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I've been working on an open source myspace style website called Appleseed for a while now. Screenshots are available on the website. I'm planning on releasing the code soon.

I've always been really annoyed with myspace. The coding errors, the bombardment of ads, that creepy "Tom" guy. But a lot of my friends were on it, so I made an account.

I'm hoping that a distributed project like Appleseed would do a bit to take the carpet out from under the rug of things like MySpace and Friendster, which are as much about community as Wal-Mart is.

I'm not very close to being done with Appleseed. I'm running low on time, and I'm hoping that releasing the code will encourage others to help out. I think I've gotten a decent foundation completed, and once I have the code cleaned up and at a point that I'm not embarrassed by it, I'll let it loose on the world.

IBM has already raided the OS/2 code base for projects that it felt would be helpful to be released as open source. While it would be neat if they could release the WorkPlace Shell or the OS/2 2.1 SMP kernel as open source, if they haven't done it by now, there is probably a good reason such as the code being tainted with third party licences.

IBM has already raided the OS/2 code base for projects that it felt would be helpful to be released as open source. While it would be neat if they could release the WorkPlace Shell or the OS/2 2.1 SMP kernel as open source, if they haven't done it by now, there is probably a good reason such as the code being tainted with third party licences.

How about we link to a service which is known to compensate artists, supports Linux, and offers high quality (192 avg bitrate VBR, lame encoded) mp3s without DRM for about $0.25 per track, like EMusic? The don't have the major artists that iTunes has, but at least they have a more substantial catalogue than Mindawn (who had heard of this site before reading this story?), comprised mainly of indie rock that college kids might be inclined to listen to. They're also cheaper than Mindawn, and they have artists that at least some segment of the population has heard of, namely those who pay attention to music criticism.

It's called a calculator and it not only doesn't care what unit you prefer, it can change between them seamlessly and cleanly.

Preference for units of measure have been irrelevant since the first portable calculator dropped (and even before that, if you passed math class.)

Even reasonably modern calculators (like the wondrous and fabulous HP48 series) have stone-awesome unit conversion tools. It's not about the units. It's about the results.

Several ways to try:

chroot to the ISO mounted as a loopback device (mount -t loop /dev/hdax/elive.iso /mnt/elive might work)

Gujin bootloader on loopback
http://gujin.sourceforge.net/

Smart Boot Manager might find the kernel, too.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/btmgr/

Using a loopback, you won't need a whole partition to itself, but the filesystem sees the file (ISO) as a partition.

Several ways to try:

chroot to the ISO mounted as a loopback device (mount -t loop /dev/hdax/elive.iso /mnt/elive might work)

Gujin bootloader on loopback
http://gujin.sourceforge.net/

Smart Boot Manager might find the kernel, too.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/btmgr/

Using a loopback, you won't need a whole partition to itself, but the filesystem sees the file (ISO) as a partition.

Can we get a book on how Slashdot works? because I have no fscking clue.

Sure! http://sourceforge.net/projects/slashcode/
It's not a book, but what the heck.

Try out Coppermine . Use comments and descriptions and search them later plus the whole web photoalbum.

I'd just say:

Nlite, nuff said.

But then you wouldn't see how this measures up to the article in question. So I'll say it like this:

Windows XP SP2 running on a Pentium 166 mhz with 32 meg RAM, only possible with Nlite.

I ran this along with Xampp to provide myself with a nice little development box that could still use Firefox/Thunderbird so roommates could read the web, play web games, and check their email.

I didn't hear any complaining except during playback of certain XviD and DivX files in BSplayer.

SubEtha's collaborative editing is cool, but I like other editors. Fortunately, you can also have collaborative editing in many other text editors.

DocSynch is a plugin for jEdit which used IRC for collaborative editing.

SangamPlugin adds collaborative editing to Eclipse.

Old school? Use VimSynch or Emacs or any text-mode editor with screen.

SubEtha's collaborative editing is cool, but I like other editors. Fortunately, you can also have collaborative editing in many other text editors.

DocSynch is a plugin for jEdit which used IRC for collaborative editing.

