede Linux?

"The future of Stampede is not in doubt, we're recruiting more and more developers as we speak (The response from the development volunteer community has been tremendous). Development will be hindered in the short term, but we forsee a future explosion in the speed of the development cycle. Unfortunatly, 0.90 will need to be delayed for a short amount of time (exactly how much time is unclear at this juncture), but users can be assured that 0.90 is coming, and it is coming soon."

Stampede developers past and present are invited to contribute their insight into what caused the rift. If you're involved with (or considering) an open-source project with more than one person, you may want to pay attention to what they say.

Havoc Pennington writes: "Some reports from the GNOME Users and Developers Conference are coming in; see one on the O'Reilly site and in the weekly GNOME Development Summary." Sounds like some good stuff was accomplished -- a GNOME Steering Committee, work towards 2.0, and setting up a non-profit among other things.

dlc asks: "i have a simple question for slashdot readers. let's say, hypothetically speaking, that i have a Linux box, co-located on a fast pipe, with fresh builds of the kernel, Apache, mod_perl, and MySQL, and i want to contribute back to the community. we already have a slashdot and a freshmeat, a segfault and a themes.org, a linux.com and a kernel.org; what else is there to be done? What do Slashdot readers want that they cannot find somewhere else? Is a user-driven site (such as Slashdot or Freshmeat) preferable to a content driven site (such as linux.com or kernel.org)? "

The recent 'Ask Slashdot' about MIDI support for Linux sparked some enlightening conversation about music, computers, and where Linux fits into the state of the art. Development of production-quality authoring, sequencing and notation software is moving ahead, but as in any artistic relationship, there's a symbiotic relationship between artists and the tools they use to ply their trade. Part I of a series.

Comparing music-authoring software on Linux with that available for other platforms isn't exactly a fair match-up. Dave Phillips, maintainer of the Sound and MIDI Software for Linux website, says "Don't bother with the odious comparisons: 'Rosegarden is no Cakewalk,' 'Brahms is no Cubase,' and so forth. We know. We're working on it, but we're working on better things, too."

I asked Dave about his current music set-up, and how he uses it with Linux. "MIDI-wise, there's not much you couldn't use. I have a Yamaha DMP11 MIDI-controllable mixer, two Yamaha TX802 synthesizers, an Alesis MIDIverb, and various other pieces. MIDI is MIDI.

Digital audio is another can of worms. Professional cards have only begun to see Linux support. Notable advances have been made by ALSA, particularly in the work led by Paul Barton-Davis. Digital audio boards from RME and MIDIman are now supported by ALSA, and OSS/Linux will be adding some more proprietary cards to their list later this year, I hope."

Free solutions are attractive to many musicians, who consider their music a labor of love, but can't spend money on equipment as if their music were a money-making venture. So, without big cash as a catalyst for the development of professional tools, how will we make that happen? Alex Young, digital composer and occasional musician, answers the question:

"We need competition. If you think about when the Amiga demo scene was big, different demo groups really competed to get the slickest code and the best tunes. As a side effect, many useful tools were produced. If Linux had a greater drive in multimedia than is commonly interpreted by onlookers onto the open source community, music tools would benefit. Maybe the increasing interest in Linux games will drive this, or maybe individuals interested in programming and music will. There are many things that could be done, maybe projects could even be funded by sales of music produced with such tools!

I think people need to be attracted to Linux itself. Considering that I still like using an Atari ST with Cubase, and some electronic musicians wouldn't give up their Atari even now, people don't see it as a platform for writing music. For that Aphex Twin sound, we need very advanced midi software. And for the kind of MoWax-style sound we need very good sample editors. I believe open source music software can be as good or if not better than the commercial counterparts, for the same reason as any other applications."

To many Linux-friendly musicians, how they license their music can be just as important as the music itself. I spoke to Jeff Alami, Linux.com editor-in-chief and weekend composer about this issue. "I'm not trying to make any money with my music. I may have to add some sort of license in the future if only to maintain that the music was originally created by me." The Design Science License has been developed by Michael Stutz as a method by which copyleft can be applied to things other than software. Written with a little help from Wendy Seltzer, an attorney at the Berkman Center at Harvard Law School, the DSL is a way of copylefting any work that is recognized by copyright law, including music and art. This is one tool you won't have to wait for; it's been available for the past few years. "From what I see right now," Jeff says, "the DSL would serve my needs, mainly because it works to maintain the attribution integrity."

