Slashdot Mirror

porkrind writes: "Linux International is launching a program designed to show all the different areas where Linux is used. It's the case study project. We figure this is a good place to start on our road to marketing Linux. What do you guys think about Linux vendors pooling resources via LI to launch marketing campaigns for Linux? In the end, whatever we come up with, we want to be used by all Linux communities: business, development, advocacy, et al."

An anonymous reader says: "With all the talk of the dreamcast port I figured I'd post a link to This deal - a "developer" model Agenda Linux PDA for $179 -- a bit more expensive than the DC, but it'll fit in ya pocket ;)" Apparently a soon-to-be-released color version of this PDA was being shown at LWCE (I missed it). I finally got my hands on an iPaq, so hopefully I'll have time soon to try PocketLinux (which sadly lacks a calandering app), as well as getting X11 on it. I still want to use an iPaq as a wireless X11 terminal. But first I must complete my MAME cabinet. One project at a time ;)

dmearns writes: "Picked this up from comp.risks. It seems the UK government is planning on requiring computer controlled speed limiters on cars within 5 years. The system uses GPS to figure out if the vehicle is in a speed limited zone. The original story is here. I suppose it is inevitable that officials would think of something like this, but I never thought people would accept it!"

Logic Bomb, standing in for a crowd of submittors, writes: "The New York Times has an interesting profile (free reg req) of John T. Draper, a long-time phreaker and hacker. He's had quite a career, but is probably best known for figuring out that a freebie toy whistle from a cereal box generated the right tone to make free calls at pay phones. It's an entertaining read." As sachsmachin puts it, "Crunch is apparently trying to redeem his blue-box-filled past by working as a white-hat hacker in the Web security industry -- his company, "ShopIP," does OpenBSD-based firewalls." Draper is also well-known for writing the first word processor for the IBM PC, (EasyWriter) among other things.

tshieh asks: "I'm trying to add XML-configurability to a Java application, and I'm trying to figure out which XML parser I should use. Any thoughts on whether I would be better off using Xerces, expat, XML4J, or JDOM (or any others)? So far, I've decided to use DOM rather than SAX since I've heard that DOM is easier to use and I don't anticipate my configuration file becoming so large that the slower and more memory-intensive DOM parsing becomes an issue."

Jon Bardin asks: "I am currently living in a dorm at the University of South Florida. The dorms come wired straight to the Internet and my connection is pretty zippy, because I have seen 2 megabytes per second download speed. I was wondering if there was a way, with the new fancy 2.4 Linux kernel, that I could shotgun at least two of the eight ethernet ports in my suite together, as to effectively double or quadruple my download speed. It doesnt have to be a Linux solution either its just all this talk about the fancy TCP/IP stack and firewalling has me thinking about things. The ethernet ports are configured by DHCP and are reasonably static... I got a new IP when I got back from winter break. so any help would be greatly appreciated." This question gets asked a lot. I wasn't quite sure if this was possible for the 2.2.x kernels, but I figure it might be time to ask this now that 2.4 has been released.

ChosenOne asks: "I'm working for a company that is currently at a crossroads on how to implement their Web site. They have a clear concept of what they want, but they are trying to figure out who will do it. It's boiling down to two main contenders: an ASP, which has a suite of services that is not exactly like (but similar to) the design specs for the concept, and a consulting group, which can code exactly to the design specs that we set for them. My company is nervous about using the consultants; they're afraid of ballooning costs. I'm afraid we'll want something that the ASP we'd be using can't provide. Anyone have any ideas?"

sachachua asks: "I'm sure most people have a story about terrific teachers they have had at some point in their life. You know, the kind of teacher who gets you really excited about subjects like computer science or physics. I credit my fascination with Linux to my first year high school teacher, who let me play with being a sysadmin while trying to figure out how to set up a Linux BBS. Then there's one of my college professors, who was really approachable and let me ask all sorts of Java-related questions outside class - even gave me extra projects to work on. There are countless professors and teaching assistants who make learning computer science fun and exciting for students. Would Slashdot readers like to share a couple of great stories?"

