Sysadmins across the Net can stop taking Doom breaks and start working it. Dennis Chao's patch (www.cs.unm.edu/~dlchao/flake/doom/) takes commands like "kill -9" literally, transforming Linux troubleshooting into a point-and-shoot free-for-all. Network processes have always been monsters - now, if you need to interrupt a job that's sucking up system resources, just aim and fire. This may not be as efficient as a command-line interface, but as a Neuromancer-like proof of concept, it's brilliant. "We're not neurally wired to do command-line stuff," notes Chao, a University of New Mexico grad student. "But you have a spatial memory that's excellent - walking through a room, you know where things are." The open source Doom-Linux code has already been ported to Back Orifice, the popular hackers' app. Could this be target practice for a coming desktop war?
ELECTRIC WORD
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Behind The Screens
