jrepin writes with news of today's release (here's Linus's announcement) of Linux 3.4: "This release includes several Btrfs updates: metadata blocks bigger than 4KB, much better metadata performance, better error handling and better recovery tools. There are other features: a new X32 ABI which allows to run in 64 bit mode with 32 bit pointers; several updates to the GPU drivers: early modesetting of Nvidia Geforce 600 'Kepler', support of AMD RadeonHD 7xxx and AMD Trinity APU series, and support of Intel Medfield graphics; support of x86 cpu driver autoprobing, a device-mapper target that stores cryptographic hashes of blocks to check for intrusions, another target to use external read-only devices as origin source of a thin provisioned LVM volume, several perf improvements such as GTK2 report GUI and a new 'Yama' security module."

strawberryshakes writes "The death knell for IE6 was sounded a couple of years ago, but seems like some people just can't let go. Many UK government departments are still using IE6, which is so old — 11 years old to be exact — it can't cope with social media — which the government is trying to get its staff to use more to engage with citizens."

wiredmikey writes with a followup to Thursday's news that Adobe was recommending paid software upgrades in lieu of fixing security holes in some of its applications. After receiving criticism for the security bulletin, Adobe changed its mind and announced that it's developing patches to fix the vulnerabilities. "Developing a patch, especially for three different applications, can be costly and time consuming. Developing these patches consumes development resources, then must run through a QA process, and the patch needs to be communicated and distributed to users. And for a company like Adobe with a massive customer base using its Photoshop, Illustrator, and Flash Professional, the bandwidth cost alone can be substantial. For a popular product that was just over two years old, providing a fix to address a serious security flaw its what customers deserve. And while Adobe may have originally tried to sneak by without addressing the issue and pushing users to upgrade to its new product, the company made the right move in the end."

An anonymous reader writes "IEEE announced the publication of IEEE 802.11-2012, which defines the technology for the world's premier wireless LAN products. The new IEEE 802.11-2012 revision has been expanded significantly by supporting devices and networks that are faster and more secure, while offering improved Quality of Service and improved cellular network hand-off. The standard's relevance continues to expand with the emergence of new applications, such as the smart grid, which augments the facility for electricity generation, distribution, delivery and consumption with a two-way, end-to-end network for communications and control."

An anonymous reader writes "An Apple programmer, apparently by accident, left a debug flag open in the most recent version of its Mac OS X operating system. In specific configurations, applying the OS X Lion update 10.7.3 turns on a system-wide debug log file that contains the login passwords of every user who has logged in since the update was applied. The passwords are stored in clear text."

bonch writes "Apple has quietly replaced the iPad 2's A5 with a smaller 32nm die that increases battery life by 15 to 30%. It's theorized that Apple is using the iPad 2 as a test bed for the new hardware platform, which shrinks the surface area of the A5 to 57% of the previous size."

Cryophallion writes "After many years of development, GIMP 2.8 is finally released. Among its features: the oft-desired single-window mode, layer groups, and many other massive improvements, including some of the GIMP UI team's work. This might be the release that helps make The GIMP a much more user friendly experience for newcomers, and has features that are rivaling those of certain exceptionally expensive commercial programs. While the porting of GEGL is still ongoing (and recently reported to have made massive advances made), this is a major step forward for one of the premier open source projects." Here are the official release notes.

An anonymous reader writes with this enthusiastic review of the latest from Canonical: "So how does Ubuntu Precise Pangolin (12.04) fare? I will say exceptionally well. Unity is not the same ugly duckling it was made out to be. In Ubuntu 12.04, it has transformed into a beautiful swan. As Ubuntu 12.04 is a long term release, the Ubuntu team has pulled all stops to make sure the user experience is positive. Ubuntu 12.04 aka Precise Pangolin is definitely worthy of running on your machine."

New submitter seb42 writes "Pixel Qi announces new screens that can match or exceed the image quality of the screen in the iPad3, with a very low power mode that runs at a full 100X power reduction from the peak power consumed by the iPad3 screen. Hope the Google tablet has this tech." The claims are pretty bold, and specific: "We have a new architecture that matches the resolution of the ipad3 screen, and its full image quality including matching or exceeding contrast, color saturation, the viewing angle and so forth with massive power savings."

