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Ubuntu

Submission + - Windows 8 Catastrophe Pushed Valve To Linux (muktware.com)

Submitted by sfcrazy
sfcrazy writes: Gabe Newell, Valve co-founder and Managing Director, doesn't hold very high opinion of Microsoft's Windows 8. He calls it "a catastrophe for everyone in the PC space" during a videogame conference Casual Connect in Seattle. Linux distribution Ubuntu's popularity and young user base may actually help these companies in finding the right audience they are looking for. Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, is also working on enhancing the user experience by introducing technologies like HUD and Web Apps.
Ubuntu

Submission + - Why Valve Wants to Port 2500 Games on Linux? Because Windows 8 is a Catastrophe 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Gabe Newell wants to support Linux because he think Windows 8 is a catastrophe for everyone in PC space. He wants to move away from a closed ecosystem of Microsoft Windows 8. He recently made a rare appearance at Casual Connect, an annual videogame conference in Seattle. From the allthingsd: The big problem that is holding back Linux is games. People don't realize how critical games are in driving consumer purchasing behavior. We want to make it as easy as possible for the 2,500 games on Steam to run on Linux as well. It's a hedging strategy. I think Windows 8 is a catastrophe for everyone in the PC space. I think we’ll lose some of the top-tier PC/OEMs, who will exit the market. I think margins will be destroyed for a bunch of people. If that's true, then it will be good to have alternatives to hedge against that eventuality. Some Linux users thinks that this is a win-win situation for Linux users as it will brings good game titles on the Linux system that haven't been there and it will protect steam business model from both Apple and Microsoft.
Microsoft

Submission + - Gabe Newell Wants to Support Linux, Because Windows 8 is a 'Catastrophe' (kotaku.com)

Submitted by wasimkadak
wasimkadak writes: The head of Valve says his company is working to develop for Linux, calling Microsoft's Windows 8 a "catastrophe" that will lead product manufacturers to abandon the platform.

At a gaming event in Seattle last night, as reported by AllThingsD, Valve CEO Gabe Newell said the one thing holding back Linux is video game support.

"The big problem that is holding back Linux is games. People don't realize how critical games are in driving consumer purchasing behavior," Newell said, according to AllThingsD. "We want to make it as easy as possible for the 2,500 games on Steam to run on Linux as well. It's a hedging strategy. I think Windows 8 is a catastrophe for everyone in the PC space. I think we'll lose some of the top-tier PC/OEMs, who will exit the market. I think margins will be destroyed for a bunch of people. If that's true, then it will be good to have alternatives to hedge against that eventuality."
Android

Submission + - Ex-Sun Employees Are Taking Java To iOS (codenameone.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Ex-Sun employees did what Sun/Oracle failed to do since the iPhone launched. They brought Java to iOS and other mobile devices. They are getting major coverage from Forbes, DDJ, hacker news and others. They are taking a unique approach of combining a Swing like API, with open source and SaaS based solution.
Australia

Submission + - Hackers release AAPT data to protest Aussie policies (itnews.com.au)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Anonymous is releasing some of the 40GB of data it claims to have stolen from Australian internet service provider AAPT. The hack is reportedly in protest against Australia's proposed data retention regime, which would mandate ISPs to collect and hold transmission data from its users for up to two years.
Apple

Submission + - Samsung: Apple wouldn't have sold a single iPhone without stealing our tech (bgr.com)

Submitted by
jsse
jsse writes: "The two consumer electronics companies, Apple and Samsung, are preparing to do battle in San Jose, California next week, and now-public court documents shed light on the positions each firm is taking. As highlighted by The Wall Street Journal, Samsung’s trial brief pulls no punches in telling the court exactly where it stands regarding Apple’s repeated patent-related accusations. In short, Apple is the thief here, not Samsung. More on BGR."
The Internet

