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Unix

Dennis Ritchie Day 301

Posted by samzenpus from the celebrate-the-C dept.
mikejuk writes "Today we celebrate Dennis Ritchie Day, an idea proposed by Tim O'Reilly. Ritchie, who died earlier this month, made contributions to computing that are so deeply woven into the fabric that they impact us all. We now have to remark on the elephant in the room. If Dennis Ritchie hadn't died just after Steve Jobs, there would probably have been no suggestion of a day to mark his achievements. We have to admit that it is largely a response to the perhaps over-reaction to Steve Jobs which highlighted the inequality in the public recognition of the people who really make their world work."
GNU is Not Unix

Ask Slashdot: GNU/Linux Laptops? 708

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the the-internet-tells-me-this-is-easier-today dept.
"I'm an OS X user looking to switch to a Linux laptop. I like the Unix/BSD aspect of OS X. Simple things like when I close the lid the laptop goes to sleep, the sound card works out of the box, long battery life, minimum cooling fan noise, and a comprehensive but relatively straightforward backup system and 'AppleCare' package are important to me. What all-inclusive model of laptop and distro would you recommend?" He didn't mention it, but I am presuming that working Wifi should be on that list too.
Unix

Dennis Ritchie, Creator of C Programming Language, Passed Away 725

Posted by samzenpus from the code-in-peace dept.
WankerWeasel writes "The sad news of the death of another tech great has come. Dennis Ritchie, the creator of the C programming language and a key developer of the Unix operating system, has passed away. For those of us running Mac OS X, iOS, Android and many other non-Windows OS, we have him to thank. Many of those running Windows do too, as many of the applications you're using were written in C."
The Courts

Civil Suit Filed, Involving the Time Zone Database 433

Posted by timothy from the they-preferred-the-old-system dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Arthur David Olson, the creator and maintainer of the timezone database used in about every unix/linux platform in use on the planet, just sent the message to the timezone mailing list: 'A civil suit was filed on September 30 in federal court in Boston; I'm a defendant; the case involves the time zone database. The ftp server at elsie.nci.nih.gov has been shut down. The mailing list will be shut down after this message. Electronic mail can be sent to me at @gmail.com. I hope there will be better news shortly. --ado' A Google search does not yet reveal anything about this; does someone know what is going on?"
Education

PLAYterm: a New Way To Improve Command Line Skills 162

Posted by timothy from the if-they-say-the-word-paduan-run-away-fast dept.
chrb writes "Linux Journal points out PLAYterm, an interesting project that offers up recordings of Linux command line sessions, with the aim of helping viewers to improve their skills by watching gurus at work." And there's no bad excuse to link to Neal Stephenson's excellent (and free-to-download in delicious zipped-text form) In the Beginning was the Command Line.
Unix

SUA Deprecated In Windows 8? 226

Posted by timothy from the how-does-being-assimilated-feel dept.
An anonymous reader writes "I just tried to install Subsystem for UNIX-based Applications (SUA) on Windows 8 Preview and found that it's marked as DEPRECATED: 'Subsystem for UNIX-based Applications (SUA) is a source-compatibility subsystem for compiling and running custom UNIX-based applications and scripts on a computer running Windows operating system. WARNING: SUA is deprecated starting with this release and will be completely removed in the next release. You should begin planning now to employ alternate methods for any applications, code, or usage that depend on this feature.'"
Image

Book Review: Digital Evidence and Computer Crime Screenshot-sm 49

Posted by samzenpus from the read-all-about-it dept.
brothke writes "When it comes to a physical crime scene and the resulting forensics, investigators can ascertain that a crime took place and gather the necessary evidence. When it comes to digital crime, the evidence is often at the byte level, deep in the magnetics of digital media, initially invisible from the human eye. That is just one of the challenges of digital forensics, where it is easy to destroy crucial evidence, and often difficult to preserve correctly." Read on for the rest of Ben's review.
Image

Book Review: JIRA 4 Essentials Screenshot-sm 33

Posted by samzenpus from the read-all-about-it dept.
frisket writes "The JIRA issue-tracking system has been around for seven years and has proved popular in commercial as well as open-source environments owing to its licensing arrangements (free of charge to certain classes of organizations, and source code available to developers). The release of v.4 in 2009 (now at 4.4) brought some major changes to the UI and searching, a new plugin architecture, and the ability to share project dashboards outside the system. Patrick Li's JIRA 4 Essentials is a comprehensive guide to the interface and facilities that both presents the material straightforwardly and avoids the trap of just being a guide to the menus. Although it is aimed mainly at the administrator, it will also be useful for the desktop user wanting a standalone system." Read on for the rest of Peter's review.
Image

