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      The Slashdot Firehose is a collaborative system designed to allow users to assist our editors in the story selection process. The hose contains submissions, RSS Feeds, journals and Slashdot stories, each color-coded along the color spectrum to indicate popularity. Red is hot, violet is not. Try tagging and voting on the entries below, and by using the 'feedback' menus. Please send comments to hose at cmdrtaco dot net but be forgiving of beta code!

        Linux: Linux Needs More Haters 2008-07-20 12:24

      Posted by Soulskill on Sunday July 20, @12:24PM
      from the dem's-fightin'-woids dept.
      Corrupt brings us a ZDNet column by Jeremy Allison, who says Linux could benefit from more "tough love" in order to improve its functionality and popularity. Excerpting: "As Elie Wiesel said, 'the opposite of love is not hate, it is indifference.' LinuxHater really doesn't hate Linux, despite the name. No one takes that much time to point out flaws in a product that they completely loathe and despise. The complaints are really cries of frustration with a system that just doesn't quite do what is desired (albeit well disguised). A friend pointed out to me that the best way to parse LinuxHaters blog is to treat it as a series of bug reports. A perl script could probably parse out the useful information from them and log them as technical bug reports to the projects LinuxHater is writing about. Deep down, I believe LinuxHater really loves Linux, and wants it to succeed."
      + -
       [+] story, linux, editorial, linuxbusiness, linuxsucks, toughlove

        Can Instant-on Linux Turn Off Windows?[->] 2008-07-19 00:04 buzzardsbay

      Submitted by buzzardsbay on Saturday July 19, @12:04AM
      buzzardsbay writes "Motherboard manufacturer Asustek Computer is ready to throw down the gauntlet when it comes to the instant-on PC. Frustrated with the boot times associated with today's operating systems, Asus is now embedding a Linux environment called Slashtop, that incorporates Firefox and Skype into its motherboards. The idea here is that in less than 10 seconds, a user can turn on the PC and be surfing the Web, checking e-mail or even making VOIP calls — simple tasks that are currently all but impossible with today's operating systems."
      http://blogs.channelinsider.com/tech_tidbits/content/opinion/can_instant_on_linux_turn_off_windows.html
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       [+] submission, linux, os
      Submitted by ruphus13 on Thursday July 17, @06:47PM
      ruphus13 writes "Tux is everywhere! Here's a great article on Linux actually powering exchanges that transact Trillions of dollars in business. "The New York Stock Exchange, where the world's largest public companies trade their stocks, is now running on Linux. (Microsoft is not listed on the NYSE; they trade on the NASDAQ. Now *that* would have been a fun headline...) In addition the Chicago Mercantile Exchange also runs on Linux. While perhaps not as famous as the NYSE, the CME is one of the largest exchanges in the world. Even the Tokyo Stock Exchange is running on Linux."..."Put it another way, over 4000 public companies and over $141 billion in daily stock transactions depend on Linux. The Chicago Mercantile exchange at last count traded 1.403 Billion contracts valued at $827 trillion annually. The Tokyo Stock Exchange has 2,413 listed companies have a total market capitalization of nearly 678 trillion yen.""
      http://www.linux-foundation.org/weblogs/jzemlin/2008/07/09/meet-the-people-who-have-trillions-riding-on-linux-this-fall/
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       [+] submission, linux, linuxbusiness

        Closed Source vs. Open Source: nVidia argument[->] 2008-07-17 05:13 Krishna Dagli

      Submitted by Krishna Dagli on Thursday July 17, @05:13AM
      Krishna Dagli writes "There is an article by Matt Hartley (I am not sure if I have read him before) here. He writes that Linux kernel developer and community should not make noise about closed source drivers like nVidia. Because driver works well for end user and is quite stable. Can slashdot people make it clear why there is objection to nvidia closed source driver but not to the closed source application like Skype?"
      http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/osrc/print.php/12068_3758486_1
      + -
       [+] submission, linux, software

        Linux kernel team not disclosing security flaws?[->] 2008-07-16 23:10 iphone-deals

      Submitted by iphone-deals on Wednesday July 16, @11:10PM
      iphone-deals writes ""The following email was sent to the full disclosure mailing list today by Brad Spengler, the author of GRSecurity. "The kernel was released with no mention of security vulnerabilities in the announcement, only "assorted bugfixes". Put simply, it only took about an hour or so to develop a PoC for this exploitable vulnerability which affects 64bit x86_64 kernels since January. So since the time of the fix itself (or even before that if someone spotted it before the kernel developers did themselves) users have been at risk. ""
      http://www.cgisecurity.com/2008/07/11
      + -
       [+] submission, linux, security, securitytheater, maybe

        KDE4 Reveals New Composition of FOSS User Base? 2008-07-16 17:03 MaulerOfEmotards

      Submitted by MaulerOfEmotards on Wednesday July 16, @05:03PM
      MaulerOfEmotards writes "Related to what was discussed a few days ago Linux.com's Bruce Byfield asks if the storm over KDE4 is the result of the FOSS demographics is changing from being dominated by geeks to more mainstream population, and what that may entail:

      In many circles, KDE 4 was greeted by an outpouring of emotions that you can deduce by the number of exclamation marks in the postings. Somebody, it seems, dislikes just about everything about KDE 4, from the icons to the menu to the use of Dolphin as the file manager. Some of these complaints, of course, are justified, but the complaints gallop off so quickly, in so many contrary directions, that the only way to reconcile them is to look for an underlying cause.