First time accepted submitter Kelerei writes "Windows 8 has been confirmed as the official name for the next x86/x64 version of Windows, which will be released in two editions: a home edition (simply named 'Windows 8') featuring an updated Windows Explorer, Task Manager, improved multi-monitor support and 'the ability to switch languages on the fly,' while a professional edition ('Windows 8 Pro') adds features for businesses and technical professionals such as encryption, virtualization and domain connectivity. Windows Media Center will not be included in the Pro edition and will be available separately as part of a 'media pack' add-on. A third edition, branded as 'Windows RT,' will be available for ARM-based systems."

An anonymous reader writes "The Next Web is reporting that Google Drive, the search giant's long anticipated cloud storage service, is set to launch next week. From the article: 'What's interesting though is that Google is planning to start everyone with 5 GB of storage. Of course you can buy more, but that trumps Dropbox's 2 GB that is included with every account. Dropbox does make it easy to get more space, including 23 GB of potential upgrades for HTC users. What's also interesting is the wording related to how the system will work. It's been long-thought that Windows integration will come easy, but that getting the Google Drive icon into the Mac a la Dropbox would be a bit harder. From what we're reading, Google Drive will work "in desktop folders" on both Mac and Windows machines, which still leaves the operation question unanswered.'"

Hugh Pickens writes "Those who grew up in the 1960s and 1970s knew the B-52 Stratofortress as a central figure in the anxiety that flowed from the protracted staring match between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Now CNET reports that it was 60 years ago, on April 15, 1952, that a B-52 prototype built by Boeing took off on its maiden flight and although the 1950s-vintage B-52s are no longer in the US Air Force inventory, the 90 or so H models delivered between May 1961 and October 1962 still remain on active duty. 'The B-52 has been a wonderful flying box,' says retired Brig. Gen. Peyton Cole. 'It's persevered all these years because it's been able to adapt and still continues to fly. It started out as a high-level flying platform during the Cold War. Then as air defenses got better it became a low-level penetrator, and more than that was the first aircraft to fly low-level at night through FLIR (forward looking infrared) and night-vision TV.' The B-52's feat of longevity reflects both regular maintenance and timely upgrades — in the late 1980s, for instance, GPS capabilities were incorporated into the navigation system but it also speaks to the astronomical costs of the next-generation bombers that have followed the B-52 into service (a total of 744 were built, counting all models) with the Air Force. B-52s cost about $70 million apiece (in today's dollars), while the later, stealth-shaped B-2 Spirit bombers carried an 'eye-watering $3-billion-a-pop unit price.' The Air Force's 30-year forecast, published in March, envisions an enduring role for the B-52 and engineering studies, the Air Force says, suggest that the life span of the B-52 could extend beyond the year 2040. 'At that point, why not aim for the centennial mark?'"

unts writes "The highly configurable Linux PVR, MythTV, has reached the 0.25 release, over 500 days after the previous full release. New features include VAAPI support, E-AC3, TrueHD, and DTS-HD audio, the ability to control other home entertainment devices via HDMI CEC and additions to the API to allow HTTP live streaming. The release notes for 0.25 don't reflect the release status at the time of writing, but should contain most of the relevant changes. MythTV can be used as a backend (recorder) and frontend (viewer), but can also feed other frontends such as appropriate versions of XBMC. Hopefully the new HTTP streaming API will lead to even more ways to get your video fix."

MatthewVD writes "Our cars run millions of lines of code that need constant and, often, critical updates. Jim Motavalli writes that Mercedes-Benz's new mbrace2 'cloud infotainment system' has a secret capability: it can update software automatically and wirelessly. In a process called 'reflashing,' the Mercedes system turns on the car operating system (CU), downloads the new application, then cuts itself off. With companies like Fisker paying dearly for constant recalls for software problems, automakers will likely rush to embrace this technology. No more USBs in the dashboard!"

yuhong writes "On April 10, the second Tuesday of April, Windows Vista will exit Mainstream Support and enter Extended Support. This means that no-charge (free) support will end, no further service packs will be created, nor will future IE versions (such as IE10) be available for Vista. Also, no new non-security hotfixes will be created or be available without an Extended Hotfix Support Agreement (EHSA). This will last for 5 years before support for Vista completely ends in 2017."