Book Review: CoffeeScript: Accelerated JavaScript Development Screenshot-sm 100

Posted by samzenpus from the read-all-about-it dept.
Michael J. Ross writes "For decades, programmers have written computer code in one language, and then programmatically translated that code into another, lower-level form (typically machine code that can be run directly by a microprocessor, or some sort of bytecode that can be interpreted by a virtual machine). For instance, source code written in C or C++ is compiled and assembled into machine code. In web programming, there are emerging languages and other tools for translating code into JavaScript. For instance, Google Web Toolkit allows the programmer to create web apps in Java. The latest addition to this category is CoffeeScript, a language that can be compiled into JavaScript, and is intended to reduce source code size and clutter by incorporating some of the best operators from other Web scripting languages, particularly Ruby. It is also the topic of a new tutorial, CoffeeScript: Accelerated JavaScript Development." Read on to learn what Michael thinks of this book.
Image

Book Review: Ghost In the Wires Screenshot-sm 77

Posted by samzenpus from the read-all-about-it dept.
brothke writes "During the 1990's when Kevin Mitnick was on the run, a cadre of people were employed to find him and track him down. Anyone who could have an angle on Mitnick was sought after by the media to provide a sound bite on the world's most dangerous computer hacker. Just one example is John Markoff, who became a star journalist for his work at The New York Times, and a follow-up book and series of articles based on Mitnick. In Ghost in the Wires: My Adventures as the Worlds Most Wanted Hacker, the first personal account of what really happened; Mitnick says most of the stories around him were the result of the myth of Kevin Mitnick, and nothing more. In the book, he attempts to dispel these myths and set the record straight." Read below for the rest of Ben's review.
Open Source

Linus' First Linux Post, 20 Years Ago Today 181

Posted by Soulskill from the know-the-score dept.
jrepin writes "One midsummer's night, a student at the University of Helsinki posted a query to the newsgroup comp.os.minix asking, 'What would you like to see most in minix?' The student's name was Linus Torvalds, and that Usenet post was the beginning of the Linux operating system. The date was 25 August 1991, exactly 20 years ago today. In 1991 Unix had existed for about 20 years, Apple had come out with its Mac OS in 1984, and Microsoft had been flogging Windows since 1985. Torvalds' ambitions for his 'new (free) operating system' were modest. It was to be 'just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu' for IBM PC '386(486) AT clones.' He wanted to call his OS kernel 'Freax,' but a friend who ran the FTP server that hosted the software named Torvalds' source code download directory 'linux' and the name stuck."
Python

Book Review: The Python Standard Library By Example 33

Posted by samzenpus from the read-all-about-it dept.
thatpythonguy writes "Addison-Wesley publishers has released The Python Standard Library By Example, another Python book that strategically fits in between programming cookbooks and library reference manuals. It brings the Python standard library that much closer to Python programmers and helps make them more proficient in their trade." Read below for Ahmed's first Slashdot review.
Programming

The Most Expensive One-Byte Mistake 594

Posted by Soulskill from the catchy-but-totally-misleading-internet-headline dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Poul-Henning Kamp looks back at some of the bad decisions made in language design, specifically the C/Unix/Posix use of NUL-terminated text strings. 'The choice was really simple: Should the C language represent strings as an address + length tuple or just as the address with a magic character (NUL) marking the end? ... Using an address + length format would cost one more byte of overhead than an address + magic_marker format, and their PDP computer had limited core memory. In other words, this could have been a perfectly typical and rational IT or CS decision, like the many similar decisions we all make every day; but this one had quite atypical economic consequences.'"
Operating Systems

OpenBSD Marches Toward 5.0 Release 112

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the netcraft-confirms-openbsd-chugging-along-merrily dept.
badger.foo writes "OpenBSD-current just turned 5.0-beta, providing us a preview of what the upcoming release (slated for November 1st) will look like. Peter Hansteen takes us through the main new features and explains the development process that has consistently turned out high-quality releases on time, every six months for more than a decade."
Networking

PlanetLab Creates a More Advanced Sudo 153

Posted by timothy from the world-will-beat-a-path-to-your-door dept.
angry tapir writes "Researchers at the PlanetLab global research network have developed a potential replacement for the widely used Unix sudo tool, called Vsys, that will offer administrators far greater control over what end users can and can't access. Vsys is similar to sudo, except it offers finer-grained access to system resources. PlanetLab created Vsys as a way to allow its researchers to access low-level network functionality so they could develop new network technologies — overlay networks, user-level file systems, virtual switches — while their experimental work remained safely isolated from other users."
Linux

Linus Torvalds Considering End To Linux 2.6 Series 293

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the linux-millenium-edition dept.
An anonymous reader writes "With the Linux 2.6 kernel set to begin its 40th development cycle and the Linux kernel nearing its 20th anniversary, Linus Torvalds has expressed interest today in moving away from the Linux 2.6.x kernel version. Instead he's looking to change things up by releasing the next kernel as Linux version 2.8 or 3.0."
GUI

Imagining the CLI For the Modern Machine 317

Posted by CmdrTaco from the now-that's-cool dept.
scc writes "TermKit is a re-think of the storied Unix terminal, where human views, input and data pipes are separated. Output viewers render any kind of data usefully. It may not be a new idea, but it's certainly a new take on it." I know you are quite comfortable in your shell of old, but this sort of thing sure gets my juices going. The best of both worlds.

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