Submission + - The Rise of the Junkweb and Why It's So Awesome

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Have you noticed your Facebook stream or looked at reddit lately? A huge chunk of what goes by lately are photos with text over them, usually quotes about this or that. "It’s the Junkweb," writes Chris Brogan. "Why 'junk?' Because the original intent of the Internet was that links were gold, that searchability was key, that this ability to find anything and use resources from wherever was magic. And this new web? The web of pictures with text over them? They’re junk. They’re a dead end. The picture is the payload." Facebook and Pinterest are doing what so much of our “awesome” tech hasn’t been able to do well: let the everyperson into this universe. For whatever reason, the “photos with text” experience gives us that feeling we get when we read magazines. "It makes the texty text of blogging a lot less stark. It draws our eyes in. It’s fast to consume, and it brings an emotional response faster." Now with the release of Google’s Panda search technology, it has been acknowledged that links and pages aren’t everything and with Google+ goes the realization that it’s no longer a links-only world. who shares is as important as how it’s shared. "I’m spending far more time on the Junkweb than I am on the Smartweb," concludes Brogan. "Deny it, if you want. The numbers show otherwise. We are in love with this new method of interacting.""

Submission + - Gabe Newell brands Windows 8 a catastrophy (arstechnica.com) 1

Submitted by fragMasterFlash
fragMasterFlash writes: Valve head—and one-time Microsoft employee—Gabe Newell has branded Windows 8 "a catastrophe for everyone in the PC space" at videogame conference Casual Connect in Seattle. The Valve boss continued, saying that in the fallout from Windows 8, "we'll lose some of the top-tier PC/OEMs, who will exit the market. I think margins will be destroyed for a bunch of people." He argued that one of the last remaining things keeping people away from Linux was the lack of games. Valve is working to bring Left 4 Dead 2 and other Steam titles to Linux in a move that Newell describes as "a hedging strategy." If his predictions about Windows 8 come true, he says "it will be good to have alternatives to hedge against that eventuality."

Submission + - Skydiver Leaps from 18 Miles Up in 'Space Jump' Practice (space.com) 1

Submitted by
wooferhound
wooferhound writes: "A daredevil leapt from a balloon more than 18 miles above the Earth today (July 25), moving one step closer to a so-called "space jump" that would set the record for the world's highest skydive.

Austrian adventurer Felix Baumgartner stepped out of his custom-built capsule at an altitude of 96,640 feet (29,456 meters) above southeastern New Mexico, officials with Red Bull Stratos — the name of Baumgartner's mission — announced today.

In today's jump, Baumgartner experienced freefall for three minutes and 48 seconds, reaching a top speed of 536 mph (863 kph), project officials said. Baumgartner then opened his parachute and glided to Earth safely about 10 minutes and 30 seconds after stepping into the void."
Programming

Submission + - Where do you find good programmers? 1

Submitted by Art3x
Art3x writes: Kernighan said, 'Controlling complexity is the essence of computer programming.' My past four coworkers subscribed to the copy-and-paste method of code reuse, preferred long names (they sound more official), and built unrequested features so they "wouldn't have to code it later." The code samples from applicants indicate they believe the same. Where do you find programmers who believe in tight design, DRY, and less-is-more? I feel that it would be easier to find an architect, painter, or writer and teach him programming than to find a programmer and teach him good design — or even get him to acknowledge its existence.

Submission + - Buckyballs Magnets Banned by Feds (gizmodo.com)

Submitted by SicariusMan
SicariusMan writes: Looks like warnings and other precautions were not enough to save Buckyballs Magnets. According to this article the Feds are concerned about the increase in children swallowing the rare earth magnets. Amazon and others have already agreed to stop selling the toys.

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Open source employee vacation day tracking software?

Submitted by sprior
sprior writes: I'm looking for preferably open source software that a business would use to track vacation/sick days for employees and so far have come up empty. I found WaypointHR which looks defunct and I'm looking at OrangeHRM which looks half defunct, half bait and switch, and half strange in general with a bunch of website bugs thrown in. Along the way I've seen a couple of other OS projects which look defunct as well. I realize that a solution might be more than just vacation tracking because once you configure the employee info for a company you tend to want to use that for more than one thing. Paid solutions are a possibility.
Iphone

Submission + - Court Docs: iPhone Design Borrowed From Sony (itworld.com)

Submitted by
jfruh
jfruh writes: "Documents introduced in court by Samsung show that Apple explicitly looked to Sony for design inspiration when developing the iPhone. Engineers were given the explicit instructions to imagined "What would Sony do?" Such borrowings undermine Apple's claims that Samsung stole their propietary original designs for Samsung's Android phones."
Government

Submission + - Black Hat: 6 FBI Lessons To Tighten Enterprise Security (informationweek.com)

Submitted by
gManZboy
gManZboy writes: "How can corporate America cure its information security ills? Take a page from the FBI's terrorism-combating revamp.

