Linux (en)

• Electron Strobe Makes Movies of Atoms (Slashdot)
  holy_calamity writes "Some grainy black and white movies are receiving rave reviews from scientists. They are taken by a new microscope which, thanks to a 'strobing' electron gun, can image movement at sub-nanometer scales. Until now, only still images that smeared out movement were possible at such scales. The press release notes, 'The researchers first blasted the sample with a pulse of heat. The heated carbon atoms began to vibrate in a random, nonsynchronized fashion. Over time, however, the oscillations of the individual atoms became synchronized as different modes of the material locked in phase, emerging to become a heartbeat-like "drumming."' Further details and a few animations are available at Caltech's site."

  

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• The Telepathic Desktop: Apps Are Out, People Are In (Linux Today)
  The New Topyli Standard: "This article is a humble opinion piece of a GNOME user who wishes to stop using communication software and just be in touch with people. I want to write mail to, chat with, talk to, and have video conferences with real people without worrying about applications and technology."
• BT Silences Customers Over Phorm (Slashdot)
  An anonymous reader writes "The Register reports that BT, the UK's dominant telecom and internet service provider, has 'banned all future discussion of Phorm and its "WebWise" targeted advertising product on its customer forums, and deleted all past threads about the controversy dating back to February.' Phorm is a controversial opt-out system for delivering targeted advertising that intercepts traffic passing through an ISP in order to profile subscribers via an assigned unique ID based on their online activities. Subscribers can opt-out at the Webwise website but are opted-in again if the Phorm cookie is cleared. Firefox users can install Melvin Sage's Firephorm add-on to manage their interaction with Phorm and Webwise."

  

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• Passive Checks and NSCA (Nagios Service Check Acceptor) (Linux Today)
  Packt: "Nagios also offers a tool for sending passive check results for hosts and services over a network. It is called NSCA (Nagios Service Check Acceptor). It can be used to send results from one Nagios instance to another. It can also be used by third-party applications running on different machines to send passive check results to a central Nagios server."
• Tabula Rasa To Shut Down (Slashdot)
  NCSoft announced today that it will be closing down Tabula Rasa on February 28th. The sci-fi shooter-flavored MMO struggled for quite some time, despite recent attempts to draw in new players by announcements of new features, price reductions, and using Richard Garriott's trip into space as a promotion. We discussed Garriott's departure from NCSoft a couple weeks ago. This is NCSoft's second failed MMO, and apparently layoffs are in the works. They seem to be making an effort to make the game's last few months as fun as they can for their remaining players, though. "Before we end the service, we'll make Tabula Rasa servers free to play starting on January 10, 2009. We can assure you that through the next couple of months we'll be doing some really fun things in Tabula Rasa, and we plan to make staying on a little longer worth your while."

  

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• Setting Up Master-Master Replication On Four Nodes With MySQL 5 On Debian Etch (Linux Today)
  Howtoforge: "This tutorial explains how you can set up MySQL master-master replication on four MySQL nodes (running on Debian Etch). The difference to a two node master-master replication (which is explained here) is that if you have more than two nodes, the replication goes in a circle, i.e., with four nodes, the replication goes from node1 to node2, from node2 to node3, from node3 to node4, and from node4 to node1."
• Plain English Explanation Of An Awk Statement For Linux Or Unix (Linux Today)
  The Linux and Unix Menagerie: "I'll be the first to admit, though, that the examples were somewhat of a test for me when I first slapped them together and probably deserved to be explained more than they were. To that end, we'll look at one of the examples from yesterday and pick it apart, so that the pieces all make sense to, hopefully, any and every one. I aim to please :)"
• Dark Matter Discovered Near Solar System? (Slashdot)
  gpronger writes "The ATIC (Advanced Thin Ionization Calorimeter) has potentially discovered the presence of dark matter close (only 3000 light-years) to our solar system. The system detected a large amount of high energy cosmic rays which match the theoretical signature of dark matter annihilating itself. The universe is believed to be composed of about 25% dark matter, but there has been little evidence of it. This discovery, if correct, would be the first." The paper was published in Nature, but it requires a subscription to see beyond the abstract.

  

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• US Officials Flunk Test On Civic Knowledge (Slashdot)
  A test on civic knowledge given to elected officials proved that they are slightly less knowledgeable than the uninformed people who voted them into office. Elected officials scored a 44 percent while ordinary citizens managed an amazing 49 percent on the 33 questions compiled by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. "It is disturbing enough that the general public failed ISI's civic literacy test, but when you consider the even more dismal scores of elected officials, you have to be concerned," said Josiah Bunting, chairman of the National Civic Literacy Board at ISI. The three branches of government aren't the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria?