It's true that Linux has no professional audio suite at present, but after speaking to some of the people who work with Linux as a music tool, the message is clear. We're getting there. Small bits and pieces of quality software are already available, but heavy hitters like Cakewalk and Mark of the Unicorn haven't made the cross-platform leap to Linux the way several big names in the graphics field recently have. A high-quality, open source audio suite is definitely high on the 'wish list' of Linux enthusiasts, and the increasing quality and openness of Linux sound-related device drivers is paving the way for Linux-based music production as more than hobby.

If software development for Linux proceeds as fast as it has over the past year or so, it won't be long till the killer audio app appears. Until that time, we still have plenty to talk about. Next week, we dive once more into the creative process, and discuss high-end audio mastering, low-bandwidth sound transport and using Linux as a tool for good old-fashioned synthesis.See you then.

Eric^2 asks: "We have an old NT server that we are going to replace sometime this year. It has Diskeeper on it to do disk defragmentation. I remember from DOS that this was also a BIG problem, and am curious how the EXT2FS handles file fragmentation. Whatever we put in to replace that NT box needs to be fairly resiliant, and I was thinking either FreeBSD, or maybe Linux with the XFS file system, as it's supposed to be more fault tolerant. I would appreciate any suggestions that you may have! Is there a more robust solution than XFS for Linux? FreeBSD? Should I stick with NT and Diskeeper? "

So Fred VanKampen (who has to hold the record for most money made by reselling two domain names) e-mailed us to say that the Domain Name for 'Linux.Net' has been sold. He won't say to whom, but it supposedly will be announced at LinuxWorld next week. Of course we have no idea what he got for the entry, but the rumors were that he made several million when he sold Linux.com to VA Linux. Hopefully he'll take me for a ride in his yacht. ;)

Marius Aamodt Eriksen writes "Linux.com recently relaunched the jobs section, now with a new improved jobs database (both for employers and job-seekers). They seem to be getting more job posting than LinuxToday, definitely worth a look!"

Precision writes "SourceForge, the opensource hosting service provided by VA Linux, has announced the initial code release. You can grab a copy here." SourceForge rocks my world.

Every year I pick a new years resolution and ever year it doesn't come true. This year I've opted to set my sights low so I can greatly increase the chance of suceeding for once. This year my resolution is to continue converting oxygen into carbon dioxide. Read on to learn what resolutions RMS, ESR, Jon Katz, CowboyNeal, Mandrake and others have for the year 2000.

Jason Haas from LinuxPPC has the following resolutions: "248x768 @ 85 Hz, Merge my world domination plans with Linus's tree, Kawasaka W650:It will be mine (a Virago would be ok), Restart akido, and mv competition to /dev/null

Jon Katz , Slashdot's favorite gasbag says " I wish for Walt Disney to thaw himself out, climb out of his Cryogenimatronic Vault, show up at Walt Disney World and wreak havoc on the corporate weenies who desecrated EPCOT, his model city of tomorrow. Maybe join with the Seattle protesters and touch off a war against corporatist weenies everywhere. "

Emmett Plant is the latest editorial addition to the Slashdot Authors roster. His resolution is "to start a company called 'EmmettLinux,' which will be responsible for creating no product whatsoever. We will employ a highly-paid staff of fifty people who will show up every day and start throwing money into a furnace. I hope to IPO by March and use the cash to hire 2,000 more moneyburners and open an office in Hong Kong. I will leave soon after, selling all of my stock and retiring to the Bahamas."

Chris J. DiBona , Linux Community Evangelist for VA Linux Systems, President of SVLUG, and Grant Chair for LI, has resolved the following: ".Sleep is high on my list, but I really just like to have more time to read, this year has been pretty hard-core. I'd also like to spend more time learning power supply electronics, dc-dc transformers and such. I'm already pretty good with the digital side of things, but this is a big gap in my knowledge. Can I give more than two? I'd also like a puppy. A puppy with an X10 Cam mounted on its collar so I can put a "puppy cam" online."

Rusty Russell , kernel hacker and mad genius wishes to Learn to cook. Or trade kernel code for food. Or buy a fire extinguisher.