That was the pitch made by Shawn Henry, president of CrowdStrike, in his keynote presentation Wednesday opening the Black Hat 2012 conference in Las Vegas. Until March 2012, Henry was the executive assistant director of the FBI, with responsibility for all of the FBI's criminal investigations worldwide, including cyber investigations, the critical incident response group, and international investigations. Two examples: Business must get proactive about fighting threats and must think hard about what to keep off the network entirely."
HP

Submission + - The HP Memristor Debate (wired.com)

Submitted by
AaronLS
AaronLS writes: "(Note: I would have included links and appropriate formatting for quotes within the story, but I have searched and searched and found no guidelines in the FAQ or googling your site that indicate what formatting tags or HTML are valid for stories.)

There has been a debate about whether HP has or has not developed a memristor. It being something fairly different from existing technologies, and similar in many ways to a memristor, I think they felt comfortable using the term. However, there are those not happy about HP using that labeling. On the other hand, had HP created a new unique label, they would have probably gotten flack for pretending it's something new when it's not. What positive will come from the debate? Martin Reynolds sums it up nicely:

“Is Stan Williams being sloppy by calling it a ‘memristor’? Yeah, he is,” Martin Reynolds tells Wired. “Is Blaise Moutett being pedantic in saying it is not a ‘memristor’? Yeah, he is. [...] At the end of day, it doesn’t matter how it works as long as it gives us the ability to build devices with really high density storage.”"
Space

Submission + - Kepler Spots 'Perfectly Aligned' Alien Worlds (discovery.com)

Submitted by
astroengine
astroengine writes: "When NASA's Kepler space telescope started finding planets at odd angles to their parent stars, scientists wondered if our solar system's tidy geometry, with the planets neatly orbiting around the sun's equator, was an exception to the rule. That idea can be laid to rest thanks to an innovative use of the Kepler data which aligned three planets circling the sun-like star Kepler-30 with a giant spot on the star's surface. "The planets themselves are not all that remarkable — two giant Jupiters and one super-Earth — but what is remarkable is that they aligned so perfectly," astronomer Drake Deming, with the University of Maryland, told Discovery News."
Data Storage

Submission + - Flash Memory Slashes Power Use At Data Centers (discovery.com)

Submitted by RedEaredSlider
RedEaredSlider writes: Researchers from Princeton's School of Engineering and Applied Science have written a program called SSDAlloc, which tells a computer running to pretend that it's running using RAM, even though it's actually accessing the storage (flash) memory.

Most computers are designed to look in the RAM first for the data they need. Only after that does the operating look elsewhere, such as on the hard drive or a flash drive. That kind of hierarchical searching around can really slow things down.

SSDAlloc changes that, basically making a computer pretend the flash is the RAM. That cuts power consumption by up to 90 percent, the researchers say, because flash doesn't need power to run nor does it use the power that hard drives do.

Submission + - Cyber Attacks on Activists Traced to FinFisher Spyware of Gamma (bloomberg.com)

Submitted by Sherloqq
Sherloqq writes: FinFisher, a spyware sold by U.K.- based Gamma Group, can secretly take remote control of a computer, copying files, intercepting Skype calls and logging every keystroke.
For the past year, human rights advocates and virus hunters have scrutinized FinFisher, seeking to uncover potential abuses. They got a glimpse of its reach when a FinFisher sales pitch to Egyptian state security was uncovered after that country’s February 2011 revolution. In December, anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks published Gamma promotional videos showing how police could plant FinFisher on a target’s computer.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-07-25/cyber-attacks-on-activists-traced-to-finfisher-spyware-of-gamma.html

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