malachid69 asks: "As a Java programmer [pls, no spam about that], I have been looking at the Patriot Scientific PSC1000a JavaChip for quite some time now. Last week, I finally ordered one (yes, just one, until I figure out how to use it). Some of the specs are here. In college, I took some Analog/Digital classes, but that was 11 years ago -- and I have forgotten a lot of it. I have been into VR for quite some time, and am looking for ways to make some really nice (yet cheap) VR hardware with this chip. I am investigating EInk/OLEDs (as replacements for LEDs/shutter) for the display, etc. Does anyone have any idea how to build VR hardware out of this chip?"

BoomMike writes "While the popular media drools over eWEEK magazine's contrived Open Hack Challenge, which offers modest cash prizes for cracking a carefully arranged network, real geeks can compete in the Honeynet Project's new Forensic Challenge, and pick up the trail of a hacker who cracked one of the project's Linux-based honeypots last November. Mount the file system images and pour through the IDS logs to figure out the who, what, where, when, why and how of the attack, and you can win a book. SecurityFocus has the story." In a much related vein to the Honeynet crack RH6.2/7 there's a story on C|Net concerning the "worm" that's a new popular exploit set with the script kiddies on RH 6/7 servers.

Jeffrey Altman asks: "I'm moving into a new building in the middle of Manhattan which has been wired by RCN and Time Warner. I would have figured that I would have the full selection of choices available to me when choosing Internet access. However, that is far from the truth. Since RCN wired the building for telephone service, Verizon is unable to provide telephone service. This in turn has ruled out the ability to use any DSL service since all of the DSL providers must use Verizon-owned lines. (RCN is not required to allow third parties to use their internal wiring.) I would have prefered DSL, but I am stuck with a choice between RCN and Time Warner. Does anyone have any recommendations for which to choose?"

DrZoom writes "The Astronomy Picture of the Day for Jan 9, 2001 is an image sent into space by the Cosmic Call project. This is yet another interesting picture from APOD." Try to figure it out without reading the solution.

mpt writes: "Mozilla 0.7 has been released. This is the first release with PSM (the Personal Security Manager) included on Win32, Mac OS, and Linux, so secure sites should work without extra fiddling. Other noticable changes since 0.6 include better mousewheel behavior, Microsoft Proxy Server support, treating maximized windows properly on Win32, and numerous performance improvements (especially for NNTP). So try it out, and report dem bugs." Since Mozilla.org and Mozillazine are now reporting this, we figure the mirrors have had time to update. :)

ecliptik asks: "My mother works at a nursery school and she asked me to setup some old 486's that had been donated for the children. I figured this would be an excellent scenario for Linux since it wouldn't cost anything to set up. My dilemma is, how exactly should I accomplish this? Anyone have any suggestions for distros to use, maybe some open software that would be good for kids ages 4 to 7?"

an anonymous coward asks: "I'm a general manager at a software company assigned the task to set up a proposal for a more scalable management structure. I've been researching how several other companies did the restructuring when they became too large for the traditional model but I ran into one strange bit: CIOs and CTOs. Some companies have neither, some have one of these and some companies have both. I can't find a pattern regarding size or focus of the companies, since very similar companies sometimes have different structures. It gets stranger when you figure out what they do: at some companies the CIO doesn't have much to do with actual technology but at other companies the CTO even reports to the CIO! So my questions: what are the 'traditional' roles for the chief information officer and the chief technology officer? And to who do they report, the COO or directly to the president/CEO?"

reptyle asks: "Over Xmas dinner, a friend of the family told us she was considering launching a partnership between her employer FNMA (colloquially known as Fannie Mae; they are a semi-private company that guarantees mortgages) and Microsoft to provide training and eventually, surplus hardware to private individuals and non-profit outfits. I lamented this choice and she suggested that I e-mail her names and URLs of companies as alternative recommendations. So far I have come up with: Debian, Red Hat (distributions), VA Linux, Penguin (hardware companies), and maybe a few non-profit advocacy groups, but I think the list is still a bit too short. I can't think of any other entities that might be appropriate so I figured I'd ask Slashdot readers for help in providing other organizations that I may have missed. I don't care whether the organization uses Linux or BSD, just as long as it's not a proprietary model."