      The reasons for the user revolt against KDE 4 ... appear to be a complex mixture that includes the assumptions that KDE used in its planning, the rush by distributions to include a release that was not ready for general use, and sensationalism in free software blogs and journalism. One reason that has yet to be discussed is one of the potentially most significant — the apparent shift in the FOSS user base. Judging from the quickness and thoroughness with which KDE 4 was rejected, the audience for free software seems to have shifted from a small group of knowledgeable users that treasures innovation to a larger one that values convention and familiarity and is actively suspicious of change.

      If this is true, what does that hold for the future of Linux? Will an incursion of the mainstream drive a migration of techheads to BSD or other "untainted" OS:s?"

      + -
       [+] submission, linux, kde

        Linux: Linus on Kernel Version Numbering 2008-07-16 10:18

      Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday July 16, @10:18AM
      from the you're-using-slashdot-T_2_5_0_212 dept.
      walshy007 writes "In a recent thread it was asked what it would take for an 'unstable' 2.7 development tree to be created, to which Linus replied: 'Nothing. I'm not going back to the old model. The new model is so much better that it's not even worth entertaining as a theory to go back. That said, I _am_ considering changing just the numbering. Not to go back to the old model, but because a constantly increasing minor number leads to big numbers. I'm not all that thrilled with "26" as a number: it's hard to remember. I think the time-based releases (ie the "2 weeks of merge window until -rc1, followed by roughly two months of stabilization") has been so successful that I'd prefer to skip the version numbering model too. We don't do releases based on "features" any more, so why should we do version _numbering_ based on "features"?'"
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       [+] story, linux, os, git, software, whocares

        Intro to Awk, Great Language with a Strange Name 2008-07-14 22:37 LinucksGirl

      Submitted by LinucksGirl on Monday July 14, @10:37PM
      LinucksGirl writes "Awk is a very nice language with a very strange name. In this first article of a three-part series, start playing around with awk to see how it works, and quickly get your awk programming skills up to speed. As the series progresses, more advanced topics will be covered, culminating with an advanced real-world awk application demo."
      + -
       [+] submission, linux, programming

        Shuttleworth Supporting Open Voting Consortium[->] 2008-07-14 21:17 Jordan Cronin

      Submitted by Jordan Cronin on Monday July 14, @09:17PM
      Jordan Cronin writes "OVC, who will be demoing their voting system at the Linux World conference, is working to raise $30,000 by August 4th, so that they will be able to complete and certify their voting solution in the state of California. Mark Shuttleworth, entrepreneur and founder of Canonical, has given his support to the OVC in their mission to provide an open, verifiable voting solution."
      http://www.openvotingconsortium.org/blog/2008-jul-14/entrepreneur_mark_shuttleworth_supporting_ovc
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       [+] submission, linux, software

        Linux: Linux 2.6.26 Out 2008-07-14 10:21

      Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday July 14, @10:21AM
      from the kernel-about-town dept.
      diegocgteleline.es writes "After three months, Linux 2.6.26 has been released. It adds support for read-only bind mounts, x86 PAT (Page Attribute Tables), PCI Express ASPM (Active State Power Management), ports of KVM to IA64, S390 and PPC, other KVM improvements including basic paravirtualization support, preliminary support of the future 802.11s wireless mesh standard, much improved webcam support thanks to a driver for UVC devices, a built-in memory tester, a kernel debugger, BDI statistics and parameters exposure in /sys/class/bdi, a new /proc/PID/mountinfo file for more accurate information about mounts, per-process securebits, device white-list for containers users, support for the OLPC, some new drivers and many small improvements. Here is the full list of changes."
      + -
       [+] story, linux, twosixtwosix

        After nine RCs, Linux 2.6.26 is here[->] 2008-07-14 02:30 Da Massive

      Submitted by Da Massive on Monday July 14, @02:30AM
      Da Massive writes "Linux creator Linus Torvalds has released version 2.6.26 of the Linux kernel after a lengthy three-month development stretch since the 2.6.25 release involving nine release candidates. In announcing the release on the Linux Kernel Mailing List, Torvalds said the 87 days since 2.6.25 makes 2.6.26 a longer-than-usual release cycle. "Or maybe it just feels that way, and we're always getting close to three months these days," Torvalds said. Torvalds said the changes from release candidate (RC) 9 are small, with the bulk (80 percent) being documentation updates."
      http://www.techworld.com.au/article/252918/after_nine_rcs_linux_2_6_26_here
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       [+] submission, linux, announcement

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