nerdyH writes "Canonical will port Ubuntu Desktop Linux to the ARMv7 architecture. The announcement sets the stage for Intel to lose the traditional 'software advantage' that has enabled x86 to shrug off attacks from other architectures for the last 30 years. How long can it be before Microsoft responds with a Windows 7 port? I mean, x86 just can't do 'idle power' like ARM ... Nokia's N810 tablets can standby for several weeks, just like a cell phone, keeping you 'present' on IM, behind IPv4 NAT the whole time. The first Atom MIDs are standing by for 6-7 hours."

fprintf writes "As much as I hate to admit it, it looks like my 13-year-old son is following in my footsteps and preferring interesting, science-based toys. In the past he has been really interested in Lava Lamps, Newton's Cradle, and anything magnetic. It seems the knick-knacks that have generated the most interest were small and relatively inexpensive. For example, a small laser pointer keychain I bought him a couple of years ago still provides tons of entertainment. Yesterday I showed him ThinkGeek and he really liked the Levitron. I wanted to ask the Slashdot crowd what were some other really neat, interesting gadgets? Is there anything cool in the under-$50 range that you would like in your stocking this year?"

With modern console technology making it easy to develop and distribute small games, more and more companies are taking advantage of gamers' nostalgia to re-release decades-old hits, and to create entirely new titles in older styles. Gamasutra takes a look at what the retro game fad has become, and where it can go from here. What old games or series do you think would translate well onto today's consoles? "Many gamers who bought Mega Man 9 did so because of the game's inherent nostalgia, or because they never had a chance to enjoy the older games on the Nintendo Entertainment System when they were younger. Mega Man 9 is very much a product of its context. Its gameplay is fantastic, but it too is a product of the time period in which it reigned supreme. It suggests the question: can neo-retro games stand the test of time? Will games that mimic or lampoon the 8-bit era remain relevant and interesting to the masses long after its original audience has disappeared?"

An anonymous reader writes "Phoronix has a new article out on Wayland: A New X Server For Linux. One of Red Hat's engineers has started writing a new X11 server around today's needs and to eliminate the cruft that has been in this critical piece of free software for more than a decade. This new server is called Wayland and it is designed with newer hardware features like kernel mode-setting and a kernel memory manager for graphics. Wayland is also dramatically simpler to target for in development. A compositing manager is embedded into the Wayland server and ensures 'every frame is perfect' according to the project's leader."

VideoGamer sat down with Randy Stude, president of the PC Gaming Alliance, to talk about the state of piracy and DRM in today's gaming industry. He suggests that many game studios have themselves to blame for leaks and pre-launch piracy by not integrating their protection measures earlier in the development process. He mentions that some companies, such as Blizzard and Valve, have worked out anti-piracy schemes that generate much less of a backlash than occurred for Spore . Stude also has harsh words for companies who decline to create PC versions of their games, LucasArts in particular, saying, "LucasArts hasn't made a good PC game in a long time. That's my opinion. ... It's ridiculous to say that there's not enough audience for that game ... and that it falls into this enthusiast extreme category when ported over to the PC. That's an uneducated response." Finally, Stude discusses what the PCGA would like to see out of Vista and the next version of Windows.

brothke writes "There is a perception in both the private and government sector, that security, both physical and digital, is something you can buy. Witness the mammoth growth of airport security products following 9/11, and the sheer number of vendors at security conferences. With that, government officials and corporate executives often think you can simply buy products and magically get instant security by flipping on the switch. The reality is that security is not something you can buy; it is something you must get." Keep reading for the rest of Ben's review.

The Register is reporting that according to some reports, Interpol will soon be pushing for a world-wide facial recognition database at the borders of all member nations. "The UK already has airport gates equipped with such technology, intended to remove the need for a human border guard to check that a passenger's face matches the one recorded in his or her passport. According to the Guardian, Interpol database chief Mark Branchflower believes that his organization should set up a database of facial-recognition records to operate alongside its existing photo, fingerprint and DNA files."