SangamPlugin adds collaborative editing to Eclipse.

Old school? Use VimSynch or Emacs or any text-mode editor with screen.

http://spamdos.sourceforge.net/

While SAS seems like a very cool company...

Looks that way to me too. They support open source, for example.

I don't have an SO you insensitive clod! :-) Seriously though, the computer can be a good way out of **AA homogenous mind-control hell. It's all a matter of how you use it. The tools are so good/cheap/ubiquitous for musicians that amateur/independent music exists to shame anything the RIAA has available. No need for RIAA assistance or studios, just grab a copy of Logic Pro and do your thing. The computer allows me to check the RIAA Radar, to ensure I buy no music from baby-litigators. Finding good free/independent music is easier with collaborative filtering. I like iRate myself, but other collaborative ranking systems are available that make the process of separating wheat from chaff easier. The "music industry" as it was 10 years ago is now useless to me. I'd rather find tunes on iRate and paypal the cash for a CD at the band's website or through CDBaby.

As for video, the process seems to be in it's infancy. Already though, shows are popping up on P2P that were canned by the major networks but attracted a fanbase online. It won't be long before producers decide to release on P2P first and approach networks later.

http://sourceforge.net/softwaremap/trove_list.php? form_cat=14

Here's your 'rectal approximation'. Look at the entry for the GPL. 45,000+ projects - far more than any other OSI-approved license. Rectal enough?

How do you figure that the choice of a license "causes problems for corporate developers"?

I think the OP was referring to the fact that a library (non-application) project under the GPL is essentially useless to a corporate developer, assuming their product is distributed beyond their firewall.

I hear the GPL will take care of that, given the Google/Yahoo "problem" that the FSF has been harping about for the past few years.

But you are right at least in this: TANSTAAFL. A developer is free to release his/her code under anything that suits him, and everyone else is free to use or not use the code if they have problems with the license. In this sense, the GPL is not "problematic" in any way. The GPL is only "viral" (or "infectious" as ESR recently called it) if you're dumb enough to let it behave that way by incorporating it into your product(s) without first considering the impact. No one forces GPL'ed code on anyone.

I will say this - I have heard people bemoan the fact that they released some code under the GPL for whatever reason, mainly because "that's what everyone uses". An opportunity comes around later that is complicated because there's already a version of the code out there under the GPL, even though they're the copyright holders. The FOSS world tends to be surprisingly misinformed about licenses, for all their firebrand rethoric on the issue. But I wouldn't go as far as to claim all developers licensed their code under the GPL "mistakenly".

Yeah, and the only project I know that turned into a GPL project because of a GPL library is the "widely known and used" (*) CLISP implementation of Common Lisp (read about the imbroglio here).

Now some would consider that real evidence that the GPL stimulates people to merge their code because of contagion, wouldn't they, as opposed to something like BSD sockets. Right?

(*) It is widely used, but just by lispers ;-)

Windows Media Lossless and FLAC are two examples of lossless codecs... meaning they will produce digitally exact copies of the music. On top of that my point wasn't actually that the copy of the music you made was exact (although it can be), but that copying it over and over again would produce exact copies of the original encoding. If I give my friend a tape, he likes a song, so he makes a tape, and then passes it on, and the next person makes a tape... every copy loses quality. With digital music, the first copy may lose quality, depening on you encoding choices, but every time after that will be an exact copy.

No no no no no! That's the best part about publishing the source (under a GPL/BSD/MIT license) (imho)! Any random person can submit improvements, start maintaining their own version or whatever. If you're too embarrassed (don't be), you could publish in under a pseudonym or something. All you have to do to publish it is put it up on a website and say, "here it is, and here's the license (preferably GPL, BSD or MIT) you have to abide by." Just put a comment at the top of each source file saying "this is distributed under such-and-such license" and give a URL to the license, put in the whole license in the case of MIT or BSD (they're short) or put the license in its own text file.

Heck, you could even put up a tip jar link asking for donations so you can devote time to improving it, if people so desire. Sourceforge could even provide the webspace.