  

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• Google Chrome OEM Strategy To Take On IE (Slashdot)
  ruphus13 writes "In an effort to take on IE and make strong headway in its share of the browser market, Google is taking a page out of Microsoft's playbook and working on deals with PC OEMs to include Chrome in their devices. From the article: '[Google] is likely to pursue deals with major original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to put Chrome on their computers and devices. ... If Mozilla could get aggressive about this too, we could see Internet Explorer facing more serious competition than ever. ... Google, much more so than Mozilla, has enough global brand recognition, money, and savvy to make a big deal of this. ... Microsoft wooed Dell, Compaq, HP, Gateway, Acer and many other companies into making its browser the default choice on Windows desktops. Chrome currently has just under one percent market share, according to NetApplications. That number could rise significantly through this effort. Mozilla doesn't have the kind of money required to get the significant deals in this space, but Google definitely does.'"

  

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• Can't Print in Evince, GEdit, Claws-Mail (Linux Today)
  My Thoughts: "I got the Printer selection box but when I clicked on print an error message popped up, "Can't prompt for Authorization". I checked my printer settings and everything looked fine, so I tried again, another error message popped up: "Too many failed attempts".
• Chinese Hacking of American Military Networks On the Rise (Slashdot)
  Anti-Globalism writes with this excerpt from the Guardian: "China is stealing sensitive information from American computer networks and stepping up its online espionage, according to a US congressional panel. Beijing's investment in rocket technology is also accelerating the militarization of outer space and lifting it into the 'commanding heights' of modern warfare, the advisory group claims. ... A summary of the study, released in advance, alleges that networks and databases used by the US government and American defense contractors are regularly targeted by Chinese hackers. 'China is stealing vast amounts of sensitive information from US computer networks,' says Larry Wortzel, chairman of the commission set up by Congress in 2000 to investigate US-China issues." The full study addresses these issues and others relating to the US-China relationship (PDF).

  

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• Kubuntu Moves Forward: You Can't Please Everyone, All the Time (Linux Today)
  OStatic: "It's nearly a year since KDE released the KDE4 desktop. The initial roll-out was rocky for KDE, and while subsequent releases have brought ever increasing stability and enhancements, some KDE users feel it's not quite ready for daily use."
• Editor's Note: Linux Should Copy Amiga (Linux Today)
  Mark Shuttleworth made headlines not too long ago when he called for the Linux desktop to surpass Mac OS X in both beauty and functionality. While a lot of folks thought that was breathtaking and audacious, I think he's aiming way too low. I think Linux should aspire to equal or better the Amiga OS.
• After Columbine, Eric Holder Advocated Internet "Restrictions" (Slashdot)
  ErikTheRed writes "In an audio clip discovered by NewsBusters, then-Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder advocated federal censorship of the Internet. This was in the aftermath of the Columbine High School shootings. From the clip: 'The court has really struck down every government effort to try to regulate it. We tried with regard to pornography. It is gonna be a difficult thing, but it seems to me that if we can come up with reasonable restrictions, reasonable regulations in how people interact on the Internet, that is something that the Supreme Court and the courts ought to favorably look at.'" Holder is reported to be Barack Obama's choice for Attorney General of the United States.

  

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• PC Magazine, a Flagship for Ziff Davis, Will Cease Printing a Paper Version (Linux Today)
  New York Times: "Ziff Davis Media announced Wednesday that it was ending print publication of its 27-year-old flagship, PC Magazine, and would take the title online only."
• The Sound of Empire Falling (Linux Today)
  Armed and Dangerous: "I predicted years ago that what would eventually do Microsoft in was white-box PC makers defecting because they needed to claw back profit margin as the Windows license became the largest single item in their bills of material. And here’s the confirmation I've been awaiting:"
• DARPA's IBM-Led Neural Network Project Seeks To Imitate Brain (Slashdot)
  An anonymous reader writes "According to an article in the BBC, IBM will lead an ambitious DARPA-funded project in 'cognitive computing.' According to Dharmendra Modha, the lead scientist on the project, '[t]he key idea of cognitive computing is to engineer mind-like intelligent machines by reverse engineering the structure, dynamics, function and behaviour of the brain.' The article continues, 'IBM will join five US universities in an ambitious effort to integrate what is known from real biological systems with the results of supercomputer simulations of neurons. The team will then aim to produce for the first time an electronic system that behaves as the simulations do. The longer-term goal is to create a system with the level of complexity of a cat's brain.'"

