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Linux

Submission + - Tux and the God Particle (itworld.com) 1

Submitted by
itwbennett
itwbennett writes: "One CERN physicist, going by the username d3pd, took to Reddit to publicly thank Linux for the role it played in the discovery of what just might be the Higgs Boson particle.

I don't see any CERN related things here, so I want to mention how Linux (specifically, Scientific Linux and Ubuntu) had a vital role in the discovery of the new boson at CERN," wrote Reddit user d3pd. "We use it every day in our analyses, together with hosts of open software, such as ROOT, and it plays a major role in the running of our networks of computers (in the grid etc.) used for the intensive work in our calculations.

"
Microsoft

Submission + - Former Microsoft exec: Microsoft has 'become the thing they despised' (bgr.com) 2

Submitted by zacharye
zacharye writes: Microsoft has a long and storied history of leadership in the tech industry, and the company has driven innovation for decades. In recent years, however, Microsoft has fallen behind the times in several key industries; the company’s mobile position has deteriorated and left it with a low single-digit market share, and Microsoft won’t launch Windows RT, its response to Apple’s three-year-old iPad, until later this year...
The Almighty Buck

Submission + - A Cashless, High-Value, Anonymous Currency: How? (itworld.com)

Submitted by
jfruh
jfruh writes: "The cashless future is one of those concepts that always seems to be just around the corner, but never quite gets here. There's been a lot of hype around Sweden going almost cashless, but most transactions there use easily traceable credit and debit cards. Bitcoin offers anonymity, but isn't backed by any government and has seen high-profile hacks and collapses in value. Could an experiment brewing in Canada finally take us to cashless nirvana?"
Software

Submission + - RIP 'Software' Companies; Hello 'Data' Companies (forbes.com)

Submitted by onlynmkj
onlynmkj writes: This has a lot of implications for a range of organizations. The crossover from being purely a software provider to a data empire-builder seems like a natural transition many software players could make. As part of a move to the cloud, for example, they could provide metrics and monitoring data that help customers run more efficiently.
Linux

Submission + - Fedora Introduces Offline Updates (itworld.com)

Submitted by
itwbennett
itwbennett writes: "Thanks to a new feature approved this week by the Fedora Engineering Steering Committee, you won't hear Fedora 18 users bragging about systems that have been running continuously for months on end. 'Fedora's new Offline System Update feature will change the current system to something that is more Windows- and OS X-like: while many updates can still be made on the fly, certain package updates will require the system to be restarted so the patches can be applied in a special mode, according to the Fedora wiki page on the feature,' writes blogger Brian Proffitt."
Open Source

Submission + - FLOSS For End Users May Be Facing Extinction (itworld.com)

Submitted by
itwbennett
itwbennett writes: "If you buy into the idea that tablets (and ultrabooks, and smartphones) in the enterprise are nothing more than glorified thin clients, then Microsoft's Surface presentation seemed more flashback than future. And if you're a fan of free software, the announcement might also have struck fear in your heart. While Microsoft has never locked out apps based on license, it's not impossible that they might chose a more locked-down Apple-esque approach for Surface, writes blogger Brian Proffitt. 'And that could put free software for end users very much at risk.'"

Submission + - Physics Community Afire With Rumors of Higgs Boson Discovery | Wired Science | W (wired.com) 5

Submitted by sirlark
sirlark writes: The latest rumors circulating around the physics blogosphere suggest that scientists with the Large Hadron Collider will announce the discovery of the Higgs boson within weeks. “The bottom line though is now clear: There’s something there which looks like a Higgs is supposed to look,” wrote mathematician Peter Woit on his blog, Not Even Wrong.
Power

Submission + - Turbine Company Compiles Worldwide Wind Database (itworld.com)

Submitted by
jfruh
jfruh writes: "Wind power involves more than just sticking a turbine on a hill and seeing what happens; you need to know exactly what typical wind conditions are like to determine where to install what kind of turbine facing which direction. Vestas, a Danish company whose turbines produce 20 percent of the world's wind energy, has a digital wind library with that information, and it's using new data analytics techniques to improve it. The original library could give you details of a 27-by-27 kilometer grid square; now they've got that down to 10-by10 meters. Reports that used to take three weeks to run now take 15 minutes."
Apple

Submission + - Analyzing the MacBook Pro with Retina display (extremetech.com)

Submitted by
MrSeb
MrSeb writes: "Late yesterday, Apple released a next-generation 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display. It has a 2880×1800 220 PPI display. The normal 13- and 15-inch MacBook Pros and MacBook Airs have also been updated, but the 17-inch MBP has been retired, in effect replaced by the new Retina display MBP. Without a doubt, this new laptop is an engineering marvel in the same league as the original iPhone or MacBook Air. During the WWDC keynote presentation yesterday, Sir Jonathan Ive appeared on screen to say, “To create something that is genuinely new, you have to start again. With great intent, you disconnect from the past. It is without doubt, it’s the very best computer we’ve ever built.” When Paul Schiller showed a cutaway photo of the new laptop, it was patently clear that Ive wasn’t being hyperbolic: The Retina display MBP really looks nothing we’ve ever seen before. Here, ExtremeTech dives into the engineering behind the laptop, paying close attention to that new and rather shiny display — and the fact that this thing has no user-replaceable parts at all."
Communications

Submission + - What Would A Post-Email World Look Like? (itworld.com)

Submitted by
jfruh
jfruh writes: "Pundits have been gleefully predicting the death of email for years, but nobody has really been able to explain what will replace email, especially for the medium's archiving capabilities that businesses and governments have come to rely on. It's possible that email won't vanish, but rather become insivible, one component of an integrated communication stream that will be transparent to users but still present — and useful — under the hood. It may turn out that Google's Wave, which was built on this idea, was just a bit ahead of its time."
Businesses

Submission + - This Is the Way Facebook Ends (vice.com)

Submitted by
pigrabbitbear
pigrabbitbear writes: "For the past eight years, Facebook has been the central neural network of the Internet’s link-sharing brain. But as the site has grown, so have our needs. Now that the company’s public, it’s crunch time, and the skeptics and haters are lining up to talk about how it might all end. One thing’s for certain: whether it’s a bang or a whimper, Facebook is not forever. How could it collapse? Let me count the ways."
Google

Submission + - James Gosling Unhappy With Oracle Trial Outcome (itworld.com)

Submitted by
itwbennett
itwbennett writes: "Reaction to the outcome of the Oracle vs. Google Trial has been generally postive, but Java creator James Gosling isn't so happy: 'For those of us at Sun who felt trampled-on and abused by Google's callous self-righteousness, I would have preferred a different outcome — not from the court case as much as from events of years past,' Gosling wrote on his personal blog."

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