The reason why your "porn, MP3s and NTFS" aren't supported without extra downloads is because of patents/lack of specifications.

I don't blame you for not knowing this because if you aren't going to go off and write this stuff yourself then it is deadly boring and tedious but it doesn't stop it being true.

MP3s are patented. The worry is if someone produces software to make or play MP3s they have pay royalties or risk being sued. This would ramp up the cost of Linux.

Porn. I have no idea what format your porn is in (I'm guessing it's video). Let's say it's some sort of MPEG4 video (this covers WMF too). MPEG4 is patented too and you need to pay royalties if you produce software that plays or makes them. This would ramp up the cost of Linux.

NTFS writing is off because it is dangerous/limited and can quite easily destroy the partition. This is mostly because NTFS has no documentation outside of MS. It may also be patented by MS. Licencing it would ramp up the cost of Linux.

By the time a company has paid for all these things and passed the cost to its customers (remember your distro can't possibly be free in either sense now) you have something more expensive than Windows which still doesn't run Windows programs. Why wouldn't you just use Windows?

The only system that could possibly win the game of being more Windows than Windows is MacOS and that comes with implicit expectation that you won't try and do things like read NTFS partitions or run Windows software outside of an emulator.

Cygwin is not free. From http://cygwin.com/faq.html

The company, whom I work for, develops and sells closed source software. I contacted redhat for the details. The "buy out" license is prohibitively expensive. We ended up using a proprietary package because it was cheaper.

I use a lot of open source at work. cygwin, inkscape, Gantt Project, umlet, and dia to name just a few. But I use open source at work only as a consumer. I do not package any of the code in the company's products. At work, I use open source as a user, not a developer. Home is a different story. I code to plenty of open source there. None of that goes into work, however.

Here's one: compare Gaim to this pathetic Gaim ripoff named IMBlaze (heh heh search for Gaim rip off).

"What kind of software would you use to enable simultaneous document editing with version control, or to sync presentations across participant browsers for an online meeting?"

MediaWiki

It's been used to edit a 600,000-page document over at Wikipedia, where it seems to cope okay with about 6000 simultaneous editors. It has version control, file uploads, image support, etc. which means that you should be able to create most types of document with it.

Freecraft has just been renamed to Wargus, Bnetd is the main reason to boycot Blizzard.

I tried to find a free CD ripper for windows, but there was not a single good quality one in sight, and it took an hour or two just to ascertain that.

Perhaps ironically, I find the best free CD ripper for Windows is the open-source CDex...

Jeez, man, you'll definitely find a sympathetic soul here...

The article states things started May 05.

I routinely monitor my logs and observed this activity starting over a year ago. Sysadmins--if this is news to you, check your logs now!

It got so bad that thousands of attempts per day--up to 1000 fomr just one server-- would try to guess ssh username/password combinations on my comptuer.

I tracked one such incident down to the owner of a server who found out he was owned.

I've greatly limited from where peopls can log into almost all my servers, but where I need to grant access to generic users, I will employ connection limiting using iptables to stop the obvious brute force password guesses. Obviously, ssh root login is a no-no from now on on my boxes.

Also, check out http://chrootssh.sourceforge.net/index.php for a chrooted login solution. Not a panacea for securing your servers, but one more barrier to throw up.

For anyone experiencing SSH attacks, I suggest you have a look at fail2ban http://fail2ban.sourceforge.net/. I got fed up with random script kiddies trying to bruteforce my DSL connected box. Now all repeated SSH authentication failures are iptable'd to a tarpit:)
This may of course not be suitable for everyone, as it creates potential denial of service conditions. Caveat Emptor.

