zman6911 asks: "I was sitting at computer for a few minutes thinking about the devices I can install linux on. I can install it on all of my computers and my iPAQ, but I cannot install it on my Audrey. Audrey is an internet appliance from 3Com which is considered "end of life" because of the current climate of the market. Currently, its main function is the sending and receiving of E-Mail. I'm asking slashdot for any ideas on how to go about porting linux to Audrey to make her more useful. She has an x86 based Geode processor made by National Semiconductor and a compact flash slot which can be used for installing a customized version of QNX."

pastie asks: "I need to get some business cards printed, and want to put something more interesting/fitting as my role than just `developer' or `programmer'. So, what have the readers of Ask Slashdot seen/put on business cards which they thought was good/bad/cheesy?" We did these with our Slashdot business cards, and I saw several others with interesting titles at both LWCE's last year. Anyone care to share some interesting job titles they've seen on business cards?

SEWilco writes "Sandia National Laboratories has released its "Cplant" massively parallel processing software. This is related to the software used in their ASCI Red supercomputer, and eliminates several scalability problems to allow hundreds of nodes for algorithms which can't be parallelized for Beowulf-type clusters. This is now number 2 on the TOP500 supercomputer list. The press release refers to "licensing terms", but the license is the GPL. We discussed this in a Linux clusters discussion and several earlier reports as ASCI Red grew."

zO1inks asks: "I work for a custom web solutions company and I'm working on a white paper and presentation that outlines the merits of open source software, particularly the cost savings that can be achieved by using free (or low cost) open source software (OS's, Server, Utilities, etc.) vs typical (and more costly) Microsoft solutions. The material is targeted towards Fortune 500 companies that would have an interest in driving down the costs of custom web development, design, construction, migration, and support. I'm wondering where the largest gains are to be had and what supporting statistics show the validity of such strategies? (e.g. Bank xyz uses Linux to conduct X number of transactions per day with a downtime of only Y hours per month) Bottom Line: Is Fortune 500 ready to embrace Open Source?"

Linus Torvalds (and David Diamond) wrote this book; chromatic wrote the review below. It may be hard to say much new about Linus and the results of his 1991 inspiration to loose his kernel on the world, but this book is historically informative, with copyrighted Torvalds humor to boot (I snorted in parts) and fun facts about growing up in Finland. And for a multimedia extravaganza, you can even listen to some conversation between Linus and co-author David Diamond.

OberonX writes: "Blockman Trading has released the alpha version of Runix, which is a working verion of Linux 2.4 kernel working with PS2. [ed. note: for the original Playstation, though they plan on porting to the PS2 also.] You can read an article about it at zdnet and you can download the 26MB file here. The final version is expected to be released by October while office software for PS1 is due by the end of the year. Pretty neat stuff..."

where_is_my_mind writes: "IBM, NEC, Fujitsu and Hitachi agreed to join forces to speed up development of Linux apps. Check it here." Another submitter sent in a Japanese story which said they were specifically working on building banking applications.

lyberth writes: "Finally after almost too much waiting Yellowdog Linux has released the newest linux distro for the wild and wonderful ppc platform. An awsome new installer, support for most of the new mac hardware, and the first distro to include Xfree 4 for the ppc, as standard makes this pretty sexy distro. The press release can be found here."

Several readers who declined identification have pointed out that this "article over at Interactive Week discusses J.S. Wurzler Underwriting Managers, one of the first companies to offer cracker insurance, charging clients 5 to 15 percent more if they use Microsoft Windows NT in their Internet operations. As insurance companies live and die by their statistics, this is a pretty significant move. The article also has interesting information about tech turn-over in Windows vs. open source shops." However, note that Wurzler is not the only company offering anti-cracking insurance, and the Big Names haven't yet followed this lead, even though they're apparently watching intently. Maybe "treating employees nicely" is at least as important a factor to consider.