We've been busy at Slashdot. As you have probably noticed, we've added a couple of new Slashboxes recently:

• Most Discussed: Highlighting recent stories with the most active discussions
• This Day on Slashdot: Featuring the biggest Slashdot stories of the day all the way back to the beginning.

We also pushed through a number of fixes to the user experience and upgrades to the site infrastructure in recent months including:

• Upgrading Slashdot to modern hardware and new versions of MySQL and Apache
• Cleaning up the topics pages
• Improving methods for sharing submissions
• Thumbnails for articles with videos
• Flag-a-comment abuse reporting
• Removal of old and unused Slashboxes
• A much overdue overhauling of the FAQ
• Fixes to user preferences
• The launch of the Slashdot Hall of Fame (that little badge icon next to the logo)
• Fixes to the D2 comment system. Highlights include bug fixes to the comment score slider, a better abbreviated view (if you quote the parent, that's removed so people can see your first sentence instead), and general reliability improvements to the AJAX magic
• And many more...

In addition, we're working on modules to highlight top submissions and we've launched Slashdot TV at http://tv.slashdot.org/ . We plan on launching more in the weeks to come. Some of these new sections will feature original content that isn't normally run on the front page. We're also planning a new mobile experience and we'll need your feedback to help us with the look and usability. Our goal through all these changes is to make your Slashdot experience a good one. We are listening to your complaints and concerns and promise to keep giving you News for Nerds and Stuff that Matters.

So, readers, what do you want to see in the coming months?

snydeq writes "Mozilla's 'endless parade' of Firefox updates adds no visible benefit to users but breaks common functions, as numerous add-ons, including the popular open source TinyMCE editor, continually suffer compatibility issues, thanks to Firefox's newly adopted auto-update cycle, writes InfoWorld's Galen Gruman. 'Firefox is a Web browser, and by its very nature the Web is a heterogeneous, uncontrolled collection of resources. Expecting every website that uses TinyMCE to update it whenever an incremental rev comes out is silly and unrealistic, and certainly not just because Mozilla decided compatibility in its parade of new Firefox releases was everyone else's problem. The Web must handle such variablility — especially the browsers used to access it.'"

supersloshy writes "The popular GNOME desktop environment has just announced the release of version 3.4. User-facing updates include, among others, a new look for many GNOME applications, smooth scrolling support in GTK, integrated document search in GNOME Shell, a new dynamic background, improved accessibility configuration options, new high-contrast icons, and more documentation. Developer-facing improvements include the release of GTK+ 3.4 and updates to standard GNOME libraries as part of the latest GNOME Developer Platform."

shreshtha writes "Huawei says it has 'recently introduced ... Beyond LTE technology, which significantly increases peak rates to 30Gbps — over 20 times faster than existing commercial LTE networks.' It claims to have achieved this with 'key breakthroughs in antenna structure, radio frequency architecture, IF (intermediate frequency) algorithms, and multi-user MIMO (multi-input multi-output).'"

Hugh Pickens writes "With 3 million sold over the last week what's not to like about the new iPad? Michelle Maltais at the LA Times does a good job of putting together a compendium of gripes about the new device, justified or otherwise. Most people thought that Siri on the new iPad was a gimme; instead it has a scaled back version — dictation. 'If you want Siri, buy an iPhone. Plain and simple.' The new iPad is a little heavier than the iPad 2, thanks to the better graphics processor and more powerful battery. At one-tenth of a pound heavier that really doesn't sound like much, but it can start to matter if you hold your iPad in one hand for long periods or have any kind of repetitive stress injury. Apps designed for Retina display can be up to five times bigger and it's not just a problem for owners of the new iPad. Legacy owners of the original and iPad 2 who have these apps get to feel the pain too, since updates aren't device specific." The list continues, below.