  

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• IE8 Coming in 2009, But Will it be Late to the Firefox Party? (Linux Today)
  The Open Road: "With a release candidate not scheduled until the first quarter of 2009, the final release won't hit until the second (or possibly even the third) quarter. Microsoft released a beta of IE8 back in March 2008. Roughly a year later, we should see the full release in action. By that time, will anyone care?"
• Complete Backup and Restore Using "tar" Command (Linux Today)
  Linuxhaxor: "I'll explain methods I use to maintain my setup and configuration files without the loss of any data or personal settings. Once you have recovered from the crash, the restoration can be as simple as typing a single command using the Live CD and a terminal."

• Red Hat Fedora Linux: 9.5 Million Users and Growing (Linux Today)
  InternetNews: "Red Hat's Fedora community Linux distribution has now tallied its user base, and it's a number that on the surface would make it the largest installed base of any Linux distribution, with at least 9.5 million users and possibly as many as 10.5 million. Fedora competitor Ubuntu Linux currently claims to have 8 million users."
• GCC Hacks in the Linux Kernel: Discover GCC Extensions for the C Language (Linux Today)
  IBM Developerworks: "The Linux kernel uses several special capabilities of the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) suite. These capabilities range from giving you shortcuts and simplifications to providing the compiler with hints for optimization. Discover some of these special GCC features and learn how to use them in the Linux kernel."
• 'Dark Knight' on its Way to Becoming 2008's Most Pirated Movie (Linux Today)
  The Open Road: "What a perverse message to send to the movie studios: we love your product so much that we refuse to pay for it."
• 5 Ways To Beat The IT Budget Blues (Linux Today)
  Ken Hess's Linux Blog: "These desperate times call for desperate measures but don't worry these measures aren't nearly so desperate and they just might help you fix that ailing IT budget. All you need is a little creative thinking and some good people behind you--and these 5 things (in order of importance)."
• Microsoft Blames Add-Ons For Browser Woes (Slashdot)
  darthcamaro writes "Running IE and been hacked? Don't blame Microsoft — at least that's what their security types are now arguing. 'One of the things we've seen in the last two years is that attackers aren't even going after the browser itself anymore,' Eric Lawrence, Security Program Manager on Microsoft's Internet Explorer team, said. 'The browser is becoming a harder target and there are many more browsers. So attackers are targeting add-ons.' This kinda makes sense since whether you're running IE, Firefox, Safari or Chrome you could still be at risk if there is a vulnerability in Flash, PDF, QuickTime or another popular add-on. Or does it?"

  

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• Worm Attack Prompts DoD To Ban Use of External Media (Slashdot)
  An anonymous reader writes "The Pentagon has suffered from a cyber attack so alarming that it has taken the unprecedented step of banning the use of external hardware devices, such as flash drives and DVDs [...] The attack came in the form of a global virus or worm that is spreading rapidly throughout a number of military networks."

  

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• More Milestones in Linux Kernel Development History (Linux Today)
  Linux Developer Network: "After we published the "Estimating the Total Development Cost of a Linux Distribution" whitepaper, out of curiosity I wondered where in the overall development history of the Linux kernel the $1 billion number was actually reached. There was also the desire to trace the history of Linux and monitor its growth. Here's what I came up with."
• Reliable Linux Netbooks for Black Friday (Linux Today)
  Cyber Cynic: "I like Linux netbooks. I like them a lot. They're lightweight, they're solid performers, they're cheap, and it looks like they're soon going to be cheaper than ever."
• Fedora 11 Release Schedule, Along With Five Features (Linux Today)
  Phoronix: "The five features that are marked to be introduced in Fedora 11 include DeviceKit integration, improved volume controls, Windows cross-compiler support, Presto plug-in integration, and simple support for setting up a multi-seat system."
• Final Judgment — SCO Loses, Owes $3,506,526 (Slashdot)
  Xenographic writes "SCO has finally lost to Novell, now that Judge Kimball has entered final judgment against SCO. Of course, this is SCO we're talking about. There's still the litigation in bankruptcy court, which allowed this case to resume so that they could figure out just how much SCO owes, which is $3,506,526, if I calculated the interest properly, $625,486.90 of which will go into a constructive trust. And then there's the possibility that SCO could seek to have the judgment overturned in the appeals courts, or even the Supreme Court when that fails. Of course, they need money to do that and they don't really have much of that any more. Remember how Enderle, O'Gara and company told us that SCO was sure to win? I wonder how many people have emailed them to say, 'I told you so.'"

  

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