Well i forgot to close my anchor tag, shame on me
Ghost Personal Firewall

I recently found myself in the same position. So, I installed swatch http://swatch.sourceforge.net/, and set up its /etc/swatch/sshblock.conf file to read

======= sshblock.conf
watchfor /sshd.*: Failed password for root from/
mail=MY_EMAIL_ADDR,subject=Root_Login_Attempt
exec /usr/bin/rootblock $11

watchfor /sshd.*: Failed password for invalid user info from/
mail=MY_EMAIL_ADDR,subject=Invalid_Login_At tempt_i nfo
exec /usr/bin/rootblock $13

watchfor /sshd.*: Failed password for invalid user ashley from/
mail=MY_EMAIL_ADDR,subject=Invalid_Login_At tempt_a shley
exec /usr/bin/rootblock $13

watchfor /sshd.*: Failed password for invalid user adm from/

mail=MY_EMAIL_ADDR,subject=Invalid_Login_Attempt _a dm
exec /usr/bin/rootblock $13
====== end

etc ... for several dictionary type attacks. The rootblock script simply reads ...

======= rootBlock

#!/bin/tcsh
set IPT=/sbin/iptables
set ip=$*:s/::ffff://
logger ROOTBLOCK Blocking $ip
echo $ip >> /var/rootBlockLoosers
$IPT -A SHUN -s $ip -j BAD_IP
$IPT -A SHUN -d $ip -j BAD_IP

======= end

Where my iptables config has a BAD_IP chain that just gets dropped. Also, on reboot/restartup, iptables parses the rootBlockLoosers file to reset the blocks.

Fail2Ban will monitor any custom log file (mail, ssh, apache, etc) and will ban IPs with the help of iptables.

http://fail2ban.sourceforge.net/

http://daemonshield.sourceforge.net/
will temporarily block IPs that have more than a certain number of failed login attempts in a certain amount of time. It seems to block these attacks nicely.

Norton products simply suck ass. Their only saving grace is the enterprise edition of their virusscanner, anything marketed to consumers is basically complete crap.

Having said that, as a consumer you can settle for a free firewall as well. Check out Sygate's offering. Not quite suitable for your mother perhaps, but a pretty good program. It even nags about services that the windows firewall won't nag about.

For use in a network of windows workstations administered by a non-n00b, I like tdi_fw.
It's simple, straightforward, and has a whole lot of nifty features. The user doesn't even get to see it, it's a service that reads its config from a text file and does the job. It'll even recognise processes (iexplore.exe) or play sounds when connections are blocked. Only drawback of the thing is that you need to restart the service for it to re-read its config.

This has been mentioned elsewhere in a comment - it might be worth looking into, as it seems to do pretty exactly what you want.

Outside of that, if you're not doing so yet, why not contribute those logs to DShield? More data is always good for them. :)

I just recently started running Denyhosts. It is a nice little script. Every 10 minutes is scans my log files for denied ssh attempts. If there are more than 5 failed attempts from a single ip address then that ip is added to /etc/hosts.deny. It at least limits thier attack to 10 minutes instead of hours as I had seen in my logs before.

Personally, I find port knocking useful in providing an extra layer of security.

Some of the systems that I am responsible for, have restrictions on when and how I can apply patches. So if a vulnerability is discovered, if I cannot patch it right away, I am relying on my FireHOL and port knocker to protect these systems. Since implementing these measures (and good security policy), none of these machines have been compromised in three years.

Of course, saying that, I probably just jinxed it...

I use DenyHosts http://denyhosts.sourceforge.net/ from a cronjob. It detects any suspicious logins in /var/log/auth.log and adds the ip address of the user into the /etc/hosts.deny file. It also sends me an email telling me the IP address that was last added to the file.

Lately I have been getting atleast 1 hack attempt a day on my personal computer connected to the internet over a cable connection. On weekends I get more.

Just this morning I had two ssh dictionary attacks. DenyHosts caught them both.

You must have missed the link that said "Click here for source and older versions"

This is probably the easiest way to explain it.

I recommend using Azureus to download the torrent.

http://azureus.sourceforge.net/

And if you're *really* unlucky, they use aalib

Actually, aalib is pretty good. http://aa-project.sourceforge.net/gallery/ I remember seeing a demo video from them. And it was an actual video, their renderer displayed it in ASCII art. With sound.
---
I'm actually just a script.
Generated by SlashdotRndSig via GreaseMonkey

So, is the statement: "Drupal is the leading open-source (written in PHP) content management system and is used to power tens of thousands of websites, blogs, community sites, etc." really accurate?