Eric S. Raymond is perhaps better known simply as esr... and if you don't know who he is, well, ouch. He resolves to " Catch up with my email and cut down on my traveling. It's nice to be needed, but 50% time on the road is getting ridiculous..."

Raster aka "That Enlightenment Guy" who is the only living person with more typos than me resolves simply to use procmail to allow more sleep time.

Mandrake resolves "I really need to start taking better care of my body. I haven't really worked out in about a year - and I eat too much garbage (junk food / fast food), and I REALLY need to stop drinking coke. I go through 2liters like most people drink cans of coke. I don't think it'll happen any time soon - but hopefully I'll at least be a little healthier by the end of the year."

Trae McCombs , aka X, aka MC, aka 'That Linux.com guy' resolves to "Learn to eat more foods, Incorporate working out into my lifestyle, Work less than 14hrs a day, Be kinder to others, Listen more, Talk less, Learn to code, Read more, Keep true to my ideals..."

Scott Draeker , the President of Loki Entertainment Software resolves to release a first tier Linux game which is not available for windows. Hard to argue with that one.

Kurt DeMaagd , aka The Pope, aka Rob's Roommate and the BSI number cruncher has the following:

1. Combat bimetallism and establish the gold standard for currency.
2. Negotiate the DeMaagd-Hay-Pauncefote treaty, allowing the U.S. to unilaterally construct an isthmian canal.
3. Establish an American protectorate in Cuba.
4. Suppress the Boxer uprising.

Mind you if you look closely at Kurt's resolutions, you might notice that they look strikingly similiar to President William McKinley's adminstration's high points. I'm going to have to up kurts medication.

Illiad , creator of the ever popular User Friendly comic strip says "I resolve to only take responsibility for those choices that I have control over. That means I have to give up on the idea of educating the technically-resistant, the doublespeak-inclined, and the village idiot."

Richard M. Stallman , founder of the Free Software Founding and the GNU Project gave us suggested resolutions for Slashdot readers: They are 1. Do not install any non-free software your computers and 2. Do not buy from Amazon until they stop using software patents for aggression.

CowboyNeal , the man, the myth, the legend. The guy who responds when users can't figure out how to login. The guy who maintains the slashboxes. And the guy who inhabitants the living room in the Geek Compound, resolves that he shall "Shower Every Week, whether I needs it or not." All of the co-workers in this office who have orafactory functionality thank him. It doesn't matter to me much either way.

Jim Jagielski , aka jimjag or jim@apache.org or jim@jaguNET.com, resolves to call sleep(28800) a lot more often.

Nitrozac is the creator of After Y2k... which as best as I can tell means she's about to work herself out of a job. But regardless she says "If civilization manages to hold on to its tenuous existence, I'd like to find a cure for Agalmatophilia, and have others join me to rid the world of this illness that causes so much needless suffering. If civilization crumbles, my Post-Apocalypse Resolution is to learn how to do 16-bead graphics on my abacus, so I can continue the comic. ;-)"

And finally (thank god because my wrists are tired) is Jeff "Hemos" Bates , a man who needs no introduction (but he does need a solid smack to the head).He says "With the coming of El Ano Neuvo, I resolve that I'm going to continue my battle against the dread forces of The Krull Invasion. I think that I might also try to learn some grammar. Per'aps. And maybe I'll learn how to spell a few more words as well".

nicedream writes "Linux.com is running a feature on BSD, and the latest installment profiles one guy's experience with OpenBSD. Haven't read a thorough review of OpenBSD ever, so it was nice to check this out.

nicedream writes "Linux.com is running a feature on BSD, and the latest installment profiles one guy's experience with OpenBSD. Haven't read a thorough review of OpenBSD ever, so it was nice to check this out.

