This isn't much different than booting from a USB key but hey, it has a screen and also functions as a multimedia device so that increases its functionality and cool factor, right?

Wow, has it really been 6 years since we watched this movie at a BillingsLUG meeting? Well, if you haven't seen it, enjoy. I think J.T.S. Moore did a good job. Buy a copy if you want a high quality version on DVD. I did!

KDE Live CD InstallIf you've read any Linux news sites today, you know that Fedora 7 was released this morning and is codenamed Moonshine. You may have noticed by now that I only seem to cover the releases of Red Hat related distros. That is because that is what I prefer. I'd certainly welcome other members covering their favorite distros. Can you hear me Ubuntu users?

If you didn't know already, the Fedora Project has dropped the word Core from the name and with this release you no longer have to download multiple CDs. Fedora 7 is a lot like Ubuntu in that it has a single Live / Install CD that is based on Gnome. For KDE (K Desktop Environment) users, there is another, single Live / Install CD that is KDE based. For those who want to download as much as possible and have a lot of software to pick from, there is also a single DVD that has both Gnome and KDE and much, much more. Me? I decided to download them all... but since the KDE .iso completed first, and hey, I'm a big KDE person, I took the KDE Live / Install CD for a spin.

Boxes O' ServersOk, I posted some pictures yesterday and since the new content notifier doesn't have a setting to not notify when just images are posted, everyone got notified... and there wasn't a story to go along with it so I got a few comments asking... HUH?

To clear everything up... I posted the pictures to my Work Image Gallery... because the pictures were work related.

Turns out that two pallets arrived yesterday... because Intel donated twenty-six 1U rack mount servers to the MSU-Bozeman Computer Science Department. It just happens to be my job to do something with them. Hey, it took quite a while to get them all unpacked.

Do you remember the time BI (Before Internet)? I do. I got my first computer in 1983 and my first modem shortly thereafter. In 2005 a guy by the name of Jason Scott released a documentary on 3 DVDs entitled The BBS Documentary. He released it under a creative commons license. I pre-ordered it and was one of the first couple of hundred folks to get a copy. The BBS Documentary brought back such memories. Hey, I used BBSes for about 12 years before the Internet became available to me... so on this memorial day, why not take a walk down memory lane with me. Hey, I even met my wife on a BBS.

Part 1: BAUD

Just in case you don't watch 60 Minutes every week like I do, here is a low quality version of the segment than ran last Sunday on the One Laptop Per Child Project. This is posted with the fair usage rights in mind.

If you'd like to purchase a high quality version of this segment on DVD, feel free to visit CBS' page for their segment... and of course, watch 60 Minutes every week!

Commodity Protocols: what are they and why are they important

For several years now I have used SmoothWall Express as a personal firewall on my cable modem connection. I have been very pleased with it and have never had any successful breaches that I have been aware of. Having kids, I knew I would soon need some form of nanny filtering. Early on I investigated Dansguardian and found great support in the Homebrew forums of the SmoothWall community.

Hmmm, recently YouTube could only do 10 minutes of video or less... but now it appears Google is pushing some of their larger, more interesting videos (at least to me) to YouTube even though they originate from Google.

Fortune magazine is playing host to Microsoft's latest attack on free/open source software (FOSS). Kind of like Fox News playing host to Dick Cheney attacking opponents of the Bush administration. I like how the title of the article reads, "Microsoft takes on the free world". It sounds like Microsoft is attacking democracy and all right thinking people. Well, now that I think about it, they are. :-) The article itself is not overly biased considering the audience of Fortune.