Posted in the past, for the future.  I always build these up over the week, so if the links seem dated (as in more than 24 hours old), that's why.  My commentary will add the flavor.
  • This NYT story about Dwarf Fortress has been linked lots of places, but I want to point out the one paragraph:
    Growing up, Tarn was enamored of Dungeons & Dragons and J.R.R. Tolkien, but he has never been a lockstep member of the geek culture so much as a wanderer on the fringes. He didn’t read superhero comics as a kid, and later, he never became obsessed with the “Game of Thrones” books, say, or with “Lost.”
    Are you over 35 or so?  Then maybe you remember a time when there wasn't a designated 'Geek Culture'.  It's something specific to a period in time, like when pay phones were still common, or when people were on average still thin.  It strikes me that the interviewer assumes that a computer programmer should become consumed with a TV media event; that it's part of what makes them what they are.   It's as if all accountants need to have brown shoes, and all artists have to wear berets and 'get' abstract art.  Maybe I'm just hipster complaining.
  • "...while Bell Labs’ parent company AT&T flatly refused to believe that packet switching would ever work" - Have I linked to Shady Characters before?  I think so.  Anyway, this is part 1 about the @ sign, and it's of course talking about email and the early days of the Internet, back when it was the ARPANet.  Be sure to check the references at the end of the article; it contains gems like this ad for a 65-pound portable TTY.
  • Tim Paterson has a blog.  DOS is his fault.  Worth reading, for the early hardware details.  (via ftigeot on #dragonflybsd)
  • Removing the Internet's relics. An article about how FTP should die.  It will...  once there's no place where it's needed.  Like gopher!
  • Comparisons like this are usually cheesy, but this one made me laugh: Text editors as Lord of the Rings locations.
A not-yet-finished guide to setting up software RAID on DragonFly has appeared on the site from user 'Markus'.  Read and/or add to it if you are interested; I have always favored having RAID controlled by separate hardware, but this question on using software comes up repeatedly.
I put together a post on users@ about updating to pkgsrc-2011Q2.  I'll just repeat it here after the break: (more…)
Francois Tigeot has fixed wip/jdk16 to build on DragonFly.  Note that this is in pkgsrc-wip, not 'normal' pkgsrc.  The secret is to build lang/kaffe to bootstrap it, which requires CCVER=gcc41 to be set.  Apparently kaffe will not build under gcc 4.4. Why did he do it?  To run OpenGrok, of course.  He's posted instructions on getting OpenGrok running on DragonFly.  Note the Java crashes he reports in DragonFly 2.11 may already have been fixed. p.s. I hated "Stranger in a Strange Land".
17 different ISA device drivers have been removed by Sascha Wildner.  The commit message has device descriptions.  This may mean you need to change your kernel configuration file on the next buildkernel, since some of them were in the GENERIC kernel.  If you need any of them, speak up.  (I don't think I've ever used any of them.  Oh darn.)
Lazy reading is easy when it's been this hot out.  In fact, I may melt before this article gets published.
  • Ecdysis - a NAT64 gateway program.  I link to it for two reasons.  1: You will probably need to NAT 6-to-4 sooner or later, and 2: it uses PF and so is BSD-compatible. (via)
  • Don't not copy that floppy! (also via)  My original Apple ][ disk for Castle Wolfenstein is probably no longer functional.  Not that I have equipment to play it on...
  • World timezones, as a visible map.  (via)   I mention time zone updates here on occasion, and this is a immediate guide to what a strange patchwork of zones it is.  You can't even see some of the really tiny/crazy ones.
  • A crappy way to start your day.  Nobody ever enjoys that call from work...
And now, a link that has nothing to do with this.
Background: You may remember some time ago, I posted a review of Michael Lucas's Network Flow Analysis.  He's written several BSD books and so I figured it was worth reading further, knowing that this network-specific book would be BSD-friendly.  Also, he made it easier by sending me a copy. No Starch Press, the company that published all the books linked in the previous paragraph, asked if I'd read/review another book from them. This would be Practical Packet Analysis, 2nd edition.  (Review continues after the break...) (more…)
The builds of pkgsrc-2011Q2 are finishing up, so we have/will have binaries to download, for those who don't want to build from source.  The uploads should be complete by now for everything except maybe 2.11/x86_64.  You'll have to change $PKG_PATH to point at the new directories for now, though.  There's also some build reports to look at.
I spied a bulk build of pkgsrc using clang.  It's interesting to see the results...  It's on NetBSD, but it should be possible to try the same thing with CCVER on DragonFly.  Any takers?
Thanks to Michael Neumann, there's more supported Broadcom network card chipsets.  There's some wierdness in setup, though, so look at his commit message.
BSDday Argentina 2011 is happening the 4th and 5th of November, in Buenos Aires City, Argentina.  The Call for Papers is out, if you'd like to contribute.
Tim Bisson has another status report on supporting TRIM in DragonFly.   It supports UFS and Hammer slices, and trimming swap too.  I'm not sure what else could be done; that sounds pretty complete to me...  In any case, if you have a SSD, his code is available to try right now.
If you happen to use a LG P-500 smartphone to get online via USB, as 'Romick' does, he's got a patch that makes that device work under DragonFly.  (Sorry, the original users@ email seems to have gone missing.)
About a month from now (August 10-14), the CCC Camp is being held outside Berlin.  Bring a tent and (I assume) something capable of getting a wireless connection.  It only happens every 4 years, so jump on it now.  There will be at least one DragonFly-using person there - Matthias Schmidt is going.