San Mehat wrote in to point us to a full-paged Accelerated-X ad that has taken to some old fashioned mudslinging. The most incriminating quotes are "Buckle Up. If you're still using that free X server that came with your linux distribution, well hazardous conditions lie ahead" and "When the X server 'falls over'--crashes--the entire operating system goes down and usually the user unfairly blames Linux itself'. What do you think?

jregel writes "Linux.com has an interview with Stefan Steefeld and Graydon Hoare, two of the Berlin core developers. Interesting stuff that should dispel a few rumours and inaccuracies surrounding this project. "

palpatine writes "Linux.com has an interview with Manish Singh (yosh), the chief maintainer of the Gimp project. " Yosh mentions that they are in a feature freeze now (and here is the list of frozen features) for Gimp v1.2. Tons of cool stuff to lust after.

palpatine writes "Linux.com has an interview with Manish Singh (yosh), the chief maintainer of the Gimp project. " Yosh mentions that they are in a feature freeze now (and here is the list of frozen features) for Gimp v1.2. Tons of cool stuff to lust after.

Samawi writes "linux.com has just published an interview with core KDE developer Daniel M. Duley. Topics covered include the upcoming KDE 2.0 (including links to screenshots!), Corba & TinyMico, the advanced widget theme designer, the new high-color icons for the very-soon-to-be-released KDE 1.1.2, influence of Gnome, etc. "

Alan J. Wylie sent us Andrew Leonard's article running on Linux.com on "The Three Stages of Free Software Cluefulness". The most clueless part of conferences is (as always) the PR firms. Mine has apparently made up some story about me herding media tycoons about LinuxWorld (I'm not sure if they mean physically or through Slashdot). Anyway, for me personally its a case study in why PR firms don't work in the era of the Internet.I mean, PR companies always screw up (you should see the comically erred press releases I get every day). The difference is that the Internet already has people (relatively) in touch with each other without the help of a PR firm. Their primary function is obsolete. As always, my email address is malda@slashdot.org, and while I don't reply to everything, I do read it. What a sucky way to start of the day.

NoWhere Man noted a story on CNet that that talks about Red Hat and their plans to Create a full blown Linux Portal. They note the fact that RH has job openings in San Fran, as well as the trivia that they recently hired 20 (!) people from Atomic Vision. They note that RH will be competing more directly with VAs Linux.com, and of course, yours truly.

juniorboy sent us JP Mogenthal's latest piece from Internetwork, this timing cautioning people about Linux and along the way tries to get at the root of why people are switching.

Chip Stillmore writes "Just read this news.com. Apparently Linux.com is supposed to be going live today. " The page simply says tonight. I've seen what they're doing over there. It isn't at all what I really expected when they announced that they had bought the domain, but it ain't bad. As long as it covers the newbie stuff though, I'm happy. As of 2300 Eastern, it's live!

VA Research had their little press conference today. They talked about their Linux.com acquisition and their intel investment- they also are reporting that they are going to offer 24/7 on-site service through DecisionOne. Most interesting, is that as part of their intel deal, they'll be porting Linux to Merced (under NDA) and are targetting a complete GPL source release of the port upon the release of the chip. Update: 03/02 06:31 by CT : theGEEK wrote in to link to a wired article that talks about the cost of linux.com. The article basically says less than the top bid of $5 million, but more than a million.

kernel was the first to tell us that Linux.com has some content. You can also read a Press Release. The most notable piece of information is that the site will be managed by Trae McCombs (Slashdot author, Themes.org guy, and VA Employee). He will be slave to a board of directors that will hopefully help make sure that Linux.com does in fact fulfill what it should: support the community). The board of directors includes me, scoop, mandrake, Chris DiBona, Nick Petreley, and representatives from Oracle and SGI.

kernel was the first to tell us that Linux.com has some content. You can also read a Press Release. The most notable piece of information is that the site will be managed by Trae McCombs (Slashdot author, Themes.org guy, and VA Employee). He will be slave to a board of directors that will hopefully help make sure that Linux.com does in fact fulfill what it should: support the community). The board of directors includes me, scoop, mandrake, Chris DiBona, Nick Petreley, and representatives from Oracle and SGI.

kernel was the first to tell us that Linux.com has some content. You can also read a Press Release. The most notable piece of information is that the site will be managed by Trae McCombs (Slashdot author, Themes.org guy, and VA Employee). He will be slave to a board of directors that will hopefully help make sure that Linux.com does in fact fulfill what it should: support the community). The board of directors includes me, scoop, mandrake, Chris DiBona, Nick Petreley, and representatives from Oracle and SGI.

An anonymous reader was the first to let me know that apparently Linux.com has finally got an actual web page on it. It's a terribly nasty looking page- one that will make you linux.org haters feel like you were mocking a masterpiece.