Hardware:
Get a Garmin handheld GPS with a 12v adaptor & download cable, and probably a crate of AA batts.
Stick with consumer stuff. Buying a spare or 3 is cheaper than buying a Trimble survey grade and they all work well enough.

GPS Software:
Download GPStrans &/or GPSbabel.
http://gpstrans.sourceforge.net/
http://www.gpsbabel.org/
You can load the GPS waypoints/track/routes into a mapping format with GRASS GIS's v.in.garmin or gpsbabel+anything.

Mapping software:
Use QGIS. http://qgis.org/
Use GPS plugin.

Data:
Start by downloading SRTM elevation data and VMAP0 digital chart of the world data. Best there will be publicly available for Africa.

Instructions for converting into a usable format here:
http://grass.ibiblio.org/newsletter/GRASSNews_vol3 .pdf

Import and crop with GRASS GIS (r.in.srtm and v.in.ogr modules) and either use with QGIS directly or export into a secondary more popular format for use with other software.

GRASS works well on a Mac. http://grass.ibiblio.org/

GPS interface programs should work on a Mac, GPStrans is command line only so with some hacking and GPSbabel is well maintained so there should be a Mac port by now.

SRTM: http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/srtm/
VMAP0: http://www.mapability.com/info/vmap0_index.html

Definitely one of the best squad-based, tactical games ever. Check out UFO 2000 a GPL'd clone of XCOM that claims to have multiplayer support. You need the data files from XCOM, however. Looks interesting, but I haven't tried it.

I don't think that solves his problem though, since he would still need once instance per torrent file, unless I'm mistaken.

The answer is an application like Azureus. It handles everything itself. It serves up the torrent files with a built in HTTP server, it acts as the tracker for all torrents, and it acts as the client to seed each torrent. It allows very powerful rules about when to seed which file, how fast/how much, and so on.

So the net result is you can handle the entire hosting procedure with just one application/instance.

More info at http://azureus.sourceforge.net/

'Fraid I'd have to disagree with you on that. They have some very smart people there, and "search" is actually an immensely broad task with lots of different requirements. http://sourceforge.net/projects/goog-sparsehash/, a library they've open-sourced, is immensely useful, and I'm sure there's lots of even more interesting code they're keeping under wraps.

I participated in the Google IPO because I figured they'd do good things with the money. So far, I think their choices in purchasing have been excellent, and I consider it well-spent. I don't think I'd buy any more stock at its current valuation, but I'm also hesitant to sell.

When was the last time you saw a home Linux machine 0wn3d?

About a month ago. Buddy of mine who was using Gallery 1.3.3 to serve up some photo albums for friends and family got rooted. Someone used a PHP injection exploit which was present in that particular version to execute remote commands on his box, then used a local root exploit (I forget what they used, sorry) to gain root. Linux is far from invulnerable.

The average person doesn't have a bunch of Word templates (maybe the average OFFICE user does, but I doubt even that.) In any event, re-adding a template (or even ten) is a one-time minor task. Mail history is easy - there are tools to convert most mailbox formats to mbox and from there it's trivial. Granted, someone needs to know about them - it would be nice if such a tool was prominently available when a user installs Linux. I believe there are now tools to migrate much of Windows to Linux such as the OpenMoveOver Project.

I use debian (+ enlightenment) cause I can use the mouse wheel to shade windows when focused on the title bar and switch desktops when scrolled on the desktop. How the f*ck can you do that with windows ?

Why wait? A $200 PDA will probably pay off for itself before you need battery replacement on eBooks alone. Also it is a nice pocket DB, notepad, reference tool (PDA dictionaries are a blessing if you learn foreign language(s)) and a game console.

Hints: you need a good (around $10) antiglare "screen-protector" and a book-reader with "RTA-like" scrolling. For PalmOS I may recommend this: http://sourceforge.net/projects/palmfiction/