Nikato Muirhead writes: "Need I say more?" and points to this page at LinuxToday which says that Mandrake is preparing a beta -- for PPC. Considering the price of a used-but-decent G3, this sounds fun to get in on. (E-mailing sympa@linux-mandrake.com with "SUB cooker-ppc" in the body will start you on the road to beta-testerhood.)

joestump98 writes: "JWZ (of Netscape and Mozilla fame) has put up an extremely interesting article about using ThinkNic diskless workstations as internet kiosks at his new club, DNA Lounge. Very cool stuff!"

Patrick Mullen writes: "The Duke of URL has just posted a Distribution Round-Up. The article covers information on many of today's (and yesterday's) popular Linux distributions as well as links to many distribution reviews -- and aims to arm Linux users with the information to choose the distro that is right for them." It's pretty much required that Slashdot publish one of these every few months.

John Jasen writes: "Join the kernel of the month club! Order yours now!" See the Changelog, I would link to the mirrors but I doubt they're updated yet, so just head to kernel.org.

Guillem Cantallops Ramis writes: "In Bulma (Balearic Islands LUG) we've done real benchmarks this time: Mongo benchmarks (designed by Hans Reiser and used to test ReiserFS, slightly modified by me to support XFS and JFS), kernel compilation benchmarks, and a small "database simulation" benchmark. You'll find everything in english this time, with benchmark results and interesting comments by Dr. Ricardo Galli (Universitat de les Illes Balears, UIB). Have fun... and switch to a journaled filesystem now!" The previous article was here.

Steven Haryanto writes: "This one's from Indonesia. InfoLinux did an email interview with Hans Reiser, in which he explained about the ReiserFS project plan and the new Namesys business model. Mr. Reiser told me that Namesys recently received $600K funding from DARPA to include encryption in ReiserFS v4.0." Dig this quote: "We are going to add plugins in our next major version, and we hope that plugins will do for filesystems what they did for Photoshop." Mmmm -- encrypted, compressed, journaling, extensible filesystems. Reiser also touches on issues of international software development and how programmers can achieve fame.

rcriii writes: "Kevin Reichard is announcing the end of Linux on the desktop over at Linux Planet . Having spent the past couple of weeks fighting with Star Office and Netscape, I'd say that he has a point. Let the flame wars begin." I'm still not sure it was ever born in the first place ... although I happily run Linux on all of my desktops. But I'm not exactly the desktop of corporate America either.

An AC submitted this sad news: "NewsForge has a couple of articles on a management shakeup and more at French Linux distribution Mandrake. The CEO, CIO, CTO and others, including most of the IS team, have been let go. Others have taken voluntary pay cuts or cuts in their work hours. Ouch!" Several of the slashdot staff are big Mandrake fans; I hope they can keep going in the face of adversity.

Chanc_Gorkon asks: "anyone know of any EMWIN software for Linux? EMWIN stands for Emergency Managers Weather Information Network. Weathernode is a free as in beer client for windows that can accept this info. EMWIN will pick up National Weather Service alerts usually before the TV and Radio people say anything. I searched both Freshmeat and Google and saw nothing but maybe embryonic projects, not ready even for developer consumption. Further info can be found at the NWS's EMWIN page. It seems, to me, that this would be a nice thing to have on Linux since Weathernode eats resources. This program even can retreive NEXRAD images and animate them."

Delrin writes "This article on Zdnet reports on how Linux is slowly becoming an important player in the high-end graphic design industry. The latest upcoming movie "Shrek" a perfect example. Dreamworks and others are turning to linux for a large portion of their work, turning away from the likes of SGI and Microsoft." The movie looks visually astonishing: I'm definitely checking it out asap. Hopefully the story can live up the credits (Mike Meyers, John Lithgow, Eddie Murphy) and the visuals (the trailers blow away much of Toy Story 2).

Wakko Warner writes: "According to this article, a new Linux worm named "Cheese worm" has been spreading lately. The difference between this and other Linux worms is that Cheese worm attempts to fix backdoors added by other worms, removing malicious code and user accounts and scanning for other infected systems on the network. Now if someone would only release something like this for Outlook that turns off VBScript..."