MousePotato writes: "Space.com is reporting that former NASA scientist turned Wall Street guru Dennis Tito has apparently gotten final approval (paid in full I guess is all you really need) for launch aboard a Soyuz by the end of April. Destination: ISS. Tito was originally slated to be one of the first tourists aboard the rapidly declining MIR space station. No specific figures are available on the site as to how much for the mircograv vacation but the rumor mill is placing the cost of the trip at $20 million USD. This may be just a few dollars more than buying your own rotary rocket company at auction but might just give the space tourism industry the kick it needs..."

I've been collecting parts to convert an old broken arcade cabinet into a home for Mame/Snes9x/DGen. I've got buttons and joysticks and a machine, and even wrote a really nice GTK Perl menu system to select games, but now I have to decide if I want to replace the (small very burned out) arcade monitor. I could throw in a 19" SVGA monitor, or I could try to get an arcade monitor and figure out a way to make it run nicely under X. I'm leaning towards the SVGA monitor simply so that I have more resolution options, but there's a part of me that would love to use either the existing arcade screen (despite the burn in) or replace it with a different one. Does anyone have advice for making such a monitor work under XFree?

Oh, and yes, I'll get the menu system up for download eventually if anyone is interested in it. Its fully functional, but it has a few significant shortcomings yet. It currently is super pimp since it allows arbitrary parameters to be added on a per-system or per-game level. It also displays nice screenshots and pictures and plays MP3s in the background ;)

If anyone else is looking into trying this, check out Happ Controls. They're not shipping right now because of the holidays, but you can get arcade buttons for less then 2 bucks, and a joystick for like 15. I've got enough parts for 2 players. Now I just need to wire them up. (I have to figure out if I should solder them or come up with some sort of clips. I'm more of a software guy then a hardware guy so I'm kinda stumped).

krow asks: "So every flight I get on I wonder, could I partially recharge my laptop off of the headphone outlet? What about using alligator clips to the recharger for the airphone? Anyone else have some creative ideas? How much juice do you think you could pull before tripping a breaker?" Well, this was a fun question for once. I've always wondered the same thing but figured the current/voltage would be insufficient for anything more than a trickle charge, if even that. Anyone have any clues? Or better yet ... anyone have alligator clips for those wacky Airphones?

sachachua asks: "I'm a sophomore taking up computer science, and since I'll be graduating pretty soon - March 2003 - I'm trying to figure out what to do in order to better prepare myself for the future. I'm really into programming, and I'm considering going for a practicum or an internship in some software company that can really help me develop my potential. I do a lot of web work with PHP, Java and Perl, and I pick up new languages easily. =) However, it's a bit difficult because I'm way over in the Philippines, which is a Third World country. Since it's so far away, my campus doesn't get visited by all those companies that court other graduates. And even if they do manage to find me, there are all sorts of visas to arrange. But the international exposure will be really great, and I want to meet other geeks. =)"

"I'm also really interested in computer science education and I want to do research. I'm thinking about going for graduate and post-graduate education, and I've been looking for professors who have done research in CS Ed. It's still kinda challenging because education abroad is expensive, so I have to have a good enough record for financial aid. I want to be a teacher, and I want to improve the way computer science is being taught. I know it's _really_ difficult, especially since I'm just a student right now, but if I work hard at it I know I'll find a way.

What advice would you have for a student who's at one of those crossroads? Should I go for the internship, do well in the industry, and make something that lots of people can use? Should I look for an internship at a university that does research in computer science education, and help develop the next generation of whiz kids? What are some other choices I might not know of yet?"