Hugh Pickens writes "Traditional peak power hours — the time during the day when power demand shoots up — run from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. when air conditioning begins to ramp up and people start heading for malls and home but utilities are now seeing another peak power problem evolve with a second surge that runs from about 8 p.m. to 9 p.m. when people head toward their big screen TVs and home computers. 'It is [not] so much a peak as it is a plateau,' says Andrew Tang, senior director of the smart energy web at Pacific Gas & Electric. '8 p.m. is kind of a recent phenomenon.' Providing power during the peak hours is already a costly proposition because approximately 10 percent of the existing generating capacity only gets used about 50 hours a year: Most of the time, that expensive capital equipment sits idle waiting for a crisis. Efforts to reduce demand are already underway with TV manufacturers working to reduce the power consumption in LCD and plasma while Intel and PC manufacturers are cranking down computer power consumption. 'Without a doubt, there's demand' for green PCs, says Rick Chernick, CEO of HP partner Connecting Point, adding that the need to be green is especially noticeable among medical industry enterprise customers."

steveit_is writes "Yesterday it was reported that Microsoft's revised CAPTCHA had been cracked. Now it's Google's turn. In a move that is sure to surprise no one, the spammers behind 'Xrumer' have announced that they've not only cracked Google's CAPTCHA, but other forms of image verification as well, including 'pick the cat' style CAPTCHA."

Harden writes "TrustedReviews has an interesting take on what the 'Ultimate Netbook' ought to be. From the article: 'How to solve a problem like the netbook? To my mind, despite nearly every manufacturer taking a stab at the thing, none has yet quite distilled my idea of what the Ultimate Netbook would be. This is partly because, until recently, not everyone had a clear understanding of what a netbook was meant to do, but also because manufacturers have all been far too busy jostling for market share to put a lot of thought into the finer details.' What would your Ultimate Netbook include?"

SoulMaster writes "The company I work for (we are a one-year-old start-up) has recently started filing patents to protect some of its intellectual property. At the onset of the patent process, one of the executives drafted a very basic Patent Incentive Program (PIP) which is now under full review to ensure that it is both accurate and fair. The basics of our original PIP are that inventors receive (or co-inventors share): $500 for each provisional filing, $1500 for an actual patent filing (with full claim-sets defined), and $5000 for any patent that is granted by the USPTO. While the current program seems fair to our staff, we have been unable to find anything to compare it to. Moreover, the revamp of the program is likely to grant an equity stake in the company (via an Options grant) rather than cash payouts. I've scoured Google for information, but because internally documented PIPs aren't generally public knowledge, the results are limited. Thus, I have decided to ask Slashdot users: How does the company you work for handle Patent incentives? Do they have them at all? Are they cash or equity based?"

JagsLive notes a patent application filed in the US by Nokia for a way to 'scribble on the back' of digital photos. Nokia's approach is similar to the iPod's Cover Flow, except that Nokia users will be able to flip through their snaps, select one, and then turn it over and annotate the back just using SMS-like text entry. The scribble becomes an integral part of the saved photo.

schliz writes "Real-world behaviours and racial biases could carry forward into virtual worlds such as Second Life, social psychologists say. According to a study that was conducted in There.com, virtual world avatars respond to social cues in the same ways that people do in the real world. Users, who were unaware that they were part of a psychological study, were approached by a researcher's avatar for either a 'foot-in-the-door' (FITD) or 'door-in-the-face' (DITF) experiment. While results of the FITD experiment revealed no racial bias, the effect of the DITF technique was significantly reduced when the experimenter took the form of a dark-skinned avatar."

SenFo writes "To many of the people who downloaded Google Chrome last week, it was a surprise to observe that each opened tab runs in a separate process rather than a separate thread. Scott Hanselman, Lead Program Manager at Microsoft, discusses some of the benefits of running in separate processes as opposed to separate threads. A quote: 'Ah! But they're slow! They're slow to start up, and they are slow to communicate between, right? Well, kind of, not really anymore.'"

Death Metal Maniac writes "Dubbed Eva de Naharon, or Eve of Naharon, the female skeleton has been dated at 13,600 years old. If that age is accurate, the skeleton along with three others found in underwater caves along the Caribbean coast of the Yucatán Peninsula could provide new clues to how the Americas were first populated. The skeletons' skulls hint that the people may not be of northern Asian descent, which would contradict the dominant theory of New World settlement. 'The shape of the skulls has led us to believe that Eva and the others have more of an affinity with people from South Asia than